Enduring Ruin: Environmental Destruction during the Irish Revolution

An environmental history of the Irish Revolution.

The Irish Revolution inflicted unprecedented damage to both natural and human-built landscapes between 1916 and 1923. Destruction transcended national and ideological divisions and remained a fixture within Irish urban and rural landscapes years after independence, presenting an Ireland politically transformed yet physically disfigured. Enduring Ruin examines how and to what degree revolutionary activity degraded, damaged, and destroyed Ireland’s landscapes. The first environmental history of the revolutionary period, it incorporates the roles animals, earth, water, trees, weather, and human-made infrastructure played in directing and absorbing revolutionary violence. It traces the militarization of private and public spaces and how the destruction of monuments renegotiated Ireland’s civic spaces and colonial legacy. Re-evaluating conventional interpretations and introducing new arguments, Enduring Ruin pioneers a new phase in the study of the Irish Revolution.
 

Justin Dolan Stover is associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of History at Idaho State University.