The Irish Question, 1840-1921

Analysis of the Irish Question

Originally published in 1940 but here reissuing the revised third edition of 1975, this book analyses the Irish Question. The study is not a narrative history. While the problems with which it deals have been suggested by the period it covers, it is with the problems and not the period that it is focussed on. Those problems are: the interrelation of economic and social with political forces; the impact of Irish discontent on the Liberal conversion to Home Rule; the character of the political, cultural and social forces behind revolutionary Irish nationalism; and the changing nature of the concept itself. Much attention is given to the implications of Anglo-Irish relations in the wider context of nationalist-imperial conflicts and critical studies are made of the writings of de Tocqueville, Cavour, Marx, Engels and Lenin among others on the Irish Question.