The most original and stimulating interpretation of the politics of the Irish Free State to be published in decades." Ronan Fanning, Sunday Independent "This is an excellent study, firmly grounded in original research, which sheds new light on this period." Fearghal McGarry, Irish Historical Studies

These texts demonstrate the diversity of opinion on the so-called 'Irish Question' in the final years of Anglo-Irish Union.

The history of Roscommon in the 1912-23 period is one of transition to new political allegiances while retaining old economic desires. Almost wholly dependent on agriculture to fuel the local economy and sustain the county's people, the fight for land was the ever-present backdrop to Roscommon's recent history. By 1912 the organization that had provided leadership in that fight - the Irish Parliamentary Party - was on the cusp of achieving Irish home rule, a measure believed to have the potential to settle the land issue. The need to protect the bill saw thousands in Roscommon join the Irish Volunteers and proclaim their opposition to anti-home rule unionists. The First World War led to the suspension of home rule and a call by Irish MPs for their followers to support the British war effort. However, a combination of increasing wartime prices, inadequate food production, ongoing land issues as well as the toleration of partition by local MPs and the draconian British response to Easter 1916 caused many in Roscommon to reassess their political allegiance. Sensationally, in February 1917, Roscommon elected the first Sinn Fein-backed MP. This proved a decisive step in the demise of the Irish Parliamentary Party and the success of Sinn Fein, which reinvigorated the fight for the land as part of its efforts for a republic. In 1919, Roscommon men took up arms against the British to pursue Sinn Fein aims, only to turn the weapons on one another three years later when conflict over the continued pursuit of the Irish Republic led to civil war. In tracing the history of Roscommon during these years of instability, Burke's careful research has produced a comprehensive and accessible study that illuminates and explains the changes and continuities that defined the period.

The Irish Revolution, at the beginning of the 20th century, spawned the creation of the modern Irish state. This full-length analysis offers a comprehensive framework of that revolution in its totality, taking into account the broad range of social, economic, and political developments, as well as the Irish Republican Army's campaign of guerrilla warfare and the British response to it. Drawing on such previously unpublished sources as the Irish Department of Defense's Military History Bureau, author Francis Costello paints a broad picture of the people and the key events in the Irish struggle for independence. Described by Paul Bew as 'a revelation' and 'ground-breaking, ' this important book is now available in paperback

The key turning point in modern Ireland's history, the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 has shadowed Ireland's political life for decades. In this first book-length assessment of the treaty in over seventy years, Jason Knirck recounts the compelling story of the nationalist politics that produced the Irish Revolution, the tortuous treaty negotiations, and the deep divisions within Sinn Féin that led to the slow unraveling of fragile party cohesion. Focusing on broad ideological and political disputes, as well as on the powerful personalities involved, the author considers the major issues that divided the pro- and anti-treaty forces, why these issues mattered, and the later judgments of historians. He concludes that the treaty debates were in part the result of the immaturity of Irish nationalist politics, as well as the overriding emphasis given to revolutionary unity. A fascinating story in their own right, the treaty debates also open a wider window onto questions of European nationalism, colonialism, state-building, and competing visions of Irish national independence. Treaty Documents

Revolutionary Ireland, 1912-25 analyses the main events in Ireland from the initial crisis over the Third Home Rule Bill in 1912 to the consolidation of partition Ulster with the settling of the boundary issue in 1925. Written with particular reference to the needs of students in further and higher education, each chapter contains an easy to follow narrative, guides to key reading on the topic, sample essay and examination questions and links to web resources. The main text is supported by an appendix of contemporary sources and a range of additional information including a chronology of significant events, maps, a glossary of key terms and an extensive bibliography. This comprehensive text will allow students to get to grips with this turbulent and fascinating period of modern Irish history.

This is a magisterial narrative of the most turbulent decade in Anglo-Irish history: a decade of unleashed passions that came close to destroying the parliamentary system and to causing civil war in the United Kingdom. It was also the decade of the cataclysmic Great War, of an officers' mutiny in an elite cavalry regiment of the British Army and of Irish armed rebellion. It was a time, argues Ronan Fanning, when violence and the threat of violence trumped democratic politics. This is a contentious view. Historians have wished to see the events of that decade as an aberration, as an eruption of irrational bloodletting. And they have have been reluctant to write about the triumph of physical force. Fanning argues that in fact violence worked, however much this offends our contemporary moral instincts. Without resistance from the Ulster Unionists and its very real threat of violence the state of Northern Ireland would never have come into being. The Home Rule party of constitutionalist nationalists failed, and were pushed aside by the revolutionary nationalists Sinn Fein. Bleakly realistic, ruthlessly analytical of the vacillation and indecision displayed by democratic politicians at Westminster faced with such revolutionary intransigence, Fatal Path is history as it was, not as we would wish it to be.

In 1956, a group of 548 refugees escaping the violence of the Hungarian Revolution arrived on the shores of Ireland. With its own history shaped by waves of emigration to escape war, famine, and religious persecution, Ireland responded by creating its first international refugee settlement. Suitable Strangers reveals the firsthand experiences of the men, women, and children who lived in the Knockalisheen refugee camp near Limerick. For the majority of those living in the camp, Ireland was meant to be a temporary waystation on their ultimate journeys, primarily to Canada, the United States, and Australia. But after almost six months of uncertainty and feeling neglected by the Irish government, the Hungarian refugees began a hunger strike, which garnered national resentment and international headlines. Vera Sheridan explores this revolt and ensuing events by offering a complex and nuanced examination of the daily routines, state policies, and international motives that shaped life in the camp. A fascinating read for historians as well as those interested in refugee and migrant studies, Suitable Strangers complicates the Irish diaspora by providing a closer look at the realities of Ireland's Knockalisheen refugee settlement.

How the British Secret Service failed to neutralize Sinn Fein and the IRA