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Tracing their history to the foundation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913, the Irish Defence Forces have undergone significant transformation in the century since the foundation of the Free State. Plunged immediately into a civil war, the path to a modern professional force during the 1920s and 1930s was rarely smooth, with progression hampered by internal dissent, political manoeuvrings, and limited financial investment. The difficulties of creating and maintaining a force capable of defending the neutrality of a small island nation, with a geopolitical and strategic importance that belied its size, were brought home during the Second World War/Emergency. The state's adherence to its policy of neutrality created new opportunities following accession to the United Nations in 1955, with the Defence Forces emerging as a vital element of Ireland's international relations. Beginning in 1958 and in every year since, members of the Forces have served overseas on UN peacekeeping missions, and later with EEC/EU military operations. At home, the Forces' duties in aid of the civil power became ever more vital with the outbreak of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland in 1969, inaugurating a new era of security operations along the border, while in recent decades the Defence Forces have been confronted with a number of challenges, both internal and external. This richly illustrated book explores the landmark successes and achievements, struggles, and missteps of the Defence Forces over the past century. Highlighting the men and women of all components of the Forces--Army, Air Corps, Naval Service, and Reserve--and their operational roles both in Ireland and internationally.,

In December 1922 General Nevil Macready sailed away from Dublin for the last time, marking the end of British rule in most of Ireland. Macready was the last in a long line of commanders of the British army in Ireland. The contribution of these men to Irish history has been overlooked. This book seeks to highlight the significant impact made by these generals who were household names in their time. Detailed for the first time are the commanders' duties, which included suppressing rebellion, guarding against enemy invasion, maintaining discipline and promoting the welfare of the army. In addition, their wider role in Irish society is revealed, highlighting their significant influence on the artistic, cultural, and economic life of the country. There is also a focus on the challenges faced by the commanders in managing relations with Dublin Castle, which resulted in crises such as the 'Abercromby affair' on the eve of the 1798 rebellion and the Curragh 'mutiny' in March 1914. A key theme throughout the book is the gradual shift in attitude towards the commanders due to the growth in Irish nationalism, which would eventually culminate in the evacuation of British Forces in December 1922.

This book uncovers the world of Charles Owen O'Conor, "the O'Conor Don" (1838-1906), a Catholic landlord and MP from County Roscommon. The scion of the last high king of Ireland and one of a long line of politically active O'Conors, he was destined for a life in politics and served as Liberal MP for County Roscommon between 1860 and 1880. In parliament, he pursued reforms in education, juvenile care, factory law, Sunday closing, the Irish language, and landownership. However, as a loyalist and a unionist, he was out of step with the mood and aims of popular Irish nationalism, especially on the issue of home rule. Indeed, what this book demonstrates is that although he was a devout Catholic and proud Irishman, his attachment to the union, the crown, and the empire ensured that he became an increasingly marginal figure in Irish politics between 1880 and his passing in 1906.

Country houses have always been a magnet for visitors. In early days individuals with the correct social credentials could gain entry, while visitors such as royalty were self-invited guests. With the rise of the railway and then the motor-car, houses became accustomed to mass visits, spawning the heritage industry of today. However, houses have also attracted less-welcome incomers: looters, arsonists, emigrés, revolutionaries, the politically undesirable, carpetbaggers, and even photographers whom one owner described as worse than burglars. This volume explores the many kinds of visitors who have crossed the thresholds of country houses, and how they have recorded their impressions--whether in sketches, journals, guest-books, works of fiction, or photographs.

This book explores the everyday character and functions of domestic spaces in Georgian Ireland. While the design and decoration of the country pile and the aristocratic town house enjoys a long and distinguished literature, to date there has been no sustained examination of how rooms were habitually occupied and experienced, or how different social demographics--not least the burgeoning 'middling sorts'--might have informed approaches to spatial design and functionality. Drawing on recent pioneering research, the topics and themes addressed here range widely from comfort, privacy, and multiple occupancy to sociability, maternity, and piety. Focusing on how different species of domestic spaces were used and inhabited, from mansions and merchant houses to lodgings and farm house cabins, this book expands our understanding of house and home in Ireland in the long eighteenth century.

This collection featuring eleven essays by established and early career scholars explores multiple dimensions to the Jesuit mission in Early Modern Ireland. Themes include women and Jesuit ministry in seventeenth-century Ireland (M.A. Lyons), the Latin writings of seventeenth-century Irish Jesuits (Jason Harris), Jesuit involvement in exorcisms in seventeenth-century Ireland (Alma O'Donnell), the mission of the Jesuits in the cities in early seventeenth-century Ireland (Colm Lennon), Jesuit schooling in Ireland, 1660-90 (Martin Foerster), Jesuit conversions in Wentworth's Ireland: the Slingsby family, Co. Cork (Brian Mac Cuarta), Irish Jesuits and religious controversy in English: an episode from the 1630s (Brian Jackson), the correspondence of William Good SJ and the Jesuit mission in Elizabethan Ireland, 1564-c.1570 (Alexander De Witt SJ and Thomas McCoog SJ), the Jesuits and music in early modern Ireland (Raymond Gillespie), popular preaching and the Jesuit mission in seventeenth-century Ireland (Bernadette Cunningham), and the Irish Jesuit College in Poitiers, 1674-1762 (Liam Chambers).

This beautifully illustrated book explores sources for botany and gardening in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ireland. It investigates the contributions of individuals such as Philip O'Sullivan Beare and Thomas Molyneux in the seventeenth century, and, for the eighteenth century, focuses on the Revd Caleb Threlkeld, whose Synopsis stirpium Hibernicarum (Dublin, 1726) was the first botanical book published in Ireland. Chapters shed light on the books in early eighteenth-century libraries, such as that of Dr. Edward Worth and of Marsh's Library in Dublin, and demonstrate the impact of the explorations of the Dutch East India Company on knowledge of the flora of distant lands. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the glorious botanical works in the Fagel Collection, bought by Trinity College Dublin in 1802. The changing nature of eighteenth-century gardens and landscapes and the factors affecting their growth and renown bring the book to a close.

