Irish Military Elites, Nation and Empire, 1870–1925

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Loughlin Sweeney

   Pages 1-11

3. Defining an Irish Military Elite

   • Loughlin Sweeney

   Pages 13-45

4. ‘One Ought To Do What One Can for People in His Circ’: Patronage and Affinity among Irish Military Elites

   • Loughlin Sweeney

   Pages 47-71

5. Ireland’s Imperial Moment: Wolseley and Roberts in Command

   • Loughlin Sweeney

   Pages 73-102

6. Aid to the Civil Power: The Military Establishment, the Land War, and the Home Rule Crisis, 1879–1914

   • Loughlin Sweeney

   Pages 103-139

7. Status Quo Ante Bellum: The Irish Military Establishment, 1914

   • Loughlin Sweeney

   Pages 141-171

8. Irish Officers in the Great War

   • Loughlin Sweeney

   Pages 173-212

9. The Irish Military Elite and the War of Independence 1918–22

   • Loughlin Sweeney

   Pages 213-234

10. Barriers Broken: Partition, the Free State, and Empire, 1922–25

    • Loughlin Sweeney

    Pages 235-258

11. Conclusion

    • Loughlin Sweeney

    Pages 259-272

12. Back Matter

    Pages 273-301

    PDF

This book is a social history of Irish officers in the British army in the final half-century of Crown rule in Ireland. Drawing on the accounts of hundreds of officers, it charts the role of military elites in Irish society, and the building tensions between their dual identities as imperial officers and Irishmen, through land agitation, the home rule struggle, the First World War, the War of Independence, and the partition of Ireland. What emerges is an account of the deeply interwoven connections between Ireland and the British army, casting officers as social elites who played a pivotal role in Irish society, and examining the curious continuities of this connection even when officers’ moral authority was shattered by war, revolution, independence, and a divided nation.

• Irish independence
• 1918 Armistice
• Irish War of Independence
• Army
• Irish identity
• Class, social status
• First World War
• British Empire
• British officer corps
• Home service

“Dr Sweeney’s important book brings to life the experience of the Irish officer class at a time of building revolutionary ferment. It is an astute and original study that sits at the boundaries of so many fields, from the national question to matters of gender and class.” (John Bew, War Studies, King’s College London, UK)

 

• John Endicott College of International Studies, Daejeon, Korea (Republic of)

  Loughlin Sweeney

Loughlin Sweeney is Assistant Professor at the John Endicott College of International Studies in South Korea, where he lectures on global history and researches Irish communities in the nineteenth-century Pacific. He conducted this research while pursuing a doctorate at Queens’ College Cambridge, awarded in 2017. Since then, he has been a visiting fellow at Queen Mary, University of London, UK and the University of Edinburgh, UK, and he publishes regularly in the fields of Irish history, the British Empire, the Irish diaspora, and imperial, colonial, and postcolonial studies.

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