Politics, Society and the Middle Class in Modern Ireland

by Lane, Fintan

• ISBN13: 9780230008267
• ISBN10: 0230008267
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-01-05
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book examines Irish society and politics from a class perspective. It provides a wide-ranging introduction to the involvement of the changing middle class in Irish political life and the public sphere between the eighteenth and late twentieth centuries. Sixteen historians trace the rise and consolidation of middle-class political power, as well as significant conflicts within this class during a period of considerable social and political turmoil. The contributions comprise both analytical surveys covering long periods and case/area studies that provide new perspectives on crucial moments, movements and figures in Irish history.

Author Biography

FINTAN LANE is Editor of Saothar, the journal of Irish labour history.

MARIA LUDDY is Professor of History at the University of Warwick.

Table of Contents

Notes on the Contributors	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
The Men of Property: Politics and the Languages of Class in the 1790s	p. 7
William Thompson, Class and His Irish Context, 1775-1833	p. 21
The Rise of the Catholic Middle Class: O'Connellites in County Longford, 1820-50	p. 48
'Carrying the War into the Walks of Commerce': Exclusive Dealing and the Southern Protestant Middle Class during the Catholic Emancipation Campaign	p. 65
The Decline of Duelling and the Emergence of the Middle Class in Ireland	p. 89
'You'd be disgraced!' Middle-Class Women and Respectability in Post-Famine Ireland	p. 107
Middle-Class Attitudes to Poverty and Welfare in Post-Famine Ireland	p. 130
The Industrial Elite in Ireland from the Industrial Revolution to the First World War	p. 148
'Another Class'? Women's Higher Education in Ireland, 1870-1909	p. 176
Class, Nation, Gender and Self: Katharine Tynan and the Construction of Political Identities, 1880-1930	p. 194
Leadership, the Middle Classes and Ulster Unionism since the Late-Nineteenth Century	p. 212
William Martin Murphy, the Irish Independent and Middle-Class Politics, 1905-19	p. 230
Planning and Philanthropy: Travellers and Class Boundaries in Urban Ireland, 1930-75	p. 249
'The Stupid Propaganda of the Calamity Mongers'?: The Middle Class and Irish Politics, 1945-97	p. 271
Index	p. 289
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