This book explores the efforts made by British governments, Irish politicians, and Irish cultural organisations to master and shape Ireland in an age of increasingly rapid change, and explain the process and outcome of these endeavours.

A time of transitions PART I Home rule, Ireland and a 'union of hearts' 1 Max Weber and leadership, Butt, Parnell and Dillon: nationalism in transition 2 Nationality and loyalty: Parnellism, monarchy and the construction of Irish identity, 1880-5 3 'These quiet days of peace': Nationalist opinion before the home rule crisis, 1909-13 4 T.P. O'Connor and The Star, 1886-90 5 A First World War transition: state and citizen in Ireland, 1914-19 PART II Irish Ireland and a separatist identity 6 Broken glass and batoned crowds: Cathleen Ni Houlihan and the tensions of transition 7 National reconstruction: George Russell (Æ) and the Irish Convention 8 The end of Parnellism and the ideological dilemmas of Sinn Féin 9 'With the eyes of another race, of a people once hunted themselves': Casement, colonialism and a remembered past PART III Reformed Ireland or 'risen people'? 10 Unintended consequences: the national schools and Irish women's mobility in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries 11 'The charm of allowing people to manage their own affairs': political perspectives on emergency relief in late nineteenth-century Ireland' 12 True Bolsheviks? The rise and fall of the Socialist Party of Ireland, 1917-21 13 Old and new unionism: the seventh Marquess of Londonderry, 1906-21