Nineteenth Century Ireland: The Search for Stability

New Gill History of Ireland #5

by David George Boyce

The search for stability proved elusive. Nationalist Ireland mobilised a mass democratic movement under O Connell to secure Catholic Emancipation before seeing its world transformed by the social cataclysm of the Great Famine. At the same time, the Protestant north-east of Ulster was feeling the first benefits of the Industrial Revolution. Although post-Famine Ireland modernised rapidly, only the north-east had a modern economy. The mixture of Protestantism and manufacturing industry integrated into the greater United Kingdom and gave a new twist to the traditional Irish Protestant hostility to Catholic political demands. In the home rule period from the 1880s to 1914, the prospect of partition moved from being almost unthinkable to being almost inevitable.

Nineteenth-century Ireland collapsed in the various wars and rebellions of 1912-22. Like many other parts of Europe than and since, it had proved that an imperial superstructure can contain domestic ethnic rivalries, but cannot always eliminate them.

a substantial and thoroughly crafted study of a very complex period . His virtues as a historian predominate clarity of thought and style, and a mastery of the telling quotation, which penetrates to the heart of the matter. The Irish Times

Genres: History, Ireland

440 pages, Paperback

First published May 21, 2014

About the author

David George Boyce is a graduate of the Queen’s University of Belfast, where he also researched for his PhD. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He was an Archivist in the Department of Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library Oxford, 1968-71, and then lectured in the Department of Politics and International relations in Swansea University from 1971 until 2004. He has written books and articles on modern British, Irish, imperial and military history and politics.

Reviews

[Katharyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for HI251: Ireland in the 19th Century

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Nineteenth Century Ireland: The Search for Stability was recommended to me as the best single volume history of Ireland under the union and it did not disappoint. The book presents an overview of Ireland during the long nineteenth century, starting with the aftermath of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and concluding in 1922 with the partition of the 26 county Irish Free State and the six counties of Northern Ireland. Boyce is particularly good as a writer because he is at pains to show why historians must not use their knowledge of what actually happened when selecting which events were important and significant. This approach provides a fresh view of Ireland during the century leading up to independence by revealing that the Union was not necessarily doomed to failure. In fact, there were long periods of stability and there were occasions when Catholics and Protestants worked together on shared grievances. For example, the"League of North and South" was an 1852 political alliance between northern Presbyterian tenant-righters and southern Catholic tenant farmers, aiming to achieve the "Three Fs" (fair rent, fixity of tenure, free sale) and land reform. Nineteenth Century Ireland: The Search for Stability is a must read for anyone interested in Irish history.