Is there a concise introduction from the republican perspective - not one of those awful romanticised, emotive ones - but something intelligent and analytical?

Tim Pat Coogan's The IRA is alright. Its got a sympathetic tone but Coogan is more nationalist than republican. Of course it deals with the IRA and not the broader issues of Irish history.

Well from the beginning to the end? There is a bumper multi volume history written yonks ago, but no-one reads that anymore. R.F. Fosters Modern Ireland 1600-1972 is probably the best survey on the market, reccomend it highly.

For Republicanism Charles Townshend wrote a great book, 'Political Violence in Ireland' which deals with the Young Irelanders up to the Troubles in the 70s. He's a British historian but I wouldn't call him biased.

There's a lot of coverage of the IRA generally in a lot of more specific books. Hopkinsons 'Green against Green' is the best book on the market dealing with the Civil War.

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'The monster is in thine eye'

That is a bit of contradiction. Most of the traditional republican history writing can be classified as romaticised and politically motivated. The Foster book is indeed a very good start. Very readable and quite comprehensive. Richard English books on Nationalism are also very well informed.

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"The thing that always annoyed me about traditional Irish historiography was the paradox of its Anglocentrism. People are now prepared, I think, to confront the possibility that many Irish problems are, in a sense, indigenous to the Irish situation." Roy Foster (1989).

Oh please don't tell us Foster & English are not politically motivated?

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COUNTRY FIRST

They are not, no. They are professional historians who write from a historical perspective using the evidence that presented itself to them. If they delivered a politically biased work with all the inaccuracies that go with that, under peer-review they would be quickly exposed and their academical positions in difficulty.

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"The thing that always annoyed me about traditional Irish historiography was the paradox of its Anglocentrism. People are now prepared, I think, to confront the possibility that many Irish problems are, in a sense, indigenous to the Irish situation." Roy Foster (1989).

I disagree about Foster. The man is contemptuous about native Irish people. His biography of Yates while brilliantly written is nevertless dripping with barely disguised hatred of us.

Of course they are politically biased works - by nature the writing of History is subjective and therefore contains within any volume or essay the seeds of byast.

I certainly didn't find Foster's work to be unbiased - that being said I did enjoy reading it.

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Alvin Jackson's Ireland 1798-1998 is extremely good. Further back, Sean Connolly has written two survey books covering from 1430 to 1800 that were published in the last year or so.

Every author brings bias of some form or another. There is no modern book covering the history of Ireland written from what you might be referring to when you say a republican position. Joe Lee's book covering 1912-1985 is probably the best one openly sympathetic to an independent state, and one of the best on the C20th from any perspective.

James Connolly: Labour in Irish History