Military History from the Street

Abstract

In Ireland and the Great War, the late Keith Jeffery argued that the 1914–18 conflict was an essential context for the Irish independence struggle, and that the Easter Rising (1916), the War of Independence (1919–21) and Civil War (1922–3) were integral parts of the same story.1 This is also the starting point of Dublin’s Great Wars, a ‘new military history’ and prosopography of British soldiers and Irish republicans who resided in Ireland’s capital city during these years. There is much to commend ‘military history from the street’, Grayson’s methodology of using ‘every source possible to draw in the military service of everyone from a given area’. Online sources have transformed the speed and ease with which researchers can search for and cross-reference information. The author’s approach is predicated largely on the vast word-searchable collections of primary-source records relating to the First World War that have become available online in recent years.2 Some marvellous material has been unearthed in British military pension and service records, diaries, newspapers, personal testimony and journals.