A History of Ulster

Volatile and dynamic, Ulster has for centuries been at the eye of the storm between Ireland and Britain, the complexity of its history embroiling its people and baffling the outside world. A History of Ulster achieves what few other books have attempted a comprehensive account of the province, spanning nine thousand years of social, political and economic life: the early settlements; the Viking and Norman invasions; the plantations and the Penal Laws; the rise of the United Irishmen and Orangeism; the Act of Union; emigration and the Great Famine; the linen industry and shipbuilding; the Home Rule crisis and partition; the Second World War and the blitz; civil rights and the turmoil of the current troubles. First published in 1992, A History of Ulster was an instant success with historians and the wider reading public, and quickly became established as the definitive book on the subject. For this edition Jonathan Bardon has written an introductory chapter covering events since 1992. His description of the process that saw the region emerge from thirty years of brutal conflict and move haltingly towards peace is a fitting coda to this classic of Irish history. Through compelling narrative and masterly use of contemporary sources, this major new history disentangles the past and captures Ulster in all its energy and obduracy.