Responsibility, risk, and recognition: Ulster's Republican women and the 1934 Military Service Pensions Act

Using the Military Service Pensions Collection (MSPC) files of more than seven hundred Cumann na mBan members from all nine counties of Ulster, this thesis conducts a quantitative and qualitative analysis of northern women’s republican activism between 1912 and 1925 and investigates how this work was (and was not) recognized after the fact. Adopting a responsibility/risk framework to evaluate activism, the thesis illuminates what Ulster’s Cumann na mBan women did during the conflict, and the risks they were exposed to as a result of that activity.

Attention is given to how the unique political and religious circumstance of early-twentieth-century Ulster shaped both how women contributed to the republican movement and how they experienced violence. The thesis concludes with an investigation of how these women fared under Ireland’s 1934 Military Service Pensions Act, highlighting the difficulties northern women had applying for and achieving awards under this legislation.