The past two decades have seen a marked, though perhaps belated, quickening of interest among historians of Ireland in issues relating to identity and state formation, commemoration, symbols, rituals, myths, and “collective” memory. Strategies and criteria of selection and exclusion have attracted attention, with concepts such as Benedict Anderson's “imagined communities” and Pierre Nora's “realms of memory” being particularly influential. In view of the continuing importance of public symbols in the communal conflict in Northern Ireland, even in the “postwar” climate since 1996, it is hardly surprising that political and cultural commentators have been acutely aware of the importance of parades, flags, and emblems in their reporting of that conflict. But a more systematic and wide-ranging analysis of the historical circumstances in which the dominant state-sanctioned symbols of the two states in Ireland emerged (or, more accurately, were constructed) in the postpartition decades has not hitherto been undertaken. Ewan Morris, a New Zealander, has now provided such an analysis in this scholarly and timely book. Morris's research is thorough, his commentary judicious, and his writing clear and stylish.

In his foreward to the book, Keith Jeffrey (himself a distinguished contributor to the study of Irish commemorations) congratulates Morris on a book that “engrossingly explores the `branding' of the two post-partition Irish states … [telling] the story of the Irish, and Northern Irish, flags, seals, stamps and songs” (viii). The praise, in this instance, is well merited.

Following a concise opening chapter, exploring the critical literature on the concepts, definitions, and “functions” of symbols, the core chapters of Morris's study deal with the adoption and consolidation of the official state symbols in both states in Ireland in the two decades after partition. Of course, the “branding” in each jurisdiction reflected the legacy of the sharpening polarization of Irish nationalist and Irish unionist sentiment and identity affirmation in the Home Rule debates from the 1880s to the eve of the war in 1914, and the even deeper chasm that was opened between Irish republicanism and Ulster unionism by the events of the 1914–21 period. Morris is also aware of, and treats sensibly, the well-stocked cabinet of identity symbols available to both sides throughout the nineteenth century, some of which were of an even more antique vintage. But the manner in which partition became the alternative solution to the failure to reconcile Irish nationalist and Irish (especially Ulster) unionist sentiment within an agreed polity resulted in two states with mutually exclusive “totalising” versions of national identity: Irish and British. The official symbols adopted by both states reflected this resolute exclusivity of self-definition.

Indeed, in the Irish Free State, the new governing elite, having accepted Dominion Status as a “stepping stone” to the full independence that the republican separatists had proclaimed in the 1916 rebellion and later in the program of reconstructed, “popular front” Sinn Féin after 1917, was especially anxious to emphasize its deep green nationalist credentials, the better to rebut the charge that its leaders had “sold out” on the republic. Accordingly, the symbols they adopted for the Irish Free State—flag, anthem, coinage, and stamps—were as distinct from anything pan-British as they could possibly be. It was as if the state symbols, though drawn from a rich stock of Irish myths and historical materials, were chosen to constitute a calculated repudiation of the British “connection.” The unionist minority within the Irish Free State found their cherished symbols officially ignored (and even where privately indulged, not always free of controversy). But, within a generation, such was the overwhelming popular endorsement of the nationalist character of the state that its official symbols became generally accepted, as the Free State became a stable entity and its official culture came to reflect what Morris (quoting Michael Billig) describes as “banal nationalism” (8).

In Northern Ireland, of course, things were otherwise. Here the minority nationalist community did not acquiesce in the exclusively British symbols adopted by the Northern state but continued to display their own symbols, notably the tricolor flag. Controversy and communal strife, on a recurring and regularly violent cycle, was the outcome. A divided community invested its rival identity symbols with a lethal significance. But, given the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, one set constituted the official symbols sanctioned by the state, the other, the defiant symbols of subversion. The contrast between the experiences in the two postpartition Irish states is frequently explained by reference to the very different size of the minority in each case. No doubt, size did matter. But the contrasts in socioeconomic comfort and opportunity also crucially influenced the prospects for the elimination or the endurance of the sense of alienation in each case.

The contested representation of “nationality” was not the only thorny issue in the public symbolism of both states. The official culture of both states was pervasively confessional, and religious symbols (Orange street furniture, Marian shrines, and Papal flags) took their place alongside (or in place of ) official state symbols in many areas of public ritual and popular culture. Morris is principally concerned with the state symbols of the postpartition decades, but he shows an admirable awareness of the more extensive repertoire of public symbols that marked popular cultural and communal identity in both states of Ireland.

In view of the thoroughness of Morris's research and commentary on the two decades after partition, it may seem churlish to ask for more. Yet, the decision to add a chapter covering the long period spanning the years 1940–2000 inevitably carried the risk of a too summary treatment of more recent developments. Moreover, while Morris provides a good comparative commentary on the Irish experience of symbols and that of the other British dominions in the 1920–40 period, the implications for official symbols and identity representation of more recent shifts within the British state, with devolution in Scotland and Wales, remain unexplored. However, these are minor quibbles compared with the impressive achievements of this study.