A blistering account of Ireland's neutrality in World War II, an episode which still scars Irish thought and politics today. Brian Girvin has written a fresh and original history of Ireland between 1939 and 1945. Drawing on new sources and recent scholarship, he tells the story of what is known as The Emergency in Ireland, but elsewhere as World War II. Despite Ireland still being a member of the Commonwealth, Eamon de Valera refused to join the war against Nazi Germany and declared his country neutral. To the endless frustration and anger of Churchill—and later Roosevelt—de Valera pursued an isolationist policy that changed the course of Irish domestic and foreign politics. In this brilliantly argued history, Girvin shows how this policy went against the national interest, and far from being the only option for the government, was simply the only one they would consider. This decision, Girvin concludes, cost de Valera his ultimate prize—a united Ireland. Woven into this political maelstrom are the stories of the people who lived through those years, those that went against the government and fought for the allies and those who even if they disagreed were not easily allowed to express that opinion. Using personal testimonies of these people brings the feel and shape of those times readily to life. Bold, fearless, and compelling, The Emergency is a unique and important addition to any understanding of Ireland and World War II.

The Emergency: Neutral Ireland 1939-45

History

Girvin, Brian

Europe

MACMILLAN PUB. LTD.

Nationalism

TF-ROUTL

From The Act of Union (1800) onward nationalism was central to Irish life. It reached its apogee in 1922, then gradually exhausted itself over the next forty years. Girvin sees the original application by the Republic of Ireland to join the EU in 1961 as the end of the nationalist adventure that had begun 160 years earlier. Everything since then has been a footnote to that decision. But in its halcyon years, Irish nationalism was a model for the rest of the world. Why then were the practical achievements of early nationalist self-governments so paltry, collapsing in the economic and social disaster of the 1950s? Girvin identifies the following key points. First, religion was vital. The old United Kingdom was a pan-Protestant state, which was why Protestant Wales and Scotland could find a place in it and Catholic Ireland could not. Second, Catholic nationalism could not accommodate Ulster Protestantism: it left the unstable sectarian cockpit of Northern Ireland to its own devices despite all the rhetoric about unity. Third, Irish nationalism ironically learned its core values of democracy and representative government from Westminster, a benign cultural legacy of the British presence. Fourth, nationalism was a political success but an economic failure. The yielding of some sovereignty in a EU context has been vital to Irish prosperity. This book surveys two centuries of Irish life. It brings a cool and provocative analytical eye to the gap between rhetoric and reality.

From Union to Union

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Gill Macmillan Ltd

Brand new(never opened)!!/No dust jacket as issued -ships immediately

The Right in the Twentieth Century: Conservatism and Democracy (Themes in Right-Wing Ideology and Politics)

UNKNO

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