Ireland and the Balkans have come to represent divided and (re)united communities. They both provide effective microcosms of national, ethnic, political, military, religious, ideological and cultural conflicts in their respective regions and, as a result, they demonstrate real and imaginary divisions. This book will specifically focus on the history, politics and literature of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, while making comparative reference to some of Europe's other disputed and divided regions. Using case-studies such as Kosovo and Serbia; Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Russia and Belarus; Greece and Macedonia, it examines 'space', 'place' and 'border' discourse, the topography of war and violence, post-war settlement and reconciliation, and the location and negotiation of national, ethnic, religious, political and cultural identities. The book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of cultural studies, history, politics, Irish studies, Slavonic studies, area studies and literary studies.

Ireland and the Balkans have come to represent divided and (re)united communities. They both provide effective microcosms of national, ethnic, political, military, religious, ideological and cultural conflicts in their respective regions and, as a result, they demonstrate real and imaginary divisions. This book will specifically focus on the history, politics and literature of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, while making comparative reference to some of Europe's other disputed and divided regions. Using case-studies such as Kosovo and Serbia; Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Russia and Belarus; Greece and Macedonia, it examines 'space', 'place' and 'border' discourse, the topography of war and violence, post-war settlement and reconciliation, and the location and negotiation of national, ethnic, religious, political and cultural identities. The book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of cultural studies, history, politics, Irish studies, Slavonic studies, area studies and literary studies.

Biographical studies of the two Dukes of Ormonde illuminate aspects of the operation of political power in seventeenth-century Ireland, and, on a wider European stage, the predicaments facing the nobility. A valuable insight into the political and material world of Ireland's leading aristocratic family. HISTORY For much of their lives the two dukes of Ormonde dominated public events in Ireland, where they served the English sovereign as viceroy five times; they were also powerful presences in the Stuart court in England, and commanded armies both in Ireland and Europe. Later, they spent long periods on the continent as travellers and exiles. Yetdespite their importance in the public life of the age, neither duke has been the subject of a full modern biography, a gap which this collection of essays aims to fill, using key episodes and phases in the Ormondes' careers to investigate the larger picture. The dukes' lives as great nobles, landowners and converts to Protestantism raise problems specific to Ireland, but they also exemplify the predicament of nobles elsewhere in Europe. A particular focusis on the worlds that they and their wives created, often innovative and always dazzling, and on the clienteles who looked to them for preferment and on which a part of the Ormondes' political weight rested. Throughout, much newlight is cast on such vexed questions as the troubled and constantly changing relationship between Ireland and England, between public and private interests, and the roles of women. Dr TOBY BARNARD teaches at the University of Oxford. Contributors: G.E. AYLMER, T.C. BARNARD, EVELINE CRUICKSHANKS, DAVID EDWARDS, JANE FENLON, RAYMOND GILLESPIE, DAVID HAYTON, PATRICK LITTLE, RENE MOULINAS, EAMONN - CIARDHA, NATHALIE GENET ROUFFIAC