Ethnicity and Conflict

The Northern Ireland Troubles

Dados Bibliográficos

ID10063992
AutoresIan Mcbride (0000-0003-1027-0285, New College, autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Volume62
Fascículo3
Páginas618-639
Data de publicação2023-07-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of British Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0021-9371 • E-ISSN: 1545-6986
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/jbr.2023.11
OpenAlexW4385552863
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas15

In this article, I defend the view that the Northern Ireland Troubles can usefully be described as an ethnic conflict. I critically examine two manifestos on this subject, those by Richard Bourke and Simon Prince respectively, which rest on misrepresentations of the scholarship on Northern Ireland. The issues raised by these historians are relevant to the historiography of nationalism and the study of civil war. I focus on the coincidence of religious affiliation and political allegiance in Ulster and the mechanisms by which patterns of conflict have been reproduced over time, suggesting several reasons why historians and political scientists have turned to the notion of ethnicity to describe the persistence of antagonism in the North of Ireland. In the final section, focusing on the loyalist agitator John McKeague, I argue that the literature on ethnicity helps historians to understand the outbreak of the Northern Ireland conflict better than does the singular concentration on democratic ideas recommended by Bourke and Prince

Democracy · Ethnic conflict · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Historiography · Nationalism · Northern ireland · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Subject (documents · Gender Studies · History · Irish and British Studies · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies