Towards Commemoration Ireland in war and revolution 1912-1923

by Horne, John; Edward, Edward; Bew, Paul; O'Toole, Fintan; Mulligan, William; Dolan, Anne; Pennell, Catriona; Adamson, Ian; Jeffrey, Keith; Jones, Heather; Winter, Jay; Burke, Tom; Hartley, Tom; Fitzpatrick, David; Clarke, Paul; Joannon, Pierre; Hanley, Bri

• ISBN13: 9781908996176
• ISBN10: 190899617X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2013-03-20
• Publisher: Royal Irish Academy

Summary

This book arrives on foot of a decade of commemorations. Contemporary Ireland was founded during the fractious years 1912-1923. From the signing of the Ulster Unionists’ Solemn League and Covenant to the partitioning of the country and subsequent Civil War in the Irish Free State, a series of events shaped Ireland for the century to come. Not least of these was World War I. This volume, edited by John Horne, features essays by leading historians, journalists, civic activists and folklorists. The outstanding body of scholarship offers an array of new views in the incendiary debate on how to remember a divided past. The book is organised into three sections: histories, memories and commemorations. The first section picks through the backgrounds of war and violence in the European and Irish revolutionary contexts. In the second section personal histories drawn from community and family memories are told. The third section contains the most heated contributions on the dangers and opportunities of commemorations. This collection is framed around a ten year period, yet it takes the reader towards a richer understanding whole of the twentieth century, allowing for an open and creative engagement with the past of war and revolution.

