From the signing of the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant in 1912 - which marked a decisive step in the crisis of the Anglo-Irish Union - to the onset of the Northern Irish Troubles in 1968, Ireland's partition was ultimately about one question: religious minorities and their oppression, real or imagined, anticipated or remembered. Ireland was of course just one illustration of a wider problem: in an age when religion was political and affected national allegiance, 'the minority question' was central to domestic and international politics throughout Europe and the Middle East. The spreading of formal democratic regimes after 1919 did not attenuate, but, on the contrary, exacerbated the problem. The Minority Mind focuses on the Twenty-Six Counties that became the Irish Free State in 1922 (Éire from 1937, and the Republic of Ireland from 1949). This was quintessentially Catholic Ireland, within which two groups stood out for their historical association with imperial power. Far from being provincial and introverted, both Irish Jews and southern Irish Protestants were intensely aware of the wider context of the times and the global significance of their experience. Rooted in the European diaspora and looking at Eretz Yisrael in mandatory Palestine, Irish Jews were able to pull well above their weight. Likewise, the southern Protestant community played a major role in the British Empire, while their bankers, intellectuals, industrialists, opinion-makers and soldiers contrasted the rise of a mono-cultural society in Ireland. Set against the backdrop of the crisis of the British Empire, this book offers a holistic account of the minority experience from their point of view and explores the reciprocal relationship between minority groups and majority culture in a democratic - but as yet not liberal constitutional and social context. This study is a cultural, political and social history of an 'alternative' Ireland.

History, Cultural Studies, Jewish Studies