The Partition of Ireland

Partition represents the most fundamental revolution in modern Irish history. By 1925 the country had been divided into two states embodying rival religious and political identities, an outcome unthinkable only a decade before. While often analysed through the lens of elite high politics, partition was by definition a mass participation event, where decision making was shaped by elections, propaganda and savage acts of violence in defence of or in opposition to the new settlement. By examining the complex interaction of nationalism, religion and politics, Robert Lynch seeks to understand how partition was constructed and imagined by Irish people themselves, arguing for a relocation of partition at the centre of historical understandings of events in Ireland which spanned the Great War. Lynch highlights the deep confusion and expediency which lay behind the partition plan, and how it failed to provide answers to the complex and enduring problems of Irish identity.


About the Author
Lynch, Robert: - Robert Lynch has worked, taught and researched at the University of Stirling, University of Oxford, Trinity College Dublin, Warwick University and Queen's University Belfast. He has published numerous articles and books on the early history of Northern Ireland and the partition era including The Northern IRA and the Early Years of Partition, 1920-22 (2006), most recently contributing to The Irish Revolution (2017). He has also published a number of articles in journals such as the Journal for British Studies and Irish Historical Studies.