Author Biography

John Horne is Professor of Modern European History at Trinity College Dublin and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He is an executive member of the Research Centre of the Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne and has published widely on 20th century France and the comparative history of the First World War. Recent books are (ed.) A Companion to World War One (Oxford, 2010); (ed.), Vers la guerre totale: le tournant de 1914-1915 (Paris, 2010); and (edited with Robert Gerwarth), War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, 1917-1923 (Oxford, 2012). He organized the Thomas Davis lectures on RTE 1 in 2008, published as Our War: Ireland and the Great War (Dublin, 2008, new ed., 2012).Edward Madigan is the Resident Historian at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and a visiting fellow to the Changing Character of War Programme at the University of Oxford. His work combines military, cultural and religious history and his main research interests are British faith and identity in wartime, and the British and Irish experience and memory of the Great War. He is a former IRCHSS and Princess Grace fellow and Associate Director at the TCD Centre for War Studies. As a historian of the Great War and the Irish Revolution, he has appeared on British, Irish, U.S. and Australian television. His first book, Faith Under Fire: Anglican Army Chaplains and the Great War, was published in 2011.Paul Bew received his doctorate at the University of Cambridge and has been Professor of Politics at Queen’s University Belfast since 1991. He is a cross-bench peer serving on the London Local Authority Bill Select Committee and acts as secretary to the All Party Group on Archives. He is also an honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Member of Royal Irish Academy. He has written articles for the Times and the Guardian, and has appeared on the Today programme. He is the author of two Thomas Davis Lectures which were broadcast on RTE and subsequently published. His most recent monograph, 'Enigma: A New Life of Charles Stewart Parnell', has just been published by Gill & Macmillan, Dublin. He is also the editor of 'A Yankee in de Valera's Ireland', the memoir of David Gray, US ambassador in Dublin during the Second World War.Fintan O’Toole is a columnist with, and assistant editor of The Irish Times. He is adjunct professor at the school of Language, Culture and Communication at the University of Limerick and Leonard Milberg lecturer in Irish Studies at Princeton. He has been drama critic for The Sunday Tribune, The Irish Times and the New York Daily News. His work on political and cultural issues has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Guardian. He was presenter of the BBC cultural magazine programme, The Late Show, and Literary Advisor to the Abbey Theatre. His many books include The Ex-Isle of Erin; Shakespeare Is Hard But So Is Life; A Traitor’s Kiss: the Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan; White Savage: Sir William Johnson and the Invention of America; The Irish Times Book of the 1916 Rising and Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger.William Mulligan is a lecturer in modern European history at University College Dublin. He has written The Origins of the First World War (Cambridge, 2010) and The Creation of the Modern German Army (2005).Anne Dolan lectures in modern Irish history at Trinity College Dublin. Her publications include Commemorating the Irish Civil War: History and Memory 1922-2000 (Cambridge, 2003) and ‘No surrender Here’: the Civil War Papers of Ernie O’Malley (Dublin, 2007). She is currently working on a study of violence and killing in Ireland in the decade of the Great War.Catriona Pennell graduated from Trinity College, Dublin in 2008 with a PhD in modern British and Irish history. During her research, she was awarded two major scholarships: the R.B. McDowell-Ussher Fellowship from Trinity College, Dublin (2003-2006), and the R.H.S. Centenary Fellowship from the Institute of Historical Research (2006-2007). Since 2009 she has been a lecturer at the University of Exeter's Cornwall Campus. Her first monograph, A Kingdom United: British and Irish Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War, was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. She is currently working on various aspects of Ireland's experiences in the First World War, including a reassessment of the 1918 Conscription Crisis.Ian Adamson, OBE, is a retired community paediatrician and well known in Northern Ireland for his political, civic and cultural work. He is founder Chair of The Ulster-Scots Language Society, a leading figure in the modern revival of Ulster-Scots and has published widely on Ulster history, language and culture. A member of Belfast City Council from 1989 until 2011, he was Lord Mayor 1996/1997 and is presently High Sheriff of Belfast. He is active in a wide variety of community groups and associations, and was a founding figure of the Somme Association. He is presently the senior adviser on history and culture to Lord Bannside, the former First Minister of Northern Ireland, Dr Ian Paisley.Keith Jeffery is Professor of British History at Queen’s University Belfast and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He is author or editor of fourteen books, including Ireland and the Great War, The GPO and the Easter Rising, and a prize-winning biography of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. His ground-breaking official history, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909–49, was published in September 2010.Heather Jones is Lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin where she was a foundation scholar and St John's College, Cambridge. A former Government of Ireland Research Scholar in the Humanities and Social Sciences, she completed her Ph.D. at Trinity College Dublin, on wartime violence against prisoners of war during the Great War. Dr Jones is a former IRCHSS Lecturer in European History at Trinity College, Dublin and has held a Max Weber Fellowship at the European University Institute, Florence. