This book brings together new research on loyalism in the 26 counties that would become the Irish Free State. Chapters cover a range of topics and experiences, from the Third Home Rule crisis in 1912 to the declaration of the Republic in 1949, including the revolutionary period, partition, independence, and Irish participation in the British armed forces and colonial service. Contributors examine who southern Irish loyalists were, what loyalism meant to them, how they expressed their loyalism, their responses to Irish independence, and their experiences afterwards. This collection offers fresh ... More

This book brings together new research on loyalism in the 26 counties that would become the Irish Free State. Chapters cover a range of topics and experiences, from the Third Home Rule crisis in 1912 to the declaration of the Republic in 1949, including the revolutionary period, partition, independence, and Irish participation in the British armed forces and colonial service. Contributors examine who southern Irish loyalists were, what loyalism meant to them, how they expressed their loyalism, their responses to Irish independence, and their experiences afterwards. This collection offers fresh insights and new perspectives on the Irish Revolution and the first decades of southern independence, based on original archival research. It addresses issues of particular historiographical and political interest during the on-going ‘Decade of Centenaries’, including revolutionary violence, sectarianism, political allegiance and identity, and the Irish border. But rather than cease its coverage in 1922 or 1923, this book – like the lives with which it is concerned – continues into the first decades of southern Irish independence.