The conclusion evaluates the overall impact of the Great War on women’s lives in Ireland, exploring the extent to which Irish women felt their lives had been irrevocably changed by the war, and analysing how the war affected women’s lives at the time and their position in society. The chapter reflects on the diversity of Irish women’s experience of the war, noting the demographic, regional, religious and socio-economic factors affecting that experience. The divergences between north and south are particularly noted with the book arguing that women’s voluntary work for the war effort accentuated the differences between Ulster and southern Ireland and accelerated the process of psychological partition. It further addresses the question of emancipation, arguing that while in many respects the war had a politicising impact upon Irish women, it also served to reinforce the gendered idea of the separate spheres. The chapter briefly discusses the emphasis on motherhood and domesticity in the Irish Free State. It concludes however with a reminder of the importance of considering how women actually experienced the upheaval of war.

The Great War altered the means by which women conducted political activity as they adapted to wartime circumstances, while also bringing new opportunities for women’s mobilisation and politicisation. Competing loyalties of suffrage, nationalism, republicanism and unionism also affected attitudes towards Irish women’s role in the war effort and provided dissenting voices against the mechanisms of wartime mobilisation. This chapter examines the mobilisation of suffragist, nationalist and unionist women for the war effort, the participation of women in acts of dissent and the impact of the war on the achievement of female suffrage in 1918. It contrasts the opportunities for politicisation offered by the nationalist and unionist movements and argues that the differing approaches to the war effort resulted in the further polarisation of unionist Ulster and southern Ireland. The chapter argues that the war created a space for political activism, evident through the mass mobilisation of previously unorganised women in the 1918 anti-conscription campaign and the actions of working-class soldiers’ wives in Ireland in defending their interests against the growing republican movement.

This chapter examines the immediate impact of the ending of the war for Irish women in the public and private spheres before considering the longer-term effects of the war for women in Ireland.While the cessation of hostilities brought enormous relief to women anxiously awaiting the return of their loved ones, in many cases it accentuated the trauma and grief of those bereaved by the war. This chapter argues that Irish women faced particular difficulties arising from the swift demobilisation of war workers which resulted in high levels of unemployment, the more limited relief available from the British government, and the political instability in the years immediately following the war. The impact of ex-servicemen returning home to family and domestic life and women’s role within the home is examined, making use of autobiographical novels. Towards the end of the war, the press returned repeatedly to the vexed issue of women’s role in society, raising the spectre of the ‘superfluous woman’. Despite the wartime loss, the chapter’s examination of the 1926 census reports for the Free State and Northern Ireland concludes that such fears were unfounded and marital prospects were little changed by the war.

This chapter focuses on the mobilisation of women for the war effort through nursing services, auxiliary military services, and a broad range of voluntary local activity on the home front such as knitting garments, preparing parcels of comforts for soldiers, and collecting sphagnum moss for bandages and surgical supplies. Following an analysis of Irish membership of the British Red Cross, the chapter argues that the extent of voluntary engagement with the war effort in Ireland was more extensive than typically realised and that it involved women from a diverse mix of social class and religious backgrounds. The impact of religious and political tensions is explored, noting the continued support for the war effort after the 1916 rebellion. Comparison is drawn between the response of Ulster unionist communities to the war effort and that of rest of Ireland, demonstrating that the war deepened the polarisation of unionist and nationalist identities.The chapter attempts to untangle the motivations of women to participate in the war effort, and to understand the impact of their wartime service on their lives.

The introduction outlines the major themes of the book and its scope and rationale. It explains briefly the Irish context upon the outbreak of war in 1914. It sets the scene for the topic of Irish women and the Great War, outlining the involvement of Irish women in the British war effort and the significant impact of the war on women’s lived experience. It contextualises the wartime experience through a brief examination of women’s role in early twentieth-century Irish society, focusing on the social and economic context and women’s political participation in the nationalist, unionist and suffrage movement. The chapter includes a survey of the international and Irish historiography, focusing on concepts such as everyday life and gender emancipation. The analysis of the Irish historiography charts the slow emergence of First World War scholarship in Ireland and the recent transformation in attitudes towards the war in Ireland. The chapter further outlines the methodological approach of the book, with its emphasis on empirical archival research and the use of samples alongside ego documents. It concludes by outlining the structure of the book, situating each chapter within the existing historiography.

