Ireland in the European Eye


Book Description

"A comprehensive survey of Ireland's place in Europe, providing a detailed narrative of a cultural relationship that began with Irish missionaries bringing Christianity and learning to the continent. How have Ireland and her people and culture been perceived and represented in Europe? Twenty-two internationally renowned experts address this question through contributions on film, music, art, architecture, media, literature and European Studies" -- publisher's website.







Ireland Through European Eyes


Book Description

This novel collection draws together a European field of expertise and resources. It reveals how Belgian, French, Italian, Luxembourg, Dutch, and West German politicians, policymakers and commentators perceived independent Ireland from the end of the Second World War until Irish accession to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973. These six West European states initiated and sustained the integration process from the debris of the Second World War. They offered Ireland a developmental and international alternative to small nation state obscurity and vulnerability. Together with the EEC institutions of the Commission and the Council of Ministers principally, these states both transformed European relations and determined the fate of Ireland's application to enter the EEC after 1961.




"Euro Vision"


Book Description




Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies


Book Description

Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies begins with the reversal in Irish fortunes after the 2008 global economic crash. The chapters included address not only changes in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland but also changes in disciplinary approaches to Irish Studies that the last decade of political, economic, and cultural unrest have stimulated. Since 2008, Irish Studies has been directly and indirectly influenced by the crash and its reverberations through the economy, political landscape, and social framework of Ireland and beyond. Approaching Irish pasts, presents, and futures through interdisciplinary and theoretically capacious lenses, the chapters in this volume reflect the myriad ways Irish Studies has responded to the economic precarity in the Republic, renewed instability in the North, the complex European politics of Brexit, global climate and pandemic crises, and the intense social change in Ireland catalyzed by all of these. Just as Irish society has had to dramatically reconceive its economic and global identity after the crash, Irish Studies has had to shift its theoretical modes and its objects of analysis in order to keep pace with these changes and upheavals. This book captures the dynamic ways the discipline has evolved since 2008, exploring how the age of austerity and renewal has transformed both Ireland and scholarly approaches to understanding Ireland. It will appeal to students and scholars of Irish studies, sociology, cultural studies, history, literature, economics, and political science. Chapter 3, 5 and 15 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.




Through Irish Eyes


Book Description




When the Luck of the Irish Ran Out


Book Description

Few countries have been as dramatically transformed in recent years as Ireland. Once a culturally repressed land shadowed by terrorism and on the brink of economic collapse, Ireland finally emerged in the late 1990s as the fastest-growing country in Europe, with the typical citizen enjoying a higher standard of living than the average Brit. Just a few years after celebrating their newly-won status among the world's richest societies, the Irish are now saddled with a wounded, shrinking economy, soaring unemployment, and ruined public finances. After so many centuries of impoverishment, how did the Irish finally get rich, and how did they then fritter away so much so quickly? Veteran journalist David J. Lynch offers an insightful, character-driven narrative of how the Irish boom came to be and how it went bust. He opens our eyes to a nation's downfall through the lived experience of individual citizens: the people responsible for the current crisis as well as the ordinary men and women enduring it.




Ireland in the Virginian Sea


Book Description

In the late sixteenth century, the English started expanding westward, establishing control over parts of neighboring Ireland as well as exploring and later colonizing distant North America. Audrey Horning deftly examines the relationship between British colonization efforts in both locales, depicting their close interconnection as fields for colonial experimentation. Focusing on the Ulster Plantation in the north of Ireland and the Jamestown settlement in the Chesapeake, she challenges the notion that Ireland merely served as a testing ground for British expansion into North America. Horning instead analyzes the people, financial networks, and information that circulated through and connected English plantations on either side of the Atlantic. In addition, Horning explores English colonialism from the perspective of the Gaelic Irish and Algonquian societies and traces the political and material impact of contact. The focus on the material culture of both locales yields a textured specificity to the complex relationships between natives and newcomers while exposing the lack of a determining vision or organization in early English colonial projects.




Europe and the Transformation of the Irish Economy


Book Description

Having stagnated for decades in the shadow of the UK, the Irish economy's performance improved after it joined the European Union (EEC) in 1973. This Element shows how the challenge of EU membership gave focus and direction to Irish economic policy. No longer dependent on low value-added agricultural exports to Britain, within the EU Ireland became a hub for multinational corporations in IT and pharmaceutical products. This export success required and facilitated a strengthening of education and social policy infrastructures, and underpinned the achievement of high average living standards. EU membership has also brought challenges, and several severe setbacks have resulted from Irish policy mistakes. But the European flavour of Ireland's structural policies (leavened with exposure to US experience) has helped it navigate the hazards of hyper-globalization with fewer political tensions than seen elsewhere.




Greece through Irish Eyes


Book Description

Greece through Irish Eyes is an insightful personal view by Richard Pine of the country where he has lived for the past 15 years. One of Ireland’s leading literary criti, Pine asks, What links Ireland and Greece? The author’s trenchant, provocative arguments acknowledge both the strengths and the weaknesses of Greece today, and draw suggestive parallels with the Irish situation Pine pays special attention to the family values of honour, loyalty, and economy, arguing that these are at the heart of Greek society and culture. He develops this in a comprehensive survey of Greek law, literature and politi, and Greece’s position at the centre of Balkan affairs. He graphically describes the effects of austerity on society and the economy, with up-to-the-minute accounts of the new government’s attempts to renegotiate Greece’s bailout. He strongly criticises the intransigence of bureaucracy, the pervasiveness of bribery and corruption and the continuing threats of terrorism and fascism. Richard Pine also calls for a major rethink on Greek and Irish positions on Europe. The parallels between Ireland and Greece may make some readers uncomfortable, but they are substantiated by solid examples of cultural, economic and historical differences which argue against integration into a centre-dominated Europe. “Greece is a country I both love and mourn. Richard Pine writes about it with a unique and painful empathy” - Roy Foster