A new book from Four Courts Press will be of interest to researchers with connections to County Monaghan.
The Irish Revolution, 1912-1923 – Monaghan, by Terence Dooley, explores the Revolutionary Era from the perspective of this border county, which seemed likely to become a battlefield in a sectarian civil war until the First World War intervened with significant consequences for both Protestant and Catholic communities.
The 1916 Rising itself had little impact on Monaghan but its consequences did, as all communities were discommoded during the turbulent 1919–23 period by violence (sometimes sectarian in nature), the growth of lawlessness and agrarianism, the economic effects of the Belfast Boycott, and the imposition of the border with the new state of Northern Ireland.
After 1923, the people of Monaghan got on with living their lives in a changed political landscape. For many, the revolution brought a sense of lingering disillusionment: Monaghan unionists were aggrieved at their desertion by their fellow Ulster covenanters and nationalists were disappointed by how little the social and political order had changed.
Terence Dooley is director of the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses & Estates, Maynooth University. He is the author of The decline and fall of the Dukes of Leinster, 1872–1948: love, war, debt and madness (Dublin, 2014) and co-editor, with Christopher Ridgway, of The Country House and the Great War: Irish and British experiences (Dublin, 2016). His new 192-page paperback is on sale (€17.95) from Four Courts Press. ISBN: 978-1-84682-616-0.