This chapter examines the impact of the war on women’s paid employment in diverse sectors including agriculture, domestic service, clerical work, munitions, the railway industry and the medical profession. Providing the first in depth all-island study of Irish women’s employment in this period, it contributes to international scholarship on the emancipatory nature of women’s war work. The chapter assesses the important role played by Irish women in the war industry, particularly through munitions work and questions the extent they were motivated by economic or patriotic factors. The urban/rural experience is contrasted, and the Irish case compared with Britain. Ireland’s economy was very different to Britain in 1914 due to the predominance of the agricultural sector in Ireland and this divergence increased over the course of the war due to the absence of conscription in Ireland. However, there was nevertheless some substitution of men in the Irish workforce and some evidence of a shift in societal attitudes towards female employment. The chapter concludes that the war gave women increased agency as workers, evident in their desire to move away from domestic service and into other sectors, their lobbying for pay increases and their significantly expanded trade union participation.

This chapter specifies the methods used in the book to studying the alliances between local and intervening counterinsurgency allies. Nine wars are examined in the book. Five wars are studied using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, including the USA in Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam, as well as India in Sri Lanka and the USSR in Afghanistan. For these five wars, thousands of primary source US, Indian, and Soviet government documents describing the day-to-day workings of these alliances were examined and used to identify 460 specific policy requests, which were then incorporated in an original dataset tracking local compliance and other relevant variables. The coding rules for each variable are detailed in this chapter. The remaining four wars, namely Vietnam in Cambodia, Egypt in Yemen, Cuba in Angola, and Syria in Lebanon, rely on secondary historical accounts or primary source observations from outside actors such as US intelligence agencies.

Detailing the US intervention in Vietnam this chapter provides a list of policy requests from the USA to Vietnamese partners and the rate of Vietnamese compliance from 1964 to 1973. Providing a summary of the US-Vietnam counterinsurgency partnership, this chapter discusses several distinctive components of the Vietnamese-US alliance, including detailing how the shock of the 1968 Tet Offensive led to a sharp increase in local compliance, suggesting that significant enemy activity can motivate clients to cooperate with the demands of intervening patrons. Overall, similar to other interventions, local compliance was affected by the convergence or divergence of US and Vietnamese interests, interacting with US dependency on Saigon to implement particular reforms. There are 105 US policy requests identified and detailed, including pacification, reconciliation and development programs.

Detailing the US intervention in Afghanistan this chapter provides a list of policy requests from the USA to Afghan partners and the rate of Afghan compliance from 2001 to 2011. Providing a summary of the US-Afghan counterinsurgency partnership from the start of the US intervention to 2011, this chapter discusses several distinctive components of the Afghan-US alliance, namely the tension between US and Afghan officials, and an unusual pattern of free riding in Afghanistan not observed in other interventions examined in the book. Afghan compliance was affected by the convergence or divergence of US and Afghan interests, interacting with US dependency on Kabul to implement particular reforms. There are 148 US policy requests identified and detailed including working against corruption, expanding governance capacity, addressing counternarcotics, and aiding in development programs.

Large-scale military interventions are usually seen as foreign policy options limited to large powers. Yet, Vietnam, Egypt, Syria, and Cuba engaged in costly COIN interventions. Emerging from their own colonial histories, these smaller interveners offer a different perspective to interventions, drawing from their experiences of occupation, revolution, and insurgency. These wars reveal how alliance dynamics shift when the asymmetries in capabilities between allies are less significant than in the interventions examined previously. Smaller interveners rely less on technology and are more likely to maintain modest agendas for development. Vietnam in Cambodia and Egypt in Yemen embedded themselves into the local regimes they were aiding, thus ignoring the norm of promoting the legal sovereignty of local regimes. Syria in Lebanon aided multiple groups to assert its interests, as opposed to commandeering the government in Beirut, in part due to Israel’s efforts to constrain Damascus. Similarly, Cuban forces did not occupy the Angolan state, partly due to the USSR's influence, and partly as Castro’s anti-imperialist stance made the Cubans wary to appear as an occupying force.

Detailing the US intervention in Iraq, this chapter provides a list of policy requests from the USA to Iraqi partners and the rate of Iraqi compliance with US requests from 2004 to 2010. Providing a summary of the US-Iraqi counterinsurgency partnership (2003–11), this chapter discusses several distinctive components of the Iraqi-US alliance, namely the imperfect and awkward transition to Iraqi sovereignty and Washington negotiating with not one, but two local governments in Iraq, namely the Shi’a-dominated government in Baghdad, and the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil. Iraqi compliance was affected by the convergence or divergence of US and Iraqi interests, interacting with US dependency on Iraq to implement particular reforms. There are 106 US policy requests identified and detailed including working against sectarianism and corruption.