I am a graduate student pursuing a Masters in History with a concentration in Public History at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. This project complements my thesis, titled “‘In His Country’s Service:’ Irish Catholic Military Participation for the First World War.” In my thesis, I focus on Irish Catholic soldiers in the British Army during World War I in order to examine the tensions between soldiers’ personal sympathies and their oath of allegiance to the British Army. I am taking a cultural approach to the topic while addressing the influence of Ireland’s colonial reality.

My goal for this project is to trace and compare the experiences of one Catholic and one Protestant Irish soldier from the First World War in order to build as clear a picture of their lives as possible with surviving records. I am loosely modeling my research on Thomas Dooley’s book Irishmen or English Soldiers: Times and World of a Southern Catholic Irish Man (1876-1916) Enlisting in the British Army During the First World War; in it, he created a case study of an Irish Catholic soldier from Waterford, James English, to explore the political, religious, and economic reasons for Irish Catholic enlistment and apparent loyalty to the British Army throughout the First World War.

Primarily, this project is intended to track my research and the process of piecing together a (metaphorical) picture of their individual lives. Additionally, I’m comparing the ease of finding records for each to see if there is any disparity between the two. Of course, because this is essentially a case study, it would be unwise to try to claim that my findings here were true of all Irish soldiers; however, the project can still point to larger trends and will be supplemented with secondary research on the topics, if applicable.

I’d like this site to become a space for sharing research, history projects, new sources, etc. This project is mostly aimed at other historians but should also be accessible to a general audience; genealogists, for example, might find it especially useful. Genealogy is one of the most common ways for the public to interact with history, after all, so my hope is that this project might be helpful for anyone trying to piece together the life an “ordinary” past individual.

Thanks for following the project! Subscribe for free to receive new posts, share research tips, and support my work.