The process of industrialisation, including its social ramifications, is central to an understanding of historical change in Modern Ireland.

In the 1940's and 1950's the long-established distinction between a broadly industrial North and an agrarian South still held true. yet by the 1980's the Irish Republic was apparently well advanced towards the status of an urban, industrial society while Northern Ireland was in the grip of a reverse process: de-industrialisation.

In a comparatively short space of time, therefore, historic patterns with their origins in the eighteenth century have been decisively recast.

The causes and course of this 'unfinished revolution' in the South and the progress and then dramatic reversal of industrial fortunes in the North form the essential subject matter of this book.