Divergent Destinies. Conscription, US Intervention and the Transformation of Ireland (1914-1918)

This book analyses the relationship between the Irish home rule crisis, the Easter Rising of 1916 and the conscription crisis of 1918, providing a broad and comparative study of war and revolution in Ireland at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

Destenay skilfully looks at international and diplomatic perspectives, as well as social and cultural history, to demonstrate how American and British, foreign and domestic policies either thwarted or fed, directly or indirectly, the Irish Revolution. He readdresses-and at times redresses-the well­ established, but somewhat inaccurate, conclusion that Easter Week 1916 was the major factor in radicalizing nationalist Ireland. This book provides a more nuanced and gradualist account of a transfer of allegiance: how fears of conscription aroused the bitterness and mistrust of civilian populations from August 1914 onwards.

By re-situating the Irish Revolution in a global history of empire and anti-colonialism, this book contributes new evidence and new concepts. Destenay convincingly argues that the fears of conscription have been neglected by Irish historiography and this book offers a fresh appraisal of this important period of history.

Endorsements:

Emmanuel Destenay is one of the most innovative scholars currently working on 20th century Irish History. His first book, on Great War veterans during the Irish Revolution, was a skilful and important reinterpretation of events. This new book will further establish his reputation as an important historian in the field. It speaks to a wide range of issues across Irish, British and American history in a provocative yet thoughtful manner. Richard Grayson, Professor of Twentieth-Century History, Goldsmiths, University of London

Emmanuel Destenay revises our views of Irish reponses to the impact of war in 1914 in important and helpful ways. He asks us to rethink debates which were reshaped more powerfully by hindsight than by opinion at that time. Perhaps only a Frenchman, distanced from from the passions and divisions which the First World War can still arouse in Ireland, could have written this book. Hew Strachan, Wardlaw Professor of International Relations, University of St. Andrews

Reviews:

Emmanuel Destenay has rendered a singular service to Irish historiography by reminding us of the importance of the fear of conscription in Ireland during the last two years of the Great War. Whether it was the pivotal point of provoking enormous political change in Irish society in those years, as opposed to the Rising of 1916, must remain in the realm of quaestiones disputatae. But whether one agrees with the central thesis or not,  this is a thoughtful and precisely argued work, based on an impressively wide range of sources, and it repays careful reading. Oliver P. Rafferty SJ, Boston College, New Hibernia Review (26), no. 4, 2022, pp. 138-140.

In Conscription, US Intervention and the Transformation of Ireland (1914-1918), Emmanuel Destenay demonstrates conclusively that although conscription was never implemented in Ireland, the fear of conscription needs to be taken more fully into account. (…) More importanly, we will have to wait for a final verdict on Destenay’s most ambitious claim that despite the Easter Rising’s status as a national foundation myth, it was the threat of conscription, not Easter Week 1916 that « decisively redirected the course of Irish history. » Whatever the final results of the debate on that claim might be, this is a book that scholars of the critical period from 1914 to 1918 will find indispensable. David Brundage, Journal of British Studies (62), no. 3 (2023), pp. 825-826.

For a period that had already been well covered in the literature, credit is due to those scholars who have attempted to find new interpretations of events so well known. Among those scholars is Emmanuel Destenay, whose writings over the past several years have cast a revealing light on the significance of the First World War for Irish domestic politics during the revolutionary period. Jeff Kildea, First World War Studies (1), 2023. 

Emmanuel Destenay takes a fresh look at the rise of Sinn Fein in Conscription, US Intervention and the Transformation of Ireland, 1914-1918: Divergent Destinies. A French historian, the author casts doubt on the argument that the Easter Rising of 1916 and Britain’s lethal revenge against its leaders were the engine behind Sinn Fein’s rise to electoral dominance two years later. He proposes instead that fear of the extension of conscription to Ireland became a determining factor well before Parliament proposed taking that step in 1918. Thomas Archdeacon, H-Nationalism (November), 2023.

L’ouvrage d’Emmanuel Destenay contribue indéniablement, avec d’autres, à remettre en question l’historiographie traditionnelle s’agissant du rôle de l’insurrection de 1916. Les sources mobilisées apportent un éclairage très utile sur l’évolution de l’opinion publique irlandaise. Ingrid Hayes, Le Mouvement Social (2023).

L’ouvrage d’Emmanuel Destenay n’en fournit pas moins un apport important à l’historiographie de la Révolution irlandaise et constitue, à ce titre, un outil précieux et incontournable pour tout étudiant et chercheur désireux d’explorer cette période historique. Olivier Coquelin, Histoire, Economie & Société (42), no. 2 (2023), pp. 154–156.