An examination of Irish society and politics, providing a wide-ranging introduction to the involvement of the middle classes in Irish political life and the public sphere accrosss the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Combines analytical surveys and case/area studies to offer new perspectives on crucial movements and figures in Irish history.

An examination of Irish society and politics, providing a wide-ranging introduction to the involvement of the middle classes in Irish political life and the public sphere accrosss the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Combines analytical surveys and case/area studies to offer new perspectives on crucial movements and figures in Irish history.

This book is the first ever collection of scholarly essays on the history of the Irish working class. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the involvement of Irish workers in political life and movements between 1830 and 1945. Fourteen leading Irish and international historians and political scientists trace the politicization of Irish workers during a period of considerable social and political turmoil. The contributions include both surveys covering the entire period and case studies that provide new perspectives on crucial historical movements and moments. This volume is a milestone in Irish labour and political historiography and an important contribution to the international literature on politics and the working class.

A comprehensive cultural history of childhood in nineteenth-century Ireland, which explores how the notion of childhood fluctuated depending on class, gender, and religious identity, and presents invaluable new insights into Irish boarding schools, the material culture of childhood, and the experience of boys and girls in education.

Why do we send children to school? Who should take responsibility for children's health and education? Should girls and boys be educated separately or together? These questions provoke much contemporary debate, but also have a longer, often-overlooked history. Mary Hatfield explores these questions and more in this comprehensive cultural history of childhood in nineteenth-century Ireland. Many modern ideas about Irish childhood have their roots in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, when an emerging middle-class took a disproportionate role in shaping the definition of a 'good' childhood. This study deconstructs several key changes in medical care, educational provision, and ideals of parental care. It takes an innovative holistic approach to the middle-class child's social world, by synthesising a broad base of documentary, visual, and material sources, including clothes, books, medical treatises, religious tracts, photographs, illustrations, and autobiographies. It offers invaluable new insights into Irish boarding schools, the material culture of childhood, and the experience of boys and girls in education.

An accessible and innovative look at Irish history by some of today's most exciting historians of Ireland This book brings together some of today's most exciting scholars of Irish history to chart the pivotal events in the history of modern Ireland while providing fresh perspectives on topics ranging from colonialism and nationalism to political violence, famine, emigration, and feminism. The Princeton History of Modern Ireland takes readers from the Tudor conquest in the sixteenth century to the contemporary boom and bust of the Celtic Tiger, exploring key political developments as well as major social and cultural movements. Contributors describe how the experiences of empire and diaspora have determined Ireland’s position in the wider world and analyze them alongside domestic changes ranging from the Irish language to the economy. They trace the literary and intellectual history of Ireland from Jonathan Swift to Seamus Heaney and look at important shifts in ideology and belief, delving into subjects such as religion, gender, and Fenianism. Presenting the latest cutting-edge scholarship by a new generation of historians of Ireland, The Princeton History of Modern Ireland features narrative chapters on Irish history followed by thematic chapters on key topics. The book highlights the global reach of the Irish experience as well as commonalities shared across Europe, and brings vividly to life an Irish past shaped by conquest, plantation, assimilation, revolution, and partition.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was an era of continuity as well as change. Though properly portrayed as the era of 'Protestant Ascendancy' it embraces two phases - the eighteenth century when that ascendancy was at its peak; and the nineteenth century when the Protestant elite sustained a determined rear-guard defence in the face of the emergence of modern Catholic nationalism. Employing a chronology that is not bound by traditional datelines, this volume moves beyond the familiar political narrative to engage with the economy, society, population, emigration, religion, language, state formation, culture, art and architecture, and the Irish abroad. It provides new and original interpretations of a critical phase in the emergence of a modern Ireland that, while focused firmly on the island and its traditions, moves beyond the nationalist narrative of the twentieth century to provide a history of late early modern Ireland for the twenty-first century.

This text uses case studies of law students, lawyers and merchants to explore overlooked dimensions of Irish migration the middle class, community and the social geography of London in the eighteenth century.

This open access book is the first comparative study of public, voluntary and private asylums in nineteenth-century Ireland. Examining nine institutions, it explores whether concepts of social class and status and the emergence of a strong middle class informed interactions between gender, religion, identity and insanity. It questions whether medical and lay explanations of mental illness and its causes, and patient experiences, were influenced by these concepts. The strong emphasis on land and its interconnectedness with notions of class identity and respectability in Ireland lends a particularly interesting dimension. The book interrogates the popular notion that relatives were routinely locked away to be deprived of land or inheritance, querying how often “land grabbing” Irish families really abused the asylum system for their personal economic gain. The book will be of interest to scholars of nineteenth-century Ireland and the history of psychiatry and medicine in Britain and Ireland.

One of the most enduring tropes of modern Irish history is the MOPE thesis, the idea that the Irish were the Most Oppressed People Ever. Political oppression, forced emigration and endemic poverty have been central to the historiography of nineteenth-century Ireland. This volume problematises the assumption of generalised misery and suggests the many different, and often surprising, ways in which Irish people sought out, expressed and wrote about happiness. Bringing together an international group of established and emerging scholars, this volume considers the emerging field of the history of emotion and what a history of happiness in Ireland might look like. During the nineteenth century the concept of happiness denoted a degree of luck or good fortune, but equally was associated with the positive feelings produced from living a good and moral life. Happiness could be found in achieving wealth, fame or political success, but also in the relief of lulling a crying baby to sleep. Reading happiness in historical context indicates more than a simple expression of contentment. In personal correspondence, diaries and novels, the expression of happiness was laden with the expectations of audience and author and informed by cultural ideas about what one could or should be happy about. This volume explores how the idea of happiness shaped social, literary, architectural and aesthetic aspirations across the century. CONTRIBUTORS: Ian d'Alton, Shannon Devlin, Anne Dolan, Simon Gallaher, Paul Huddie, Kerron Ó Luain, David McCready, Ciara Thompson, Andrew Tierney, Kristina Varade, Mai Yatani