Children of Wrath: Political Violence in Northern Ireland

The argument of this cogently reasoned analysis is that the enduring conflict in Northern Ireland is shaped by the legacy of colonialism. Tracing the convoluted history of reform movements, compromises and violence that have been the pattern of English intervention in Irish affairs since Elizabethan times, MacDonald, political science professor at Williams College in Massachusetts, identifies a ""settler mentality,'' one that in many respects is paralleled in South African history. He shows that the creation of Ulster as a colony led to domination by the ascendency, in this case Protestant and English, and to a relationship based on privilege and deprivation. Today, as MacDonald notes, it is the ascendant group, which needs, yet distrusts, Britain. This investigation is an important contribution to an understanding of a cruelly intractable political problem. (November)