ABSTRACT
More than 60 years ago a distinguished historian speculated on the probable state of Ireland had the Act of Union of 1800 never been enacted. He suggested that the country would have continued to experience a form of aristocratic rule ‘under the domination of a mainly Protestant Junker class’, and that this form of rule could have survived well into the twentieth century, with this class ‘ruling the country through a paternal and authoritarian type of government and probably weakening potential resistance by making as solid an alliance as possible with the Roman Catholic hierarchy’ (Shearman, 1948: 67-8). This counterfactual image of an Ireland evolving independently of its larger neighbour and turning essentially into the Hungary of western Europe draws attention to the central question of this introductory chapter, and a recurring theme in the rest of this book: to what extent has the Irish political experience been conditioned by a history of domination by Great Britain? Although political histories of Ireland often start at 1922, and conventional wisdom stresses the ‘new era’ that then began, it is clear that centuries of British rule left a deep imprint. Significant elements of continuity underlay the sharp political break that took place at the time that the state was founded. Before looking at the establishment of the state itself and at subsequent developments, then, we must examine the legacy of the old regime.
