The Disparity of Sacrifice

Irish Recruitment to the British Armed Forces, 1914-1918.

During the First World Warapproximately 210,000 Irish men and a much smaller, but significant,number of Irish women served in the Britisharmed forces. All were volunteers and a very high proportion were from Catholicand Nationalist communities. This book is the first comprehensive analysis ofIrish recruitment between 1914 and 1918 for the island of Ireland as awhole. It makes extensive use of previously neglected internal Britisharmy recruiting returns held at The National Archives, Kew, along with other valuablearchival and newspaper sources.

There has been a tendency todiscount the importance of political factors in Irish recruitment, but thisbook demonstrates that recruitment campaigns organised under the auspices ofthe Irish National Volunteers and Ulster Volunteer Force were the earliest andsome of the most effective campaigns run throughout the war. The Britishgovernment conspicuously failed to create an effective recruiting organisationor to mobilise civic society in Ireland. While the military mobilisation whichoccurred between 1914 and 1918 was the largest in Irish history, British officialspersistently characterised it as inadequate, threatening to introduceconscription in 1918.

This book also reflects on the disparity of sacrifice betweenNorth-East Ulster and the rest of Ireland, urban and rural Ireland, and Irelandand Great Britain.

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