The elusive search for stability is the subject of Professor D. George Boyce's Nineteenth-Century Ireland, the fifth in the New Gill History of Ireland series. Nineteenth-century Ireland began and ended in armed revolt. The bloody insurrections of 1798 were the proximate reasons for the passing of the Act of Union two years later. The 'long nineteenth century' lasted until 1922, by which the institutions of modern Ireland were in place against a background of the Great War, the Ulster rebellion and the armed uprising of the nationalist Ireland. The hope was that, in an imperial structure, the ethnic, religious and national differences of the inhabitants of Ireland could be reconciled and eliminated. Nationalist Ireland mobilised a mass democratic movement under Daniel O'Connell to secure Catholic Emancipation before seeing its world transformed by the social cataclysm of the Great Irish Potato Famine. At the same time, the Protestant north-east of Ulster was feeling the first benefits of the Industrial Revolution. Although post-Famine Ireland modernised rapidly, only the north-east had a modern economy. The mixture of Protestantism and manufacturing industry integrated into the greater United Kingdom and gave a new twist to the traditional Irish Protestant hostility to Catholic political demands. In the home rule period from the 1880s to 1914, the prospect of partition moved from being almost unthinkable to being almost inevitable. Nineteenth-century Ireland collapsed in the various wars and rebellions of 1912–22. Like many other parts of Europe than and since, it had proved that an imperial superstructure can contain domestic ethnic rivalries, but cannot always eliminate them. Nineteenth-Century Ireland: Table of Contents Introduction - The Union: Prelude and Aftermath, 1798–1808 - The Catholic Question and Protestant Answers, 1808–29 - Testing the Union, 1830–45 - The Land and its Nemesis, 1845–9 - Political Diversity, Religious Division, 1850–69 - The Shaping of Irish Politics (1): The Making of Irish Nationalism, 1870–91 - The Shaping of Irish Politics (2): The Making of Irish Unionism, 1870–93 - From Conciliation to Confrontation, 1891–1914 - Modernising Ireland, 1834–1914 - The Union Broken, 1914–23 - Stability and Strife in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

The eighteenth century is in many ways the most problematic era in Irish history. The years from 1700 to 1775 have been short-changed by historians, who have concentrated on the last quarter of the period. Ian McBrides new survey seeks to correct that balance.

A groundbreaking interpretation. In Ireland, the seventeenth century was a war zone, but it was also about politics, about wheeling and dealing. In the end, politics failed, and Raymond Gillespie explains why.

In 1500, most of Ireland lay outside the ambit of English royal power. Only a small area around Dublin was directly administered by the crown. The rest of the island was run in more or less autonomous fashion by Anglo-Norman magnates or Gaelic chieftains.

The eighteenth century is in many ways the most problematic era in Irish history. Traditionally, the years from 1700 to 1775 have been short-changed by historians, who have concentrated overwhelmingly on the last quarter of the period. Professor Ian McBride's survey, the fourth in the New Gill History of Ireland series, seeks to correct that balance. At the same time it provides an accessible and fresh account of the bloody rebellion of 1798, the subject of so much controversy. The eighteenth century was the heyday of the Protestant Ascendancy. Professor McBride explores the mental world of Protestant patriots from Molyneux and Swift to Grattan and Tone. Uniquely, however, McBride also offers a history of the eighteenth century in which Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter all receive due attention. One of the greatest advances in recent historiography has been the recovery of Catholic attitudes during the zenith of the Protestant Ascendancy. Professor McBride's Eighteenth-Century Ireland insists on the continuity of Catholic politics and traditions throughout the century so that the nationalist explosion in the 1790s appears not as a sudden earthquake, but as the culmination of long-standing religious and social tensions. McBride also suggests a new interpretation of the penal laws, in which themes of religious persecution and toleration are situated in their European context. This holistic survey cuts through the clichés and lazy thinking that have characterised our understanding of the eighteenth century. It sets a template for future understanding of that time. Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Table of Contents Introduction Part I. Horizons - English Difficulties and Irish Opportunities - The Irish Enlightenment and its Enemies - Ireland and the Ancien Régime Part II. The Penal Era: Religion and Society - King William's Wars - What Were the Penal Laws For? - How Catholic Ireland Survived - Bishops, Priests and People Part III The Ascendancy and its World - Ascendancy Ireland: Conflict and Consent - Queen Sive and Captain Right: Agrarian Rebellion Part IV. The Age of Revolutions - The Patriot Soldier - A Brotherhood of Affection - 1798

Medieval Ireland is an extended essay on Irish society from the coming of Christianity in the fourth century to the Reformation in the sixteenth. Seen in wider European context, medieval Ireland emerges as exceptional and her contributions to the shaping of Europe, outstanding.

The Way We Were is an account of the social life of Irish Jews from the late 19th century to the modern day. Most of the story is concentrated in Dublin where almost 90 per cent of the entire Irish Jewish community settled. Until the late nineteenth century, there were only a tiny number of Jews in Ireland, most of them well established on the north side of Dublin. But then came the great influx of Jews into Britain and Ireland, most of them from the Russian Pale of Settlement in search of a better, freer and more tolerant life.

The chapters in this book offer a range of impressive new studies on the history of education in Ireland, based on detailed research and drawing on important sources. This book also serves to show the healthy state of the history of education in Ireland. In particular, the book also seeks to understand how both teachers and pupils in Ireland experienced education, and how they ‘received’ education policies and education change. The lived reality of education is woven through the chapters in this book, while the impact of policy on education practice is illuminated many times, and with great clarity. This book is a very important contribution not only to the history of education, but also more widely to social history, women’s history, church history and political history. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal History of Education.