RT Article
T1 Bosnia on the border?: Republican violence in Northern Ireland during the 1920s and 1970s
JF Terrorism and political violence
VO 29
IS 4
SP 635
OP 655
A1 Lewis, Matthew
A1 McDaid, Shaun
A2 McDaid, Shaun
LA English
YR 2017
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1871060362
AB Unionist politicians have argued that Republican political violence on the Irish border, during both the partition of Ireland and more recent Northern Ireland conflict, constituted ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Protestant/Unionist community in those areas. These views have been bolstered by an increasingly ambivalent scholarly literature that has failed to adequately question the accuracy of these claims. This article interrogates the ethnic cleansing/genocide narrative by analysing Republican violence during the 1920s and the 1970s. Drawing from a wide range of theoretical literature and archival sources, it demonstrates that Republican violence fell far short of either ethnic cleansing or genocide, (in part) as a result of the perpetrators’ self-imposed ideological constraints. It also defines a new interpretive concept for the study of violence: functional sectarianism. This concept is designed to move scholarly discussion of political and sectarian violence beyond the highly politicised and moral cul-de-sacs that have heretofore characterised the debate, and has implications for our understanding of political violence beyond Ireland.
NO Gesehen am 24.11.2023
NO Published online: 20 Jul 2015
K1 ethnic cleansing
K1 Genocide
K1 Irish Republican Army
K1 Northern Ireland
K1 Sectarianism
DO 10.1080/09546553.2015.1043429