it did in Canada, with one vitally importantdifference: Canada had an autonomous set of political institutions within theEmpire, Ireland did not. In short, the British state (in spite of Irishrepresentation in the British parliament) did not significantly penetrate thecore national identities of the Irish population in which people couldexperience an emotional connection towards political institutions. As aconsequence of this basic difference, the wartime transformation of civiclife in Ireland was markedly different from Canada and practically oppositethat of the United States. The diverse numbers of civic events to support thewar as well as a widespread involvement and participation in them was largelyabsent. At the beginning of the war, the more powerful actors within Irishcivil society, the AOH and UIL, in particular, did moderately supportIreland's mobilization. But this mobilization lacked the buttressing effectof nationalism due to the inability of the British state to engender anemotional response (even among those in the Irish party) that Irish nationalidentity was fundamentally at stake I argued that the reluctance of theBritish parliament to implement Home Rule made it appear, in fact, thatBritain was the chief obstacle to or enemy of the realization of Irishnational identity. Consequently, the Irish party and its civic auxiliarieswere in a measurable state of decline since the onset of the war Inaddition, the events of the Easter Rising coupled with the looming threat ofconscription into the British army mobilized a more radical kind of Irishnationalism articulated by Sinn Fein and its civic allies. The expectedcivic struggle that results from low nation-state fusion thus was borne outas the Sinn Fein movement inspired and directed civic energies against theinstitutionalized centers of power within civil society, virtually displacingthe AOH and UIL by 1918. In this situation, as anticipated, there was bothgreater leve...
