Ireland and the Great War

Winner of the Whitfield Book Prize 2020
On 4 August 1914 following the outbreak of European hostilities, large sections of Irish Protestants and Catholics rallied to support the British and Allied war efforts. Yet less than two years later, the Easter Rising of 1916 allegedly put a stop to the Catholic commitment in exchange for a re-emphasis on the national question.
In Ireland and the Great War Niamh Gallagher draws upon a formidable array of original research to offer a radical new reading of Irish involvement in the world's first total war. Exploring the 'home front' and Irish diasporic communities in Canada, Australia, and Britain, Gallagher reveals that substantial support for the Allied war effort continued largely unabated not only until November 1918, but afterwards as well.
Rich in social texture and with fascinating new case studies of Irish participation in the conflict, this book has the makings of a major rethinking of Ireland's twentieth century.

Niamh Gallagher is a lecturer in modern British and Irish history and a fellow of St Catharine's College at the University of Cambridge, UK.

I. Introduction
Contradictions
Irish Civil Society
The Evidence
Chapter Outline
II. Memory, History, and the Great War
Remembering and Writing 1914 to 1918
Politics and Irish Nationalism
Reappraising the War
III. Irishwomen and War-Relief on the Home Front
War-relief across Ireland
War-work in Southern Ireland
War-work in Ulster
An all-Irish Endeavor?
IV. The War at Sea: Encountering the German 'Enemy'
Bringing Ireland within the War Zone
Rural Ireland and "Black '47"
Ireland's 'Enemy'
V. Greater Ireland and Catholic Loyalism
Moderate Nationalism and the War
Irish Catholic Loyalism
'Ireland's half million'
Meeting Irish-Canada
VI. Irish Catholics, Britain, and the Allies
The 'death of innocence', 1914-1915
Home Rule, Recruitment and Britain, 1914-16
Politics, Conscription, and Recruitment, 1916-18
A Righteous Defence
VII. Conclusion: Ireland's War?