Fighting For Ireland: The Creation of Northern and Southern Irish National Identity during the First World War

Author(s):  
Bryan McClure

The decade of 1912-1923 in Ireland was a period of transition, change, and bloodshed. By the end of the period Ireland had gone from a British colony to two separate nations, the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. While the actions of radical ultra-nationalists and unionists insured this physical partition of Ireland, the psychological and cultural divide that dominates Irish society was also created during this period. The divide between north and south was created by the epic struggle of the First World War. Both northern and southern Irish attempted to use the war to reinforce their position in the new Ireland that was to be created at the war's conclusion. The results were drastically different for both sides as the south was driven into the arms of the ultranationalists and the north into the radical unionists. By looking at public monuments, widespread stereotypes and cultural works, the separation between northern and southern Ireland becomes obvious as each side interpreted the war on opposite ends of the spectrum. The south, with its republican-nationalist leaders choosing to ignore the war and the soldiers contributions to the creation of the new Irish state to the point where the nation now suffers from a "collective amnesia". In the north, the unionists took their role in the war to become one of the foundation stones in their culture and identity. Such veneration led the unionists to develop a culture of sacrifice and bloodshed, which has contributed to the violence in Northern Ireland.

1966 ◽  
Vol 70 (661) ◽  
pp. 268-269
Author(s):  
Alan Cobham

At the end of the First World War, from a design point of view, aviation seemed to slow down compared with the tempo of progress during the war years. From the practical flying angle, there were brave efforts by a few to create flying records, such as the first crossing of the North Atlantic by air. Hawker and Grieve took off from Newfoundland and accomplished a remarkable feat of landing in mid-Atlantic and being picked up by a steamer. Alcock and Brown, in a war-time Vickers Vimy made a successful crossing, but unfortunately ended up in a bog in Northern Ireland.


Author(s):  
Ekaterina Simonenko ◽  

Introduction. The paper is devoted to the participation of Canada in the creation and activities of the Imperial War Cabinet and two Imperial War Conferences of 1917 and 1918 to explain the evolution of the foreign and political status of Canada as a part of the British Empire after the end of the War. Methods and materials. The paper is based on the British and Canadian Parliamentary Debates, Reports, Minutes of Proceedings and Meetings of the Imperial War Conferences 1917/1918 and the Imperial War Cabinet. To study them, it uses the method of historical criticism of sources. The author also uses the historical-genetic, comparative and the narrative methods to investigate the causes, the process of creating and activities of imperial military bodies for the unified management of the war. Analysis. The paper analyzes the reasons for the creation of imperial military organizations in the British Empire during the war. It reveals the organizational and functional differences between the two imperial military bodies: Cabinet and Conference. The author studies the activities of imperial military bodies during the war in detail, determines the role of the Canadian delegation in this process. The article analyzes the decisions of the imperial military bodies, reveals their domestic and foreign policy consequences for Dominion of Canada. Results. Canada’s active participation in the creation and activities of the imperial military bodies during the First World War was one of the factors in the transformation of the Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations, the formation of its own national identity, political and foreign independence within the Empire.


2004 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-37
Author(s):  
Malcolm Saunders

Australians — not least of all historians and political scientists — have long wondered whether Queensland was any different from the other colonies/states. Some of the ways in which it differs from most of its southern sisters — such as its geographical size and decentralised population — have always been obvious. No less well known has been its pursuit of agrarian policies. For much of the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, governments of all political persuasions in Queensland preferred to develop primary rather than secondary industries, and consequently favoured rural rather than urban areas. An integral part of agrarianism was its emphasis on closer settlement — that is, breaking the pastoralists' (or squatters') hold over vast areas of land and making smaller and suitable plots of land available to men of limited means, people most often referred to almost romantically as ‘yeoman farmers’. Governments envisaged a colony or state whose economy was based less on huge industries concentrated in a few hands and situated in the cities than on a class of small-scale agriculturalists whose produce would not only feed the population but also be a principal source of wealth.


