Irish Lives in War and Revolution: Exploring Ireland's History 1912-1923

How do people experience war and revolution? How does political change, violence, total war, affect life in its most basic ways? Looking at Ireland through war and revolution, this course considers these and other questions about Irish life between 1912 and 1923.

The course looks beyond the familiar names and the famous faces - the traditional histories can tell us about them. Instead, it explores how the events that shaped the nature of modern Ireland - the Great War, the Easter Rising, the Irish war of independence and civil war - were experienced by the people who lived through them or in spite of them. Through videos, assignments and discussions, through innovative approaches, this course introduces you to the history of Ireland in one of its most tumultuous periods.

Considering the choices of those who fought in all sorts of ways for all sorts of causes, looking at the continuities of everyday life, this course allows us to question our broader understanding of these years. Looking at the intricate and complex tapestry of lives lived, often in the midst of chaos, we might begin to ask different questions of these years. Do we understand war better if we consider the motivations that took a single soldier to the front, whether that front was in Flanders or Dublin? Does our sense of the entire period change when we examine general social and cultural trends or when we investigate their effect on private lives?

Join this course as we begin to consider these and other questions. You can find out more about what to expect from this course in Ciarán Wallace’s post for the FutureLearn blog: “Do you know what’s going to happen tomorrow?”