Paul Townend's The Road to Home Rule: Anti-imperialism and the Irish National Movement is a welcome contribution to the literature on both imperial history and Irish nationalism. In recent years, scholars of Ireland and empire have moved beyond the question of Ireland's imperial status to examine the island's engagement with the larger British Empire. However, there has been relatively little historical investigation of the impact of British imperial expansion on either the Irish polity or Irish culture. Similarly, scholars of Irish history have consistently pointed to local events—especially the “traumatic experiences of famine and emigration”—to explain the development of Irish nationalist movements without taking the empire into account (10). In The Road to Home Rule, Townend merges these two historiographical trends, tracing the convergence of anti-imperial sentiments with Irish nationalism during the turbulent final decades of the nineteenth century. In the same moments that jingoism began to infuse British imperial culture, Townend argues, an opposing response to imperial developments began to pervade the culture of Irish nationalism.

Of course, the Irish nationalist movement was never monolithic, and Townend does not depict it as such. Nor does he portray the movement's adoption of anti-imperialism as a foregone conclusion. Drawing from a wide range of Irish newspapers, political cartoons, parliamentary debates, and papers of notable Irish nationalists, Townend explores the varied response to imperial events within Irish public opinion and the subsequent impact on Irish political efforts. The result is a portrayal of Irish nationalism as a dynamic, cosmopolitan, and evolving political force, one that developed alongside as well as in response to changing collective attitudes toward empire. The decision of Home Rule nationalists to embrace anti-imperialism, Townend argues, was both opportunistic and strategic. The rhetoric of anti-imperialism provided the Home Rule movement a means to unify various Irish nationalist impulses and also to establish a distinct political identity within Parliament.

The Road to Home Rule is organized chronologically, moving from disputes between Charles Stewart Parnell and Isaac Butt during the late 1870s to William Ewart Gladstone's decision to introduce the first Home Rule Bill in 1886. As Townend notes in his opening chapter, anti-imperialism existed prior to the Home Rule era. Much of this earlier “rejection of the empire,” however, tended to be “open ended, unsystematic,” and focused on “the nature of the Union” (26). Furthermore, this critique existed largely within the realm of public discourse, rather than among Ireland's political elite. Parnell's early achievement, according to Townend, was his decision to appeal to public opinion, and his subsequent embrace of anti-imperialism as a political tool forged “a clear link between populist nationalism and parliamentary politics” (36). Following Parnell's advance to the leadership of the Home Rule movement, a series of events within the empire helped to solidify anti-imperialism as the dominant strand in Irish nationalism.

Townend structures much of the book around these imperial events, with chapters on conflicts in Afghanistan, southern Africa, Egypt, and the Sudan. By drawing repeated attention to these events, Townend argues, Irish nationalists distinguished themselves from the British and also established a uniquely Irish agenda—one that was “equal parts moral condemnation and political calculation” (238). For example, under the Disraeli government, the Irish nationalist press openly condemned events in Afghanistan and Zululand as “unjust” and frequently argued that these conflicts paralleled events in Ireland, past and present. Following the general election of 1880, Irish nationalists shifted their attention from Disraelian jingoism to Gladstonian liberalism. Home Rulers seized first the Boer War and then the Egyptian crisis as opportunities to highlight the “hypocrisy” of liberalism and maintain their critique of the British imperial state. By the 1884–85 crisis in the Sudan, Townend concludes, the transition was complete. Irish Home Rule MPs openly opposed Britain's imperial project, voting to condemn British involvement in the region. Irish anti-imperialism, in other words, had fused with the Home Rule movement, and the Irish party had emerged as a powerful political bloc.

As with any well-researched study, The Road to Home Rule raises tantalizing possibilities for future projects—for example, more research into responses to anti-imperial Irish nationalism throughout the empire and Britain. Townend touches upon the relationship between the Irish and other imperial subjects, concluding that the Irish interest in empire was driven more by the insight it provided into Ireland's relationship with Britain than what it revealed about “native societies” (242). Fascinating stories like that of J. J. O'Kelly and his brother Aloysius, both of whom traveled to Egypt “to offer encouragement and material to the Mahdi,” however, indicate that some colonial nationalists recognized the Irish brand of anti-imperialism as widely applicable (204). Similarly, Townend's brief glimpse at the impact of Irish affairs on Gladstone's political decisions also suggests the potentially widespread impact of Irish anti-imperialism as a political tool.

On the whole, Townend's book is a lucid and stimulating treatment of a complex story. He effectively ties the imperial to the local and demonstrates the impact of public opinion on political developments. As such, The Road to Home Rule represents a crucial contribution to our understanding of Irish nationalism as well as debates on imperial culture more broadly. This is a book that will appeal to and should be read by scholars of Ireland, Britain, nationalism, and imperialism.