From Giuseppe Mazzini in the 1830s to Woodrow Wilson in the 1910s, democratic nationalists argued that the evils of war and oppression would be removed by liberating nations from imperial oppression. A democratic state, neutral in matters of religion, would facilitate the emergence of a political and national environment where diversity would not attract persecution. After 1919 this model was exported and appropriated by new states, including Turkey, Czechoslovakia and the Irish Free State, as well as by nationalist groups in colonial settings, such as the Indian National Congress. In practice, however, in tracing the nation’s boundaries, the new states fell back on ethnic lines. The result was never a peaceful process. As Sabine Rutar, Robert Gerwarth and others have shown, from the Baltic to the Balkans the war ‘failed to end’ in November 1918: once the various imperial armies were disbanded, militias started to implement ‘popular sovereignty’ by direct action. Ireland provides a further illustration of this pan-European phenomenon. Robert Lynch argues, ‘[f]ar from being a necessary evil reluctantly embraced by all sides to drive on the more enlightened goals of freedom and democracy, partition was … brought about through violence and the threat of force’ (p. 11). In fact, even before partition started, the threat of violence was there. Both the 1912 Ulster Solemn League and Covenant and the 1916 Proclamation of the Republic (documents which ostensibly enshrined ‘civic’ nationalism) were accompanied and enforced by the mobilisation of private armies. In this respect, Lynch’s argument that the 1925 outcome would have been ‘unthinkable only a decade before’ (p. 12) is rather disingenuous. Ireland was ready for both partition and civil war in 1914.