Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006

The Anglo-Irish relationship has historically been a fraught one. The modern Irish question is defined by many as a case of a great and supposedly liberal nation supposedly mistreating a smaller one. The Politics of Enmity embodies a new approach to this issue, analysing key issues from religious discrimination, and famine, to the passions of both nationalism and unionism. Re-evaluating British political leadership and its approach towards Ireland, Paul Bew sheds new light on the changing ideological passions of the modern Irish question. Examining the influence and legacies of many key figures, from Tone to Parnell to Haughey and from Peel to Churchill to Blair, he takes the reader all the way from the society of the United Irishman to the crisis of the Good Friday Agreement. The French revolution had an electrifying impact on Irish society. The 1790s saw the birth of modern Irish republicanism and Orangeism, whose antagonism remains a defining feature of Irish political life. The 1790s also saw the birth of a new approach to Ireland within important elements of the British political elite, men like Pitt and Castlereagh. Strongly influenced by Edmund Burke, they argued that Britain's strategic interests were best served by a policy of catholic emancipation and political integration in Ireland. Britain's failure to achieve this objective, dramatised by the horrifying tragedy of the Irish famine of 1846-50, in which a million Irish died, set the context for the emergence of a popular mass nationalism, expressed in the Fenian, Parnell, and Sinn Fein movements, which eventually expelled Britain from the greater part of the island. This book reassesses all the key leaders of Irish nationalism - Tone, O'Connell, Butt, Parnell, Collins, and de Valera - alongside key British political leaders such as Peel and Gladstone in the nineteenth century, or Winston Churchill and Tony Blair in the twentieth century. A study of the changing ideological passions of the modern Irish question, this analysis is, however, firmly placed in the context of changing social and economic realities. Using a vast range of original sources, Paul Bew holds together the worlds of political class in London, Dublin, and Belfast in one coherent analysis which takes the reader all the way from the society of the United Irishman to the crisis of the Good Friday Agreement. - ;...explores his chosen themes with originality, iconoclasm and a range of unexpected quotations - Roy Foster, TLS Books of the Year;Remarkable, formidably researched and fluently written - Times Literary Supplement;a remarkable survey - Diarmaid Ferriter, Irish Times;finely nuanced history ... [Bew] brings enormous authority to the subject. - Michael Burleigh, The Sunday Times;...an historian of note and a distinguished commentator on the politics of modern Ireland; this study confirms his analytical skills... - Edward Norman, Literary Review;Bew ... is a master of elegant and pithy prose ... Ireland: The Politics of Enmity ... is unfailingly absorbing. - Peter Hart, The Irish Times;absorbing reading for all who are interested in Irish-British history. - Morning Star;[Bew] explores his chosen themes with originality, iconoclasm and a range of unexpected quotations. - Roy Foster, Times Literary Supplement;The book is dense yet easy to read - Edward Norman, Literary News

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Avainsanat: politics of modern Ireland, political class in London, political leaders, British