Abstract
At the beginning of this book several questions were posed about Irish people taking commissions in the British armed forces after the Irish Free State had organised its own army and later, when Ireland was neutral during the Second World War. What were the officers’ reasons for doing so and how many of them served in the British forces over the period? How did they regard their identity? What was the policy of the British government and armed forces towards them? Finally, how did government and society in independent Ireland regard this ongoing military tradition? In answering these questions the book’s findings can be divided into three distinct areas: the British army in the Second World War, the Irish military tradition in the first half of the twentieth century and British-Irish relations in the 30 years after southern Irish secession.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Quoted in Ian F.W. Beckett, ‘War, identity and memory in Ireland’, Irish Economic and Social History, xxxvi (2009), 64.
Jeremy A. Crang, The British Army and the People’s War, 1939–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).
Jeremy A. Crang, The British Army and the People’s War, 1939–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).
David French, Raising Churchill’s Army: The British Army and the War against Germany, 1919–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Niall Barr, Pendulum of War: The Three Battles of El Alamein (London: Pimlico, 2005), 46. At the final battle of El Alamein roughly 50 per cent of Montgomery’s forces were not British but Indian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Free French, Polish and Greek.
Martin Conway and José Gotovitch (eds), Europe in Exile: European Exile Communities in Britain 1940–1945 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001).
See also Matthew Bennett and Paul Latawski (eds), Exile Armies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
David French, Military Identities: The Regimental System, the British Army, and the British People, c.1870–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 76–98.
Richard Doherty, Clear the Way! A History of the 38th (Irish) Infantry Brigade, 1941–1947 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993), 57.
Adam Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few: The Polish Air Force in the Second World War (London: J. Murray, 1995), 44–60.
Alan Brown, Airmen in Exile: The Allied Air Forces in the Second World War (Stroud: Sutton, 2000).
See Alan Brown, Airmen in Exile: The Allied Air Forces in the Second World War (Stroud: Sutton, 2000); Paul Latawski, ‘Polish exile armies, 1939–45: man-power and military effectiveness’, in Exile Armies, ed. Matthew Bennett and Paul Latawski (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 31–41 and Anthony Clayton, ‘French exile armies, 1940–44’, in ibid., 18–30.
Tom Johnstone, Orange, Green and Khaki: The Story of the Irish Regiments in the Great War, 1914–18 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1992).
Myles Dungan, Distant Drums: Irish Soldiers in Foreign Armies (Belfast: Appletree, 1993).
David Fitzpatrick, ‘Militarism in Ireland, 1900–1922’ in A Military History of Ireland, ed. Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 381.
Keith Jeffery, ‘The Irish military tradition and the British Empire’, in ‘An Irish Empire’? Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire, ed. Keith Jeffery (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 108.
Peter Martin, ‘Dulce et Decorum: Irish nobles and the Great War, 1914–19’, in Ireland and the Great War: ‘A war to unite us all’? ed. Adrian Gregory and Senia Paseta (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 28–9.
C.B. Otley, ‘Militarism and militarization in the public schools, 1900–1972’, British Journal of Sociology 29, no. 3 (September, 1978): 321–39.
Tony Mansell, ‘Flying start: educational and social factors in the recruitment of pilots of the Royal Air Force in the interwar years’, History of Education 26, no. 1 (1997): 71–90.
Christopher M. Bell, ‘The King’s English and the security of the empire: class, social mobilisation and democratisation in the British naval officer corps, 1918–1939’, Journal of British Studies 48, no. 3 (July 2009): 695–716.
Nelson D. Lankford, ‘The Victorian medical profession and military practice: army doctors and national origins’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 54, no. 4 (Winter 1980): 511–28.
Greta Jones, ‘“Strike out boldly for the prizes that are available to you”: medical emigration from Ireland 1860–1905’, Medical History 54, no. 1 (January 2010): 55–74.
Indeed Lowry has found that the maintenance of an undefined dominion status was central to de Valera’s diplomacy and that it is likely, had he stayed in power in the late 1940s, that he would have accepted, like India, ‘the status of a republic within the Commonwealth’. See Donal Lowry, ‘The captive dominion: imperial realities behind Irish diplomacy, 1922–45’, Irish Historical Studies 36, no. 142 (November 2008): 223–4.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Steven O’Connor
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
O’Connor, S. (2014). Conclusion. In: Irish Officers in the British Forces, 1922–45. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137350862_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137350862_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46862-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-35086-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)