Ireland In The European Eye

"A comprehensive survey of Ireland's place in Europe, providing a detailed narrative of a cultural relationship that began with Irish missionaries bringing Christianity and learning to the continent. How have Ireland and her people and culture been perceived and represented in Europe? Twenty-two internationally renowned experts address this question through contributions on film, music, art, architecture, media, literature and European Studies" -- publisher's website.

This novel collection draws together a European field of expertise and resources. It reveals how Belgian, French, Italian, Luxembourg, Dutch, and West German politicians, policymakers and commentators perceived independent Ireland from the end of the Second World War until Irish accession to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973. These six West European states initiated and sustained the integration process from the debris of the Second World War. They offered Ireland a developmental and international alternative to small nation state obscurity and vulnerability. Together with the EEC institutions of the Commission and the Council of Ministers principally, these states both transformed European relations and determined the fate of Ireland's application to enter the EEC after 1961.

Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies begins with the reversal in Irish fortunes after the 2008 global economic crash. The chapters included address not only changes in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland but also changes in disciplinary approaches to Irish Studies that the last decade of political, economic, and cultural unrest have stimulated. Since 2008, Irish Studies has been directly and indirectly influenced by the crash and its reverberations through the economy, political landscape, and social framework of Ireland and beyond. Approaching Irish pasts, presents, and futures through interdisciplinary and theoretically capacious lenses, the chapters in this volume reflect the myriad ways Irish Studies has responded to the economic precarity in the Republic, renewed instability in the North, the complex European politics of Brexit, global climate and pandemic crises, and the intense social change in Ireland catalyzed by all of these. Just as Irish society has had to dramatically reconceive its economic and global identity after the crash, Irish Studies has had to shift its theoretical modes and its objects of analysis in order to keep pace with these changes and upheavals. This book captures the dynamic ways the discipline has evolved since 2008, exploring how the age of austerity and renewal has transformed both Ireland and scholarly approaches to understanding Ireland. It will appeal to students and scholars of Irish studies, sociology, cultural studies, history, literature, economics, and political science. Chapter 3, 5 and 15 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Having stagnated for decades in the shadow of the UK, the Irish economy's performance improved after it joined the European Union (EEC) in 1973. This Element shows how the challenge of EU membership gave focus and direction to Irish economic policy. No longer dependent on low value-added agricultural exports to Britain, within the EU Ireland became a hub for multinational corporations in IT and pharmaceutical products. This export success required and facilitated a strengthening of education and social policy infrastructures, and underpinned the achievement of high average living standards. EU membership has also brought challenges, and several severe setbacks have resulted from Irish policy mistakes. But the European flavour of Ireland's structural policies (leavened with exposure to US experience) has helped it navigate the hazards of hyper-globalization with fewer political tensions than seen elsewhere.

The Council of Europe (CoE) has played a central but neglected role in the definition of Irish attitudes to European integration. Ireland was a founder member of the Council in 1949 and participation in the work of the Council changed Irish attitudes towards broader European integration by demonstrating to politicians and officials the benefits and challenges of collective European action. This book explores the differing views of politicians on European integration and examines the changing opinions of Irish academics, businessmen, civil servants and diplomats from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.

Post-war Marshall Plan aid to Europe and indeed Ireland is well documented, but practically nothing is known about simultaneous Irish aid to Europe. This book provides a full record of the aid – mainly food but also clothes, blankets, medicines, etc. – that Ireland donated to continental Europe, including France, the Netherlands, Hungary, the Balkans, Italy, and zones of occupied Germany. Starting with Ireland’s neutral wartime record, often wrongly presented as pro-German when Ireland in fact unofficially favoured the western Allies, Jerome aan de Wiel explains why Éamon de Valera’s government sent humanitarian aid to the devastated continent. His book analyses the logistics of collection and distribution of supplies sent abroad as far as the Greek islands. Despite some alleged Cold-War hijacking of Irish relief – and this humanitarianism was not above the politics of that East-West confrontation – it became mostly a story of hope, generosity and European Christian solidarity. Rich archival records from Ireland and the European beneficiary countries, as well as contemporary local and national newspapers across Europe, allow the author to measure and describe not only the official but also the popular response to Irish relief schemes. This work is illustrated with contemporary photographs and some key graphs and tables that show the extent of the aid programme.

The declining role of the Church and its conservatism have left a vacuum in Irish politics. O'Connell assesses the likelihood that the vacuum will be filled by a new and shrill right-wing populism. Evidence from surveys and focus groups are presented