Abstract: This book studies the politics of language in Ireland during the colonial and post-colonial periods. Beginning with the Tudors and ending with recent language legislation in Ireland and Northern Ireland, the account set out in this text challenges received notions and reveals a complex, fascinating, and often surprising history. The linguistic aspects of the major issues that have united and divided Ireland are considered, including ethnicity, cultural identity, religion, governance and sovereignty, propriety and purity, memory, and authenticity. But rather than presenting the received wisdom on many of the language debates, this book revisits the material and considers new evidence in order to offer novel insights and to contest earlier accounts. Ranging across colonial state papers and the arguments of Irish revolutionaries, the writings of Irish priest historians and the works of contemporary Loyalist politicians, Gaelic dictionaries, and Ulster-Scots poetry, this book offers a re-reading of the role language has played in Ireland's political history. The text concludes by arguing that the Belfast Agreement's recognition that languages are ‘part of the cultural wealth of the island of Ireland’, must be central to the future social development of both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland if the new voices on both sides of the border are to be heard.

Keywords: Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, colonialism, post-colonialism, language debates, Gaelic, Ulster-Scots, Belfast Agreement