What kind of people joined the I R A? What was the Irish Revolution? Did Michael Collins order the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson? Were Protestants ethnically cleansed from southern Ireland? This title addresses these and other controversies to suggest different ways of looking at the history of the Irish Revolution of 1916-23.

These events have never been numbered among the world's great revolutions, but in fact Irish republicans were global pioneers. Long before Mao or Tito, Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army were the first to use a popular political front to build a parallel underground state coupled with sophisticated guerrilla and international propaganda and fund-raising campaigns. Ireland's is also perhaps the best documented revolution in modern history, so that almost any question can be answered, from who joined the I.R.A. to who ordered the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson. The intimacy and precision with which we are able to reconstruct and analyse what happened make this a key site for understanding not just Irish, but world history.

PART I. THE STRUCTURE OF REVOLUTION
1. A New Revolutionary History
2. The Geography of Revolution in Ireland
3. The Dynamics of Violence
PART II. GUERRILLAS AT HOME
4. Paramilitary Politics in Ireland
5. The Social Structure of the I.R.A
PART III. GUERRILLAS ABROAD
6. Operations Abroad: The I.R.A. in Britain
7. The Thompson Submachine Gun in Ireland Revisited
8. Michael Collins and the Assassination of Sir Henry Wilson
PART IV: MINORITIES AT BAY
9. The Protestant Experience of Revolution in Southern Ireland
10. Ethnic Conflict and Minority Responses
Index