Ireland's Holy Wars

The Struggle for a Nation's Soul, 1500-2000

Plot

In most accounts of Irish history, the focus is on the political rivalry between Unionism and Republicanism. But the roots of the Irish conflict are profoundly and inescapably religious. As Marcus Tanner shows in this vivid, warm, and perceptive book, only by understanding the consequences over five centuries of the failed attempt by the English to make Ireland into a Protestant state can the pervasive tribal hatreds of today be seen in context. Tanner traces the creation of a modern Irish national identity through the popular resistance to imposed Protestantism and the common defense of Catholicism by the Gaelic Irish and the Old English of the Pale, who settled in Ireland after its twelfth-century conquest.