Ireland in Transition, 1867–1921

Ireland in Transition, 1867–1921. Edited by D. GEORGE BOYCE and ALAN O'DAY (London: Routledge, 2004; pp. 291. £20.99). THE editors of this volume have gathered together a series of stimulating essays, written by an admirable combination of established and post-doctoral scholars, concentrating on what they regard as a ‘key period’ in Irish history, and with a particular emphasis on the formation of Irish identity. Although the focus throughout is primarily political, the editors have wisely not been restrictive in this matter and one or two essays also explore social and cultural aspects of the subject. The book is divided into three sections, in turn reflecting the progressively more explicit separatism of nationalist Irish politics and identity. And, as the editors observe in their introduction, the changes of the period were plural: it was ‘a time of transitions’, rather than the singular ‘transition’ of their title, which encompassed changes in socio-economic life, culture, psychology, as well as political structures. The punchy introduction, moreover, takes issue with some existing scholarship and links current research to theoretical perspectives in a productive way which makes a nonsense of United Kingdom Research Assessment Exercise-led assumptions that both introductions and edited volumes per se are comparatively valueless

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