Dublin: The Making of a Capital City

by David Dickson

Overview

Dublin has experienced great—and often astonishing—change in its 1,400 year history. It has been the largest urban center on a deeply contested island since towns first appeared west of the Irish Sea. There have been other contested cities in the European and Mediterranean world, but almost no European capital city, David Dickson maintains, has seen sharper discontinuities and reversals in its history—and these have left their mark on Dublin and its inhabitants. Dublin occupies a unique place in Irish history and the Irish imagination. To chronicle its vast and varied history is to tell the story of Ireland.

David Dickson’s magisterial history brings Dublin vividly to life beginning with its medieval incarnation and progressing through the neoclassical eighteenth century, when for some it was the “Naples of the North,” to the Easter Rising that convulsed a war-weary city in 1916, to the bloody civil war that followed the handover of power by Britain, to the urban renewal efforts at the end of the millennium. He illuminates the fate of Dubliners through the centuries—clergymen and officials, merchants and land speculators, publishers and writers, and countless others—who have been shaped by, and who have helped to shape, their city. He reassesses 120 years of Anglo-Irish Union, during which Dublin remained a place where rival creeds and politics struggled for supremacy. A book as rich and diverse as its subject, Dublin reveals the intriguing story behind the making of a capital city.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674744448
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	11/24/2014
Pages:	736
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 2.20(d)

About the Author

David Dickson is Professor in Modern History at Trinity College Dublin.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

List of Abbreviations xvii

Prologue: Dublin Town and the First Thousand Years 1

1 The Fashioning of a Capital: 1600-1647 42

2 Court City: 1647-1690 67

3 Injured Lady: 1690-1750 105

4 'This Now Great Metropolis': 1750-1780 152

5 Patriot Town: 1780-1798 201

6 Apocalypse Deferred: 1798-1830 258

7 A Tale of Four Cities: 1830-1580 306

8 Whose Dublin? 1880-1913 379

9 Eruption: 1913-1919 425

10 A Capital Once Again: 1920-1940 461

11 The Modern Turn: 1940-1972 502

12 Millennium City: 1972-1000 536

Notes 564

List of Illustrations 651

Bibliographical Note 655

Index 670

Editorial Reviews

This history of Dublin is an insightful, deeply researched, witty volume, which anyone interested in Ireland, England, Georgian architecture, or the misadventures of nation-building will find fascinating.

Weekly Standard - Edward Short

In Dublin, Dickson has woven together the city’s social, economic, cultural, demographic and architectural histories; the story he tells will intrigue natives, enlighten newcomers and stand as a monument to this great city’s place in an ever-changing Ireland.

The Telegraph - John Gallagher

[Dickson] distils a mountain of scholarship to illuminate the whole of Dublin’s history. He is strongest on political and social change, informative too on the city’s marvellous architecture… This is the fullest overview of the many transformations of one of the world’s most enchanting cities.

The Times - Eamon Duffy

I thought I knew the history of my hometown, Dublin, and then I read David Dickson’s wise and stylish book… [An] eloquent book… Dickson’s book was teaching me things about my hometown until almost the very last page.

Los Angeles Review of Books - Robert Cremins