Northern Ireland: The War that came in from the Cold

Abstract

If students of international relations can readily be accused of failing to take the Northern Ireland conflict seriously enough, then analysts of the conflict in the North can be criticised with equal force for ignoring the complex ways in which the outside world has impacted upon the place since the struggle for civil rights rapidly and tragically evolved into a military campaign in the late 1960s. This is not only historically indefensible insofar as the tangled web of relations between Britain and Ireland make no sense unless they are situated within a wider international context. It is also analytically parochial. Indeed, in my view, far too many historians of the Troubles have discussed them as if they stood in some splendid Miltonian isolation from events elsewhere. My approach is quite different, and while in no way seeking to deny either the local causes or the national character of the conflict, insists that the conflict in its various phases can only be fully explained if we 'bring in the international'. Northern Ireland does not stand and has never stood outside of world