If we situate the Irish struggle for independence, and the eventual emergence of the Irish Republic, in a lineage of Republics achieved by revolution, we think naturally of the French and American republics as predecessors. Unless we examine the matter carefully, it is fatally easy to consider that the Irish Republic, like its antecedents, was the outcome of a successful revolutionary process. This is to risk glossing over the not inconsiderable difficulty that Ireland, to my way of thinking,..
