The Crimean War was an important and influential event in Irish nineteenth-century history, to which a large cross-section of Irish people responded between 1854 and 1856. This they did in a variety ways and to a variety of different degrees, but when combined it represents a substantial and multifaceted response, that, much like the event, has remained under-researched and largely absent from Ireland's modern historiography and history. As with the Great War, the conflict with Russia touched every part of Irish society, and elicited responses from the same, albeit on a far smaller scale. These were often similar to those in Great Britain, other parts of the empire and even in France in certain instances. It has been the aim of this book to illustrate the degree to which the Crimean War impacted upon Irish society, through an analysis of the latter's responses in the six areas of parliamentary and nationalist politics, popular and religious reactions, the military and the economy. Within its parameters this book has endeavoured to produce as in depth and balanced a study of that response as possible, within the context of the United Kingdom and the British Empire.

At Westminster, between 1854 and 1856, Irish MPs and peers primarily expressed criticism of the two wartime governments’ conduct of the campaign, and other war-related issues. This they did frequently with little or no reference to specifically Irish concerns. Unlike during the Boer War forty years later, there was no Irish nationalist party which opposed the war, and all opposition to the war came from a small number of British MPs. All Irish members, whether Liberals, Conservatives, Old Repealers (nationalists) or non-nationalists, supported it. Most critical comments, punctuated at various stages by more positive ones, were influenced by a policy, formal in the Conservative case and informal in the Liberal, of what might be termed ‘critical patriotism’. This stemmed from the fractured and fluid nature of United Kingdom politics in the wider period 1846 to 1859. That almost constant critique of the governments throughout the war, of which most Irish members were a part, only served to damage parliament's hitherto prestigious status in Britain.