Thesis
Ireland and the difficulties of World War I memory
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2010
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/100474
Abstract
World War I was a great watershed in European history. The war left an indelible mark on every combatant nation. The memory of this conflict influenced European history for the rest of the twentieth century. While many memory works have discussed the creation of war memory in Britain, France and Germany, few have discussed the war memory of Ireland. In 1914 Ireland was rife with political tension between nationalists and unionists who disagreed over the fate of Irish independence from Britain. The onslaught of World War I intensified these political divisions and further divided the Irish people. Such divisions caused great difficulty for the Irish in forming a collective memory of the war. Whereas Britain surrounded itself with war memorials and testaments to the soldier’s sacrifice, Ireland (specifically southern Ireland) failed to create a similarly coherent war memory. This thesis will explore the experiences of nationalist soldiers during the war to illustrate the fragmentation of the southern Irish which prevented the soldiers from forming a united war memory to pass on to the public. I will also discuss how the Northern Irish monopolized the memory of the iconic World War I battle on the Somme which prevented the southern Irish from incorporating the battle’s memory. By examining the difficulties of creating a national war memorial in the post war period and the subsequent memorial building boom in the 1990’s, this thesis will show how influential politics were in the failure to create a war memory.
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Details
- Title
- Ireland and the difficulties of World War I memory
- Creators
- Amanda Rae Townsley
- Contributors
- Heather Streets-Salter (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- History, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; Pullman, Wash. :
- Identifiers
- 99900525391201842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis