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Irish History

Curiously, despite the many volumes of Irish History that have been written, there is a great deal of it still being published. Beginning with Early Christian Ireland, through Viking, Norman, Tudor, and Williamite Ireland there are new studies being published on a monthly basis. There have been major advances made in the study of Early and Late Medieval Ireland as well as early Modern Ireland. It would seem that the "Irish Question" as it became called, came into being during the Eighteenth Century, a period that was also the golden era of the Ascendancy and resulted in the grandeur of Georgian Ireland. This was followed by the great Rebellion of 1798, the Act of Union, the Emmett Rebellion and then the Nineteenth Century was on its way.
The Famine proved to be Ireland's holocaust, and from it Modern Ireland grew through the Fenian Rising, the Land War and the 1916 Rising. There are many facets of Twentieth Century Ireland being studied and contant new titles are appearing relating to the growth of the Free State and its counterpart, the North of Ireland. All of this leads to a fascinating field of reading and research, all readily available from our website.

For a more specific look at Irish Archaeology, please go to our Archaeology section.

"The Irish Question"

The bizarre thing about the Irish Question is that nobody quite knows what it is. Is it to do with Irish Nationalism, Irish Agrarian Ferment, Irish Land Rights, Irish Republicanism, Irish Partition, Irish Politics, Irish Dissent, or plain ordinary downright Irish Stubbornness? Whatever it is, there are quite a number of books dealing with it. In fact, there have been enough to now recognise the fact the The Irish Question has become an inherent part of the Irish Cultural Debate, whatever that may be. It would seem that its origins are to be found in the English Political Canon as the "Irish Question" was often a matter brought up with all due gravity (and dropped just as quickly) in the House of Commons since roughly the formation of an Independent Irish Parliament in 1782, but it has become a rare scarce item of discussion since the creation of the Free State in 1922 and the subsequent Partition of the country. Somehow or other, when Ireland has been discussed in the same august assembly since then, it has lost something of its gravitas. Perhaps that has something to do with the further democratisation of British Imperialism?