Book excerpt: This overview of Irish labour history serves both as an introduction for the general reader and as a synopsis for the specialist. Its basic concern is to outline the course of labour history, to illustrate the different phases of its chronology and to determine the forces behind its development. It also investigates some of the most persistent questions surrounding the history of labour in Ireland including why labour marginalized in disaffected 19th-century Ireland and why nationalism presented such a problem in the 20th century?