"The Only Thing British That Everybody Likes": Military-Civilian Relations in Late Victorian Ulster

Abstract

T   , Ireland was home to a large proportion of the British army. Although figures fluctuated considerably over time, up to , soldiers, or around one-seventh of the total strength of the force, were based in Ireland at any one time.1 Academic study of this sizable section of the Irish population has been limited, however.2 For most historians “the army” has simply supplied bit players to fill in the background to the rich tapestry of agrarian protest, political agitation, and sectarian conflict seen to characterize late Victorian Ireland.3 The few specific studies of the military in this period have tended to examine the army primarily in a political context. Virginia Crossman has argued that toward the end of the nineteenth century the army in Ireland was “sucked into the political morass” and became a “combatant as opposed to [a] mere auxiliary” in the conflicts between the majority nationalist