Transcript

Learning outcomes

• Identify the main chronological events of the 1912-1923 period in Irish history
• View historical events from multiple perspectives
• Consider history in a thematic way (fighting, politics, society etc.)
• Analyse on-screen content (videos, articles, images) for evidence of the main themes
• Interrogate digitised historical materials in other national and institutional repositories
• Apply learning in written assignments and online discussions
• Question your own understanding of history

Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction

The purpose of the introductory week was to allow learners to become familiar with the broad sequence of events unfolding between 1912 and 1923. It began to explore some of the conflicting interpretations that have arisen concerning the significance of this period.

Week 2: Fighting Lives

This week engaged with the violence and activism of the period at its most direct point by looking at those who fought and those who participated in a variety of forms. It examined what mobilised or moved people to campaign, to fight at various points across 1912-23.

Week 3: Political Lives

This was the period of major changes in the political and electoral process. We considered how political lives changed and radicalised across the period and what part politics played in ordinary people’s lives. Do historians pay too much attention to the violence, when the major changes were effected by political means?

Week 4: Economic Lives

The economic effects of these years are striking. War brought a boom to the Irish agricultural economy, while economic problems may well have explained why men continued to enlist when it was all too clear what the Great War promised. Considering economic lives across the period allowed us to consider what costs people were asked and prepared to pay for whatever their cause. It allowed us to consider who profited and who lost.

Week 5: Social Lives

This week considered some of the effects war and revolution had on Irish social life. How people experienced a variety of basic, social activities was shaped and changed by the events of these years. But lives continued to be lived in diverse ways in spite of what was happening, and this survival of many unexpected normalities featured in this week’s theme.

Week 6: Private Lives

This final theme encouraged learners to consider the individual consequences of war and revolution, which is where the costs of both are most obviously borne. It looked at personal loss; the toll fighting took; the personal prices people paid, but also the things that may have shaped their lives beyond war and revolution at this point.