This paper serves as an introduction to this second edition of the Journal of Military History and Defence Studies. It explains the origin and nature of the educational partnership that exists between the Irish Defence Forces and Maynooth University.…
Ireland’s experience of the Waterloo campaign has been consistently under-explored, despite the degree of attention paid to the campaign by historians. This paper shows that that experience was far more significant and multi-faceted than has…
The majority of the historiography concerning the Irish contribution to the British army during their campaign on the Iberian Peninsula (1808 -1814) has focused on the Irish regiments and their service with Wellington in Portugal, Spain and France.…
This paper examines the development of British naval aviation in the period 1908 to 1914 in the light of modern theories of military innovation. The case is of particular interest because it took place in peacetime in a force which had enjoyed global…
This article examines the little-known battles fought by German and Soviet forces over the Kuban bridgehead on the north-eastern coast of the Black Sea from January to October 1943. The bridgehead formed when the German Seventeenth Army withdrew into…
In 2013 the Irish Defence Forces went under significant reorganisation. Part of this organisation entailed integrating the Irish Army Reserve into the Defence Forces, as part of the ‘Single Force Concept’. Ostensibly, the Single Force Concept sought…
Over the last two decades, stabilisation missions have become a growing trend in the strategic practices of the United Nations. Such an incremental growth coincides with the hegemonic status achieved by a particular vision of peace, the liberal…
In this paper, we examine Kofi Annan’s two most consequential roles in the course of his long career at the United Nations: his role in the Rwanda genocide in 1994 as the head of UN peacekeeping and his tenure as Secretary-General. A realist analysis…
Kofi Annan, the seventh UN Secretary-General (UNSG), and the only UNSG to have come from the ranks of the Secretariat, has been described in many ways over the years by observers, supporters and critics. Nevertheless, in this article, the Ghanaian is…
Throughout his ten-year term as United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan pursued reform of the organisