The Irish establishment examines who the most powerful men and women were in Ireland between the Land War (1879–81) and the beginning of the Great War, and considers how and why the composition of the Irish establishment changed during this period. Although enormous shifts in economic and political power were taking place at the middle levels of Irish society, this book demonstrates that the Irish establishment remained remarkably static and unchanged. The Irish landlord class and the Irish Protestant middle class (especially businessmen and professionals) retained critical pos ... More

The Irish establishment examines who the most powerful men and women were in Ireland between the Land War (1879–81) and the beginning of the Great War, and considers how and why the composition of the Irish establishment changed during this period. Although enormous shifts in economic and political power were taking place at the middle levels of Irish society, this book demonstrates that the Irish establishment remained remarkably static and unchanged. The Irish landlord class and the Irish Protestant middle class (especially businessmen and professionals) retained critical positions of power, and the rising Catholic middle class was largely—although not entirely—excluded from this establishment elite. In particular, the book focuses on landlords, businessmen, religious leaders, politicians, police officers, and senior civil servants and examines their collective biographies to explore the changing nature of each of these elite groups.The book provides an alternative analysis to that advanced in the existing literature on elite groups in Ireland. Many historians argue that the members of the rising Catholic middle class were becoming successfully integrated into the Irish establishment by the beginning of the twentieth century, and that the Irish revolution (1916–23) represented a perverse turn of events that undermined an otherwise happy and democratic polity. This book suggests, on the other hand, that the revolution was a direct result of structural inequality and ethnic discrimination that converted well‐educated young Catholic men and women from ambitious students into frustrated revolutionaries.