Author(s):  
Leslie Bor

During the Manchester University's 1946 geological excursion to Anglesey, a visit was made to Parys Mountain. At this locality small quantities of an attractive light blue mineral were found capping pyrite veins and in clefts in the rock. Larger finds were obtained in an artificial cavern which extended for fifty or sixty feet into the south-east side of the excavated pit. A specimen weighing 2½ pounds and consisting of silicified shale veneered with the pale blue mineral was collected by the author and examined in the geological research laboratory at Manchester University during the session 1948–1949. The blue mineral was identified as pisanite, and this is the first record of pisanite as a British mineral.Parys Mountain is situated in the north-west of Anglesey close to Amlwch. Copper and to a smaller extent lead were mined throughout a period exceeding one hundred and fifty years, but operations have completely ceased since the first world war. The geological structure of the district need only be briefly outlined for the purpose of this study.


1980 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 875-898 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. Taylor

In July 1918 it was the considered opinion of Lord Northcliffe that propaganda and diplomacy were incompatible. When, only five months earlier, Northcliffe had accepted Lloyd George's invitation to take charge of the newly created department of enemy propaganda, his appointment, coupled with that of Lord Beaverbrook as Britain's first minister of information, had held out the promise of a new phase in the efficiency and co-ordination of Britain's conduct of official propaganda in foreign countries. It was then, in February 1918, that the Foreign Office had finally been forced to relinquish its control over such work. However, the creation of the two new departments had produced an intolerable situation. After three years of inter-departmental rivalry and squabbling over the conduct of propaganda overseas, Whitehall closed ranks on Beaverbrook and Northcliffe and united behind the Foreign Office in opposition to any further transference of related duties into their hands. Now, after five months of continued obstruction, Northcliffe expressed the view that:As a people we do not understand propaganda ways…Propaganda is advertising and diplomacy is no more likely to understand advertising than advertising is likely to understand diplomacy.


1984 ◽  
Vol 24 (93) ◽  
pp. 69-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. S. Walker

The Commonwealth Labour Party (Northern Ireland), hereafter referred to as the C.L.P., came into existence on 19 December 1942. Its birth was the result of a split in the ranks of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (N.I.L.P.). This split centred on the personality and the political outlook of the man who had led the N.I.L.P since 1932, and who was to be leader of the C.L.P during its five-year lifespan: Harry Midgley.Midgley (1892-1957) was, by the time of the formation of the C.L.P., one of the best-known and most controversial politicians in Northern Ireland. Born into a working-class protestant home in north Belfast, he acquired an early political education as a youth through the medium of the Independent Labour Party organisation in the city. He was close, at least initially, to William Walker, the most outstanding labour leader produced by the north of Ireland during the early troubled years of the labour movement. In addition, he met and listened to some of the most eminent spokesmen of British labour, most notably Keir Hardie. Midgley served his time as a joiner in the Workman Clark shipyard (where his father was a labourer) before spending a brief period in America in 1913 and 1914. After serving in the Ulster division in the First World War, he returned to Belfast in 1919 and quickly got himself a job as a trade-union organiser with the Linenlappers’ Union.


1991 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-142
Author(s):  
Taha J. Al 'Alwani

The Polemics of IjtihadFrom the second hijri century until the present day, the reality, the essence,the rules, the conditions, the premises, the means, and the scope of ijtihadhave remained a source of debate engaging some of the Islamic world's greatesttheologians, scholars of al usul, and fuqaha': This debate has also been enrichedby proponents of the view that the door of ijtihad was closed and that thefiqh left by the Four Imams obviated the need for any further ijtihad, aswell as by those who claimed that this door was still open and that the existingfiqh was not sufficient to guide the contemporary Muslim world.In our own times, attention is now focused on the suitability of the Shari'ahas an order and a way of life. This new topic of debate, before unknownamong Muslims, emerged after the crushmg defeats experienced by the Muslimummah after the First World War, such as the dismantling of the khihfahand the creation of artificial states ruled from Europe. Many Muslims blamedIslam and its institutions for their defeat, and soon began to emulate theirconquerors. Others, however, had a quite different view: the Muslim ummahexperienced these disasters because it had become alienated from the eternaltruths of Islam. Thus, what was required was a return to the true Islam andnot its wholesale rejection in favor of alien institutions and ideologies. Onefundamental part of this return would have to be the use of ijtihad, for howelse could Muslims incorporate Islamic principles into situations with whichthey had never had to deal?Muslims who hold the latter view are aware of the fact that they mustmeet their opponents in the realm of ideas, for it is here that the future courseof the ummah will be decided. To be successful, much energy must beexpended in scholarship and conceptual thinking, in seeking to understandhumanity's place in the divine scheme of existence and what is expected ofit, and how this knowledge might be applied by Muslims as they struggle ...


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