ABSTRACT
After the partition of the island of Ireland in 1921, the island was divided into two new states, Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State. The formative decades of the 1920s and 1930s in both Irish states saw huge efforts at local and national levels to promote particular identity narratives. One of the devices that were used to do this was public history—through the erection of monuments, commemorative events and practices, and various cultural initiatives. Focusing on Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, this chapter considers how representative of the entirety of the community the official narrative was and explores how active the public were in negotiating their identities as citizens of the newly established Irish Free State.
