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About Us

Our Mission:

Our People



Our Mission

The Military Heritage of Ireland Trust is concerned with the study and commemoration of Irish people who served in military forces on land, sea or in the air, wherever in the world and for whatever country, group of countries or cause.

From earliest times, evidence can be found of Irish people serving under arms. This is reflected not only in the island's own history of conflict, but in the military history of almost every other part of the world. In some instances Irishmen served in explicitly Irish formations, whether as regulars or as mercenaries; in others they enlisted, fought and died individually in the armed services of states, empires, nationalist movements and private enterprises.

Britain's growing need for men in the era of colonial expansion was qualified, particularly at officer level, by the intertwined issues of religion and allegiance. This meant that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Gaelic or Catholic military tradition was maintained, in an era when service in the British forces was impossible, by enlistment in continental armies such as the French, the Austrians, the Spanish, the Russian and even the Ottoman. From the end of the eighteenth century British apprehensions about drawing from the Catholic manpower were largely outweighed by the needs of empire, and in the 19th century British forces came to be disproportionately reliant on Irish recruits.

At the same time, from the 1780 onwards, emigration resulted in a distinctive Irish contribution to the armed forces of the United States and of the emerging Central and South American nations. In the 20th century, the Irish military experience has been shaped by the Boer War, where Irish units fought on both sides, by the experience of Irishmen under British arms in the two world wars, and by the emergence after 1916 of a distinctive style of guerrilla warfare in Ireland itself which saw the eventual establishment of an independent twenty six county Irish state in 1921 and the formation of conventional Irish defence forces. Yet the tradition of enlistment in the British services remained strong within both of the major religious and political communities on both sides of the border, while the Irish defence forces have since the 1950's been extensively engaged in international peacekeeping in Europe and beyond.

Irish military history and experience consequently continues to reflect the involvement of Irish men and women in operations far beyond the shores on the island. The Military Heritage of Ireland Trust seeks to reflect and to promote the memory of the breadth and extent of that Irish service, wherever the place and whatever the flag.

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