Ireland and the Great War

First book to give a unified picture of Ireland's experience of the First World War.

This book explores the impact, both immediate and in its longer historical perspective, of the First World War upon Ireland across the broadest range of experience - nationalist, unionist, Catholic, Protestant - and in civilian social, economic and cultural terms, as well as purely military. Underscoring the work is a belief that the Great War is the single most central experience in twentieth-century Ireland and that the events of the war years, whether at home in Dublin during the Easter Rising or at the European battlefront, constitute a 'seamless robe' of Irish experience. The book also explores cultural responses to the war and its commemoration since 1918, up to the dedication of the Irish 'Peace Tower' in Belgium in November 1998. It argues that identifying and exploring the Irish Great War experience can contribute to the contemporary Irish peace process.

Introduction; 1. Obligation: 'Irishmen remember Belgium'; 2. Participation: Suvla Bay, the Somme and the Easter Rising: the military experience of the war, abroad and at home; 3. Imagination: onlookers in France: Irish cultural responses to the war; 4. Commemoration: 'Turning the 11th November into the 12th July': Irish politics and the collective memory of war; Bibliographical essay.

This 2000 book gives a unified picture of Ireland's experience of the Great War. It identifies the similarities of political experience, and deals with civilian, social, economic and cultural aspects, as well as the purely military. It also relates the experience of the war to contemporary politics.