Barton and Roche have drawn on the expertise of leading Irish historians to examine the history and political/ideological character of Irish nationalism and unionism and the origins and implementation of Partition.

The book also draws on the expertise of historians, political analysts and economists to explore ‘North-South relations’ in post-Partition Ireland and the extent of socio-economic and political discrimination in Northern Ireland after 1920.

The Northern Ireland Question: Nationalism, Unionism and Partition offers a ‘revisionist’ challenge to Irish nationalist claims (in, for example, the Report of the New Ireland Forum published in 1984) about the nature and extent of ‘discrimination’ in Northern Ireland and to Irish nationalist claims about the economic viability of the political unification of Ireland.

The book concludes with an overview of unionist and nationalist thinking in the 1990s during the crucial period of the beginning of the ‘peace process’ and the negotiations that led to the Belfast Agreement in 1998.

Patrick Roche