Conclusion

Summary

The creation of the Irish Free State, with its largely Catholic ethos, destroyed the Protestant nationalist hope for an all-Ireland, secular republic. The Conclusion opens with a discussion of how a number of prominent Protestant nationalists adapted to life in the Free State. It discusses figures, such as Douglas Hyde, Ernest Blythe, and David Lubbock Robinson, who found success in the new state, and those such as George Russell and George Irvine, who came to react against it. It ends by stressing the extent to which Protestant nationalists formed identifiable denomination-based networks, and spent vast amounts of time seeking to inculcate nationalist sentiment in their fellow Protestants. It argues for the importance of associational culture as a category of historical research. Finally, it stresses both the diversity of Irish Protestant society during the period 1900–1923, and highlights the sense of loss engendered among some Catholic nationalists with the decline of a substantial Protestant nationalist activist tradition.