Kerry and the Royal Munster Fusiliers


Book Description

Ballymullen Barracks in Tralee was the regimental depot of the Royal Munster Fusiliers prior to the establishment of the Irish Free State. It was through the barracks gates that Kerrymen enlisted for a career in the Munsters. Kerry and the Royal Munster Fusiliers examines the reasons why Kerrymen enlisted during the Great War, and how these citizens-turned-soldiers endured the World War they found themselves participating in. By using local sources, this book documents the rapidly changing political situation in Kerry, how support for the conflict diminished after 1916, and how this change affected the returning soldiers.




Armorial Families


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Visitation of Ireland


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The end of the Irish Poor Law?


Book Description

Analyses the attempted reform of the Poor Law system in Ireland between 1910 and 1932. This period represented one of the most formative and crucial eras in Irish politics and society with the ideas of culture, nation, state and identity widely contested.




The Impact of World War One on Limerick


Book Description

This book examines the impact of World War One on the people of Limerick. It traces how recruitment, which was weak at the commencement of the war, increased locally after the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, John Redmond, issued his call for Irish nationalists and others to enlist, and, as the war progressed, how Sinn Féin separatists impinged on recruiting efforts. It also shows that the British War Office were unwitting contributors to the separatists’ cause by their ill-conceived actions that only assisted them in their political cause and anti-recruiting campaign. The book also tracks how the separatists gained considerably in both military and political strength locally through the inept policies that changed public support for the war effort, thereby paving the way for the Sinn Féin victory in the General Election of December 1918; thus giving credence to the author and poet Robert Graves’ description that Limerick had become a Sinn Féin-ridden town. Further to this, it demonstrates that, despite the best efforts of local capitalists to procure war work contracted out by the British War Office, only very little was achieved; the War Office ensuring that the vast array of such work was to remain in Britain. Some local capitalists did, of course, gain as a result of the war; these were notably those such as merchants and farmers who were in a position to provide Britain and her army with all the foodstuffs that she required. Those on low incomes, namely the working class who also provided the majority of recruits for the armed forces, were to suffer through the ever-increasing price rises. This book, therefore, reveals a complex scene where social and political alignments reflect much of what was happening nationally, but also had uniquely local characteristics.




Post-Famine Ireland: Social Structure


Book Description

This book describes the social and economic conditions in Ireland in the second half of the 19th century, that is after the Great Famine. Though the famine severely affected the under-developed parts of Ireland, it did not greatly affect the Irish economy as a whole . On the contrary, an ever-increasing output was now spread over a falling population. GDP per capita went on rising, and people had more money to spread. The Government, the economy, agricultural and industrial, the churches, the educational system, medicine, the arts, the music, and the sports are described.