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne. Her monograph Violence Against Prisoners of War in the First World War: Britain, France and Germany, 1914-1920 was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011.Jay Winter teaches history at Yale University. He is the author of Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge University Press, 1995); Remembering War (Yale University Press, 2006) and Dreams of Peace and Freedom (Yale University Press, 2006). His biography René Cassin et les droits de l’homme, co-authored with Antoine Prost, was published by Fayard in February 2011, and will appear in English in 2012. He is editor-in-chief of the three-volume Cambridge History of the First World War, to be published in 2014.Edward Madigan is the Resident Historian at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and a visiting fellow to the Changing Character of War Programme at the University of Oxford. His work combines military, cultural and religious history and his main research interests are British faith and identity in wartime, and the British and Irish experience and memory of the Great War. He is a former IRCHSS and Princess Grace fellow and Associate Director at the TCD Centre for War Studies. As a historian of the Great War and the Irish Revolution, he has appeared on British, Irish, U.S. and Australian television. His first book, Faith Under Fire: Anglican Army Chaplains and the Great War, was published in 2011.John Horne is Professor of Modern European History at Trinity College Dublin and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He is an executive member of the Research Centre of the Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne and has published widely on 20th century France and the comparative history of the First World War. Recent books are (ed.) A Companion to World War One (Oxford, 2010); (ed.), Vers la guerre totale: le tournant de 1914-1915 (Paris, 2010); and (edited with Robert Gerwarth), War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, 1917-1923 (Oxford, 2012). He organized the Thomas Davis lectures on RTE 1 in 2008, published as Our War: Ireland and the Great War (Dublin, 2008, new ed., 2012).Tom Burke, MBE, is a founding member of The Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association, a history society that researches, presents and preserves the history of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the First World War. Tom was a member of The Journey of Reconciliation Trust, the volunteer group responsible for the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines in Belgium. In August 2004, he was awarded an Honorary M.B.E for his contribution to the British-Irish peace process. He has acted as a guide/adviser to President McAleese on her visits to Wytschaete, Belgium, in June 2007 and Gallipoli in March 2010. His publications include The 16th (Irish) and 36th (Ulster) Divisions at the Battle of Wijtschate 7 June 1917, along with several articles on military history in History Ireland, Stand To (journal of Western Front Association) and The Irish Sword. He is currently pursuing an M.Litt degree in military history at University College Dublin.Tom Hartley has been active in politics for 42 years and was first elected to represent the Lower Falls on Belfast City Council in May 1993. In 2008 he became the second Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Belfast. Since 1998, Tom has combined his love of history and interest in the environment by organising historical walks through the Belfast City Cemetery as a part of the West Belfast Festival. Now recognised as an authority on the Cemetery he continues to highlight the importance of this burial site as a repository of the political, social and economic history of Belfast. He is the author of Written In Stone, the history of the Belfast City Cemetery.David Fitzpatrick is Professor of Modern History at Trinity College, Dublin. Among other topics, he has written various articles on Irish participation in the Great War and Irish military history, and edited a volume of essays, Ireland and the First World War, first published by the Trinity History Workshop in 1986. He has also edited the Workshop’s fifth volume, Terror in Ireland, 1916 – 1923, published by the Lilliput Press in 2012. His biography of Louis MacNeice’s father, ‘Solitary and Wild’: Frederick MacNeice and the Salvation of Ireland, was published by same publisher in 2011.Paul Clark presents the news programmes, UTV Live, and UTV Live Tonight, in Northern Ireland. He has made a number of programmes about Ireland and the Great War, most of which have been broadcast during Remembrance Week, in November. In the documentaries he has examined the legacy of the Great War in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.Pierre Joannon is a writer, historian and Franco-Irish diplomat. He is a former member of the Board of Trustees at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco and since 1973 he has acted as Consul General of Ireland in the five departments of the French south-east. His recent publications include Une Poète dans la Tourmente: W.B. Yeats et la Révolution Irlandaise (Rennes, 2010), Histoire de l'Irlande et des Irlandais (Paris, 2005), and Michael Collins: Une Biographie (Paris, 1997).Brian Hanley lectures in history at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool. He is the author of The IRA 1926-1936 (2002), The Lost Revolution: the Story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party (2009) and The IRA: A Documentary History 1916-2005 (2010).Stuart Ward is Professor of imperial and global history at the University of Copenhagen. He was educated at the Universities of Queensland and Sydney, and has held previous positions at the European University Institute and King’s College London. He was recently Keith Cameron Chair of Australian History at University College Dublin (2008-9). His major publications are Australia and the British Embrace (2001); British Culture and the End of Empire (ed., 2001); The Unknown Nation: Australia After Empire (with James Curran 2010); and the Australian volume for the Oxford history of the British Empire series, Australia’s Empire (ed., with Deryck M. Schreuder, 2008). His most recent book is a volume of essays on the uses of history in waging public controversy in Ireland and Australia, Exhuming Passions: The Pressure of the Past in Ireland and Australia (ed. with Katie Holmes, 2011).Fearghal McGarry is Senior Lecturer in History at Queen’s University Belfast and joint editor of Irish Historical Studies. His recent research has focussed on grassroots participation in the Irish revolution. He is the author of The Rising: Ireland: Easter 1916 (2010) and Rebels: Voices from the Easter Rising (2011).