Conclusion

Abstract

A number of surprising conclusions are offered, which provide greater nuance to the history of Irish military elites. The diversity of backgrounds to be found in the officer corps reflects the central importance of the British Army to Irish society in the late nineteenth century, while the mechanisms of socialisation which governed access are also reflective of broader middle-class trends towards professionalisation and the accumulation of social capital, and the decline of the aristocracy. The British Army as a node of interaction between Irish society and the overseas empire is discussed. The Home Rule question is assessed as the precipitating factor in the systemic crisis faced by the officer corps in Ireland, culminating in the 1914 Curragh mutiny. Irish officers’ increasingly uncomfortable social identity and their incompatibility with the strain of Irish national identity which emerged immediately before the First World War are explored and weighed against the Great War itself as the force which finally, in the words of one Irish officer, ‘killed society’. Through all of these events, the most surprising realisation may be that the demographic make-up of the officer corps—and the proportion of Irishmen taking the oath and embarking for the empire—hardly changed between the 1870s and 1920s. These myriad factors are drawn together in a discussion of the sustained and continuing presence of Irish officers in the British Army to this day.

Perhaps more than any other citizens of the Empire, Irishmen are able to adapt themselves to altered circumstances. The problems of the new India … although different, may prove to be not less fruitful than those of the India where so many of their fathers won fame and fortune.

—Lord Meston addressing students of Trinity College Dublin. Irish Times, 28 February 1925

Allegations having been made that ex-Service men had been victimised by the Irish Free State Government, a meeting, presided over by General Sir Bryan Mahon, was held … He understood that a number of ex-Service men who were in His Majesty’s Forces have lost their jobs … General W.B. Hickie said that he was rather doubtful about the allegations … He believed that the Committee now about to be formed would help to allay a great deal of dissatisfaction

—Irish Times, 28 March 1925