History Studies: University of Limerick History Society Vol (18)

This latest volume of the History Studies journal offers many fresh insights that help us to understand the past better. The essays cover a refreshingly broad spectrum. As well as twentieth-century Irish history, there is an emphasis on US responses to its domestic and international problems, and on European experiences of the Ottoman Empire. Attention is also given to approaches to scriptural translation in the Reformation period, and to the mixed loyalties of soldiers in the Bourbon armies of the early eighteenth century. William O’Neill, and Daniel Haverty have presented novel interpretations of well-studied subjects. O’Neill shows how received understanding of the Carter administration’s supposed lack of direction in foreign policy is belied by its success in luring the USSR into a debilitating military commitment in Afghanistan. Haverty has provided a reassessment of the rise of the IRSP/INLA following Bloody Sunday, one in which the nationalist desire for independence is overshadowed by the appeal of this organisation for the deprived working classes in Derry.