• Offered for Year: 2025/26

• Module Leader(s): Dr Fergus Campbell

• Owning School: History, Classics and Archaeology
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

• Capacity limit: 48 student places

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

This module will consider the origins and dynamics of the Irish revolution (1916-1923) in the broader context of political, social, economic and cultural change between 1879 and 1916.

In particular, the module will examine popular political activity and explore the ideas, activities and experiences of ordinary men and women in Ireland during this turbulent period. The revolutionary era witnessed an extraordinary outpouring of radical ideas, and a wide range of nationalist, socialist and feminist texts will be analysed alongside more conventional political documents.

Finally, the module will consider the applicability of the broader theories of revolution to the Irish case.

At a more general level, the module will provide students with an opportunity to investigate selected problems in some depth, including the appraisal of selected source material and the critical examination of current historiography.

Outline Of Syllabus

An in-depth study of the Irish Revolution of 1916-1923 in the wider of political, social, cultural and economic developments in Ireland since the beginning of the Land War (1879-82).

We will explore the conflicts between Home Rulers and Unionists that led to the beginning of the Irish Revolution, and we will look in detail at different phases of the revolution including the impact of the first world war on Ireland, the easter rising, the war of independence and the irish civil war.

We will also explore the way radical groups contributed to the revolutionary process, especially radical women's movements and working class activists and agrarian agitators.

Finally we will explore what the revolution achieved and didn't achieve, and what the legacies of the revolution are.

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Seminars encourage independent study and promote improvements in oral communication, problem-solving skills and adaptibility.

LECTURES will enable students to gain a wider sense of historical argument and debate and how such debates operate, which also allows them to develop comparisons between different historiographical debates.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Formative Assessments

Formative Assessment is an assessment which develops your skills in being assessed, allows for you to receive feedback, and prepares you for being assessed. However, it does not count to your final mark.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Essays: these will engage with primary sources and prepare students for longer and more in-depth research practices in History in their dissertations including: developing research questions and methodologies; sourcing data and writing / constructing an argument. Essay one will be based on the students' own research into a range of documents that I will introduce them too and I will provide a bespoke question for each student. Essay two will engage more widely with the historiography and wider debates about the Irish Revolution while also incorporating primary source material.

A formative exercise - a discussion of the students' own research - will be set for this module. This will be un-assessed, but will be discussed in the seminars and will feed into the assessed research essay.

Reading Lists

• HIS3206's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• HIS3206's Timetable