Fergal O'Leary's study of Ireland and empire is a much needed addition to the historiography. Inspired by recent works on empire that speak to colonial legacies, violent pasts and postcolonial trauma, the author attempts to break out of the traditional silos of scholarship associated with Ireland in this period, the rise of Irish nationalism and the adherence to union, to investigate how imperialism was normalised and even popularised in Ireland. He concentrates on the ways empire impacted on Irish politics, culture and society in the final two decades of the nineteenth century, paying special attention to the years 1882–98. Where this study comes into its own is the author's attention to detail in a period of profound upheaval surrounding the land wars and home rule. Yet, the author endeavours, in ‘his broad assessment of Ireland's place in the late nineteenth century United Kingdom and its Empire’ (p. 4) to set this national crisis against the bloody turmoil of the Boer War and aggressive imperial expansion. Through his focus on global context, O'Leary breaks away from Irish society's domestic arguments and looks at the liminal space where everyday life carried on in an Ireland that was a constituent, though contested, part of empire.

The author's thorough overview of popular opinion, political commentary and news reporting, presented and represented in the national and regional newspapers, reinforces this study. In this survey of print media, O'Leary attempts to gauge if the politics of land reform and self-government were the sole focus of the public attention and concludes that events overseas did, in fact, generate a significant level of interest. Importantly, he teases out how news from across the empire extensively influenced and impacted the rise in anti-imperialist feeling that characterised Ireland at the close of the century. Significantly, however, O'Leary asserts that outrage was not the only reaction. An exploration of various facets of ordinary life (theatre performance, music hall songs, contemporary literature) reveals that popular feeling towards imperialism, along with Ireland's participation in the empire, at times, garnered a certain willingness to tacitly accept and appreciate imperialist values. This argument is fleshed out when O'Leary steps outside the entertainment centres and media hubs of urban life and embarks on a wider study of the national school curriculum and its implementation in cities and villages across the island. This is further augmented by considering the Catholic Church's ‘spiritual empire’, evident in its mission to spread its brand of Irish Catholic morality and theology through imperial territories. Here, the author finds a commonality with Protestant and evangelical missionaries. However, even though fears of proselytising galvanised a missionary impetus it encouraged a certain paranoia that locked religious groups in an imperialistic battle for hearts and minds.

The most potent dichotomy in the Irish relationship with empire comes in O'Leary's analysis of the Irish involvement in colonial campaigns in Egypt and Sudan, during years of violent upheaval and coercion at home in Ireland (pp 56–8). Despite the turbulence and duress of the land wars, Irish participation in colonial administration and imperial regiments was at least tolerated but was, more often, encouraged. Viewed as a badge of respectability and social mobility to the burgeoning middles classes, it was also a survival mechanism and economic safety net to working-class families. Indeed, military experience or colonial service defined and shaped a future revolutionary generation. O'Leary explores the tipping point where the high price of the modernity and economic prosperity brought by union and empire became intolerably extortionate (pp 138–41). Ultimately, he argues, the extent of the ‘wanton waste of human life in bloody and expensive wars’ (p. 222) challenged the popularity of Parnell, the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party and, finally, the political consensus of home rule.

Yet, The strength of O'Leary's thesis is that it does not come to a definitive conclusion on the participation, responsibility or culpability of Ireland and empire. Indeed, his acceptance that empire affected ‘Irish society in different ways and to different degrees’ (p. 87) bolsters his innovative exploration of the contradictory nature of the Irish personality. Ireland has long been and continues to be assessed as a hothouse of empire and, in many ways, it was. Yet, this reviewer contends, it can and should be argued that it is the diversity of Irish society, its multilingualism, religious beliefs, political convictions, popular opinion and, most significantly, its historical memory that continues to make assertions of the Irish commitment for and against empire tantalisingly intangible. Refreshingly, it is the original consideration of the apathy and banality towards abhorrence of empire but, also, our imperial involvement that defines this important book.