It was not until 1949, when Ireland declared itself a republic, that the U.S. diplomatic post in Dublin was elevated to the status of an embassy. How significant, therefore, could an American consulate in Belfast have been during the previous 150 years, or indeed since, either to the United States or to the residents of Northern Ireland? Francis Carroll reminds us that Ulster was the ancestral homeland for nearly half a million people who already had emigrated to North America by 1796, the year in which the Belfast consulate was established, during George Washington's administration. Throughout the course of the next two centuries that post confronted a variety of challenges of lesser and greater importance, all the while sustaining an American presence in Ulster and having the noteworthy distinction of being the oldest U.S. consulate to remain in continuous service.

Carroll skillfully utilizes diplomatic correspondence to be found at the U.S. National Archives, most notably dispatches between U.S. consuls and their superiors at the U.S. Department of State. Together with a rich trove of private papers and related government documents located in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, these communications provide pithy and engaging perspectives on people and events as seen from a distinctly different part of the United Kingdom.

What students of this genre will find of genuine interest are the diverse, though occasionally fallible, analyses of major events outside of Ireland by American consuls as viewed from their station in Northern Ireland. John Young, appointed by Abraham Lincoln to the Belfast consulate just as the U.S. Civil War began in 1861, expressed disappointment with Ireland's pro-Confederate sentiment since he had expected the Irish to support the Union because of their dislike for slavery. What had alienated many in Ireland and England from the North, Young believed, were Lincoln's attempts to assure Southerners that his government posed no threat to slavery and had as its objective the preservation of the Union. To many people in the British Isles that explanation seemed inimical to the principle of self-determination.

Carroll's previous work has established him as a respected authority on Irish history of the early twentieth century, and he uses that expertise to good advantage in illustrating the various kinds of connections that emerged during that period to link the United States, Britain, and Ireland in unprecedented and unexpected ways. The legendary Titanic, built in Belfast and sunk on its maiden voyage to the United States, united Americans and Ulstermen and women in mutual grief and loss; the Irish Home Rule movement galvanized Ulster Protestants to declare their bond with Britain; and the Great War, which decimated a generation in the United Kingdom, also devastated Northern Ireland. Although Belfast consuls regularly reported on the conduct of the Anglo-Irish War from 1919 through 1921, their grasp of events in both the North and South was sometimes wide of the mark. Consul William Kent, for example, thought Unionism a lost cause, and he further predicted that de Valera's political career was over because he had rejected the Treaty.

World War II presented still new challenges for the U.S. consulate in Belfast after the U.S. Army established bases in Northern Ireland through which some three hundred thousand troops eventually passed en route to war on the Continent. Carroll reveals the role that the consulate played in the wake of such an influx, during which only the Protestant community was openly pro-American. While many Catholics privately shared that sentiment, they were publicly ambivalent, conscious of how support for the United States could compromise the Irish government's declared policy of neutrality.

Apart from two or three printing errors (e.g., “build” for built [142]), there is precious little to fault in this splendid history of the American-Ulster relationship, which the author sensibly expanded to include the 1998 Good Friday Agreement despite the 1796–1996 time frame cited in the subtitle. He rightly credits President Bill Clinton with having made the most notable contribution of any U.S. president in advancing the peace process, but Carroll hints that he might not have credited Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush sufficiently for their interest in Northern Ireland affairs. We learn that U.S. ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith was initially opposed to granting a visa to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, as was the U.S. ambassador to London, Raymond Seitz. Irish journalist Tim Pat Coogan may indeed have been the one who changed Kennedy Smith's mind on the visa issue, as Carroll reports, but his authority on this matter is solely based on Coogan's own statement to that effect.

One of the most interesting and informative parts of this narrative relates to U.S. consul general Valentino Martinez and his negotiations with Unionist paramilitary groups during the mid-1990s. Martinez, a Catholic who first won the trust of working-class Protestants and former Unionist prisoners, succeeded in obtaining a 1995 cease-fire agreement from both the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Freedom Fighters in response to a similar and earlier concession by the Irish Republican Army. Martinez also took the lead in the planning and execution of President Clinton's decidedly successful 1995 visit to Northern Ireland.

Carroll concludes his book with the observation that the United States has profited greatly from the hundreds of thousands of emigrants who have come to America from Northern Ireland, including fifteen presidents with Ulster origins extending from Andrew Jackson to George W. Bush. He reasons, however, that the United States will have reciprocated notably if the peace process that successive administrations have persistently supported is ultimately successful.

Lucidly written and impressively researched, this history of the American presence in Northern Ireland contains an excellent index, bibliography, and, commendably, source references that appear as footnotes. Francis Carroll's account of the unexpected role played by an improbably important diplomatic post could serve as a valued primer for future studies in this genre.