Untitled [Daniel Williamson on Britain, Ireland, and The
Ian S. Wood. Britain, Ireland, and the Second World War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. ix + 238 pp. $95.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-7486-2327-3. Reviewed by Daniel C. Williamson Published on H-Albion (August, 2011) Commissioned by Thomas Hajkowski (Misericordia University) Ian S. Wood’s Britain, Ireland, and the Second Irish Free State was now known, cut many of the World War provides a valuable survey of the im‐ symbolic ties that had bound it to the United King‐ pact that the war had on Ireland and how it af‐ dom. Even before war broke out, de Valera was fected relations among the governments of Eire, preparing for Irish neutrality by insisting on the Northern Ireland, and Great Britain. The author return of the Treaty Ports to Eire, a policy that covers a number of major topics including the Wood characterizes as “an affirmation of full neutrality of Eire, the impact that the war had on sovereignty” (p. 26). Northern Ireland, the response of the IRA to the Historians have long understood that Irish conflict, and Britain’s relations with the Irish gov‐ neutrality, or more accurately, nonbelligerence, ernments on both sides of the border. tilted strongly in favor of the Allies. Dublin coop‐ Eamon de Valera’s determination to keep Eire erated with Britain on intelligence matters, sup‐ officially neutral is given a central place in Wood’s plied the Allies with valuable weather informa‐ study. “With our history, with our experience of tion, and made secret military plans to coordinate the last war and with part of our country still un‐ with British forces in case of a German invasion justly severed from us, we felt that no other deci‐ of Ireland.
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