’And So Began the Irish Nation’

Brendan Bradshaw S.M. is a Life Fellow of Queen's College Cambridge, UK.

In this collection, the result of a lifetime's study, Brendan Bradshaw provides an insight into how concepts of 'nationalism' and 'national identity' can be understood and applied to pre-modern Ireland. Drawing upon a selection of his most provocative and pioneering essays, together with three new pieces, the limits and contexts of Irish nationalism are explored and its impact on both early modern society and later generations, examined. The volume illuminates political and religious developments within Ireland, and how these affected events across the British Isles and beyond.

Part I Historical Method; Chapter 1 A Word on Words; Chapter 2 Nationalism and Historical Scholarship in Modern Ireland; Chapter 3 Revising Irish History; Part II Introduction; Chapter 4 Nationality, National Consciousness and Nationalism in Premodern Ireland; Part III Case Studies; Chapter 5 The Tudor Reformation and Revolution in Wales and Ireland: the Origins of the British Problem; Chapter 6 The Beginnings of Modern Ireland; Chapter 7 Native Reaction to the Westward Enterprise: a Case Study in Gaelic Ideology; Chapter 8 Geoffrey Keating: Apologist for Irish Ireland; Chapter 9 Patrick Sarsfield and the Two Sieges of Limerick, 1690, 1691; Part IV Review Articles; Chapter 10 The Elizabethans and the Irish: a Muddled Model,; Chapter 11 The Ulster Rising of 1641,; Part V Epilogue; Chapter 12 Irish Nationalism: an Historical Perspective,; Part VI Appendix; Chapter 13 Cromwellian Reform and the Origins of the Kildare Rebellion; Chapter 14 A Treatise for the Reformation of Ireland 1554-55;