This first volume in A Treatise on Northern Ireland illuminates how British colonialism shaped the formation and political cultures of what became Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State. Contrasting colonial and sectarianized accounts of modern Irish history, Brendan O'Leary shows that a judicious meld of these perspectives provides a properly political account of direct and indirect rule, and of administrative and settler colonialism. The British state incorporated Ulster and Ireland into a deeply unequal Union after four re-conquests over two centuries had successively defeated the Ulster Gaels, the Catholic Confederates, the Jacobites, and the United Irishmen-and their respective European allies. Founded as a union of Protestants in Great Britain and Ireland, rather than of the British and the Irish nations, the colonial and sectarian Union was infamously punctured in the catastrophe of the Great Famine. The subsequent mobilization of Irish nationalists and Ulster unionists, and two republican insurrections amid the cataclysm and aftermath of World War I, brought the now partly democratized Union to an unexpected end, aside from a shrunken rump of British authority, baptized as Northern Ireland. Home rule would be granted to those who had claimed not to want it, after having been refused to those who had ardently sought it. The failure of possible federal reconstructions of the Union and the fateful partition of the island are explained, and systematically compared with other British colonial partitions. Northern Ireland was invented, in accordance with British interests, to resolve the 'hereditary animosities' between the descendants of Irish natives and British settlers in Ireland. In the long run, the invention proved unfit for purpose. Indispensable for explaining contemporary institutions and mentalities, this volume clears the path for the intelligent reader determined to understand contemporary Northern Ireland.

About the Author
Brendan O'Leary is the Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and World Leading Researcher Visiting Professor of Political Science at Queen's University Belfast. He is the inaugural winner of the Juan Linz Prize of the International Political Science Association for lifetime contributions to the study of federalism, democratization, and multinational states, and was recently elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and to Membership of the US Council on Foreign Relations. Educated in Northern Ireland, Oxford, and the London School of Economics & Political Science he advised parties and governments during and after the making of the Good Friday Agreement. His extensive publications include Power-Sharing in Deeply Divided Places (co-editor, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), The Northern Ireland Conflict (OUP, 2004), and Explaining Northern Ireland (co-author, Blackwell, 1995).

Reviews
This three-volume set is quite the remarkable achievement...I will continue to spend time with these volumes, which will not be surpassed anytime soon. Unlike in so many history books, O'Leary is always trying to explain what happened, or what did not. * Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution *
O'Leary colors his work throughout with lively writing, moving past equivocation and pulling no punches in his assessments of participants or previous scholarship. He sees the disputatious state of Northern Ireland as the result of attempts to instill an Irish or British national identity among its residents....Although the cumulative length of this work might be daunting, the author has thoughtfully structured his books and chapters in a way that is accessible to both non-experts and specialists. Whatever the audience, this is a work of canonical importance for understanding Northern Ireland. * M. J. O'Brien, Franciscan University of Steubenvill, CHOICE *
The detailed coverage is astonishing, the range immense. The book exemplifies best practice in social science and history, combining both disciplines, asking analytic questions of the historical record and widening the remit of social science - above all by looking carefully both at political calculations and the details of constitutional arrangements. It is important to stress that he offers us an analytic history of Ireland as a whole, paying special attention to developments in the Irish Free State and to the Republic thereafter. * John A Hall, McGill University in Montreal, Dublin Review of Books *
The most prolific, perceptive and powerfully analytical writer on the north in the last 35 years, Brendan O'Leary, has just produced his magnum opus. * Brian Feeney, Irish News *


Awards
Winner of Winner of the James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize from the American Conference for Irish Studies An Irish Times Book of the Year 2019.



Book Information
ISBN 9780198869801
Author Brendan O'Leary
Format Paperback
Page Count 560
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 155mm * 29mm