Forgotten Histories: the Irish in the First World War

A Lecture given by Niamh Gallagher - Associate Professor in Modern British and Irish History at the University of Cambridge -
The First World War was Ireland’s single greatest military contribution and it significantly impacted various Irish home fronts; in Ireland and overseas. Yet the history of the Irish in that conflict has been
deeply contested for more than 100 years. Even though we now know much more about Irish experiences of the First World War, an uneasy relationship remains in historical memory when the
war is considered alongside the march to independence. This talk explores new aspects of the First World War that suggest that support for the Allies and support for new horizons of independence
were not in fact mutually exclusive, at least at the time. Drawing on her prize-winning book, Gallagher will look at some of the insights that emerged in the course of her research that make us think anew
about our historical conceptions of the past, as well as the murky relationship between history and memory.

Biography:
Niamh Gallagher is Associate Professor in Modern British and Irish History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine’s College. She is the author of Ireland and the Great War: A
Social and Political History (Bloomsbury, 2019) which won the Royal Historical Society’s WhitfieldPrize in 2020 awarded to the best book in British or Irish history published by a first-time author. She is
also co-editor of The Political Thought of the Irish Revol