Throughout the long history of Irish monasticism, the experience of women monastics has, until recently, been relatively sidelined. A desire to redress this inspired the decision in 2021 to dedicate the Fifth Glenstal History Conference to exploring the various ways in which women responded to the monastic and ascetic vocation in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland. Whether as practitioners or as patrons, women found creative and dynamic ways to pursue their calling as 'Brides of Christ' between the fifth and the seventeenth centuries, often in the face of tremendous difficulties and challenges. Their lives of prayer and service are sometimes hard to glimpse but the combined interdisciplinary perspectives of these essays brings them into sharper focus. The collection also demonstrates the current vitality of research on this topic and includes contributions by both established and emerging scholars. The volume is dedicated to Dr. Dagmar Ó Riain Raedel in recognition of her outstanding contribution to Irish and European medieval history and, in particular, to the study of medieval Irish-German monastic relations.

There is ample evidence, from the earliest periods onwards, that mankind has sought to measure and organize temporal movement by means of intellectual theories about historical sequences and the contours of peoples' lives, as well as by practical literary instruments such as calendars, almanacs, and a variety of physical timekeeping devices such as sundials, astrolabes, flame-clocks, hour-glasses, and water-clocks. But in the late thirteenth century and early fourteenth century, because of developments in physics and mechanics, it became possible to develop mechanical clocks, timekeeping machines independent of natural phenomena like the sun, moon, and stars, daylight and darkness. This book seeks to describe the impact of these instruments on the theological, philosophical, political, social, moral, and personal thinking of the period from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and the way that this thinking was expressed, mainly in English texts, but in other linguistic cultures too.

In the spring of 1919, UK Prime Minister David Lloyd George wrote: 'The whole of Europe is filled with the spirit of revolution. There is a deep sense not only of discontent, but of anger and revolt, amongst the workmen against prewar conditions ... In some countries, like Germany and Russia, the unrest takes the form of open rebellion; in others ... it takes the shape of strikes and of a general disinclination to settle down to work.' While comparative studies of revolution within the social sciences define revolution, in part, as necessarily involving mass participation, dominant narratives of the Irish revolution have left Lloyd George's 'spirit of revolution' by the wayside. The political content of the revolution is assumed to exclusively be the demand for national independence, while a focus on high-politics and military elites obscures the ways in which tens of thousands of people participated in diverse forms of popular mobilization. This collection of regional and local case studies, by contrast, shows that a 'spirit of revolution' was widespread in Ireland in the period 1917-23.

Cathal Brugha's life was extraordinary: member of the Gaelic League, Irish Republican Brotherhood and Irish Volunteers; celebrated survivor of the 1916 Rising despite multiple gunshot wounds; crucial figure in the post-Rising reorganization of the Volunteers; speaker at the first sitting of Dáil Éireann; minister for defence during the War of Independence; passionate and acerbic opponent of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921; a reluctant participant in the Irish Civil War, having tried to prevent it, and that conflict's first high profile fatality in July 1922. This book chronicles Brugha's public and private life and the influences that shaped him; appraises his multi-faceted involvement in the Irish Revolution; contextualizes his relationships with contemporaries such as Michael Collins; reveals how his premature death at the age of forty-seven affected his young family and how his wife, Caitlín, upheld his political principles by standing as a Sinn Féin TD; and reflects on how Brugha's indomitable patriotism was propagandized after his death. Based on wide research, this is a fascinating portrait of an intriguing, complex, and often misunderstood figure.

When the Dominicans arrived in Dublin in 1224, they established a house on the north bank of the river Liffey next to the bridge where the Four Courts are situated today. Anyone who wanted to enter the city of Dublin from the north, or leave across the bridge, had to pass the gate of the priory. It was in this priory in the mid-fourteenth century that a Dominican friar named Prior John de Pembridge wrote these Latin annals. This is the first modern edition of the annals of Pembridge (1162-1348), together with those of his anonymous Dominican continuator (1348-70). In 1884, in a two-volume work entitled The chartularies of St Mary's Abbey, Dublin, Sir John Gilbert printed these Latin annals without an English translation. Gilbert's was a rudimentary edition that did not make use of all available manuscripts. In this new edition, Bernadette Williams, the foremost expert on the Latin annals of Anglo-Norman Ireland, presents an authoritative modern edition of these manuscripts with facing translation. The annals, which cover the period 1162-1370, provide a unique window into the political, religious, and social character of the city of Dublin, and Ireland more generally.

From Viking trading place to modern hi-tech city, Limerick's long history as Ireland's oldest Atlantic port has been played out against its natural backdrop of limestone and river. The stone circles of Lough Gur, the Norman strongholds of Askeaton and Adare as well as King John's Castle, the Treaty stone, the Georgian quarter of Newtown Pery, Cleeves Factory, and Thomond Park all stand proudly within this landscape today as monumental testimony to the region's character, a place where the peoples of Ireland and Britain have clashed, meshed, and evolved into a distinctive whole. With such a vibrant cultural inheritance, it is hardly surprising that Limerick is also the home of one of the oldest and biggest of Ireland's local history societies, first founded as the Limerick Naturalists Field Club in 1892 and now the Thomond Archaeological and Historical Society (TAHS). This volume of essays on Limerick city and county has been put together in honour of Liam Irwin, retired Head of History in Mary Immaculate College and leading member of the society for forty years, by his many admirers and friends.