All Resources: The Irish Troubles Since 1916

J. Bowyer Bell

Online Resources

BBC History — The Troubles: An Exploration of the Northern Ireland Conflict

CAIN — The Northern Ireland Conflict, 1968 to the Present

Timelines of Irish History

Further Reading

There are now nearly ten thousand books on the contemporary Irish Troubles, as well as a considerable library on modern Irish history. Because the crisis has had no conclusion, there is no single narrative treatment. Instead, studies tend to clump around special and spectacular events, such as the civil rights struggle, the hunger strikes, and the peace negotiations.

Since the Troubles have had no final act, the processes continues, and so too the need for updating. If the peace process continues, then an authoritative book on the Troubles may be possible—my own Irish Troubles ended just before the peace process dominated events. That process, like all Irish events, has had long roots.

These roots in modern Irish and Anglo-Irish history were ignored until the beginning of the Troubles as a minor area for non-Irish historians and a source of only bitter memories for the Irish. As a result, in 1968 the historical literature on modern Ireland was small, a specialized field, still limited by the bitterness of the civil war. In fact, historical narrative was apt to end in 1916 or perhaps in 1921; the next fifty years were left in newspaper files, memories, and unopened documents. Historical fashions, the need to explain the present, and the opportunity of untouched sources has encouraged a great many academics, not only in Ireland but around the world, to examine the Irish past.

Ireland is now well served by history in particular and by scholarship in general. Once the Troubles begin, even with official archives closed, there was an enormous flood of primary material, combined with the availability of the participants, so that scholars and analysts have been attracted to the issue. Any of these who attempt a complete chronological narrative have been frustrated by the receding cutoff date: the Troubles go on and on. My book on the IRA, The Secret Army (New Brunswick, N. J.: Transaction, 1997), finished first in 1968, with each new edition has grown more substantial -(it has doubled in size to 702 pages) and, like my The Irish Troubles Since 1967 (New York: St. Martins, 1994), offers more than most want to read. In this case, The Irish Troubles also offers a long bibliographic essay on sources relevant to further reading.

With the peace process seemingly secure, serious political violence may be over, and the contemporary Irish Troubles may evolve into a historical period rather than, as has been the case for a generation, a crisis without culmination. In the meantime, the peace process continues, and so do the books.

Thus there have been many splendid works offered over the years, some still worthy but none definitive; it is far easier to be authoritative about the Tan War or the establishment of the Stormont system than about the motives of those engaged in the peace process. For Irish history in general, there is R. F. Fosters' Modern Ireland 1600-1972 (London: Penguin Press, 1988), which critics feel revised away much of militant Irish nationalism -(cf. Robert Kee, The Green Flag, A History of Irish Nationalism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972) and the more focused and analytical Political Violence in Ireland, Government and Resistance Since 1848 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) by Charles Townshend). For Ireland in this century, the best work is J. J. Lee, Ireland 1912-1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

In 1966, the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising generated the first real attempts to address modern Irish history; selections may be found in edited volumes like F. X. Martin's Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising (London: Methuen, 1967) or Owen Dudley Edwards and Fergus Pyle's 1916—The Easter Rising (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968). The anniversary also inspired the first general and optimistic survey of contemporary Ireland, by the editor of the Irish Press, Tim Pat Coogan, Ireland Since the Rising (London: Pall Mall, 1966).

For the Tan War there are not only the guerrilla classics of Tom Barry, Dan Breen, and Ernie O' Malley, but also an expanding literature based on local sources, survivors' recollections, and scholarly investigation; a good analysis can be found in Charles Townshend's The British Campaign in Ireland 1919-1921 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). The civil war from 1921-1923 is covered by Michael Hopkinson, Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1988). With the beginning of the Troubles, there has appeared a library of books that focus on the historical roots of the conflict, but primarily on the roots in Northern Ireland—the arena of the conflict. Thus most works on the Irish Republic that include the Troubles, if they are considered relevant at all, include them as an issue, not a primary factor. As for the North, the greatest number of works tended to clump around the issue of the moment, and then later on the meaning of that issue: the civil right struggle, the IRA campaign, peace efforts, Anglo-Irish negotiations, the loyalists, the evolving political events, the hunger strikes, and the peace process. For a general and fair (if nationalist) explanation, there is John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland (London: Blackwell, 1995). The survey works tend to have a problem with sources close to the present and the lack of a satisfactory final date; the peace process books have the same problem. The precipitous reduction in political murder has allowed the appearance of one of the Troubles' most depressing and longest works, David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Christ Thornton, Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Edinburg & London: Mainstreet, 1999) that lists all the relevant details of each death from John Patrick Scalon, a Catholic shot and killed on June 11, 1966, in Belfast, by the UVF to Brian Service, also a Catholic and also shot and killed by loyalists in Belfast on October 31, 1998. The few deaths after that may be included in later editions, but the enormous volume—1630 pages—makes all too tangible for anyone, reader or no, the cost of the Troubles. A recent overview is Thomas Hennessey's A History of Northern Ireland, 1920-1996 (New York: St. Martin's, 1997).

What is most useful are works that give a flavor of the times rather than a survey. So for the civil rights process, Bernadette Devlin's The Price of My Soul (New York: Knopf, 1969) holds up after a generation. The history of the Provisional IRA up to 1987 can be found in Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London: Heinemann, 1987), and there are various works on other republican splinters and on the Protestant loyalists; see in particular Steve Bruce, The Red Hand, Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). There are works on the Royal Irish Constabulary, the British Army (including multi-volume exercises), and on all the spectaculars and operations. A good survey of the armed struggle for much of the period is Brendan O'Brien, The Long War: The IRA and Sinn Fein from Armed Struggle to Peace Talks (Dublin: O'Brien Press, 1995). See as well, for a sympathetic treatment of the Irish hunger strikers, Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990). For a non-analytical sense of the reality of an armed struggle, try Kevin Toolis, Rebel Hearts: Journey Within the IRA's Soul (London: Picador, 1995). And to end with the peace process, Thomas Hennessy's The Northern Ireland Peace Process: Ending the Troubles? (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2000) is valuable, the question mark indicating the consensus that the uncertain future is certain to inspire still more items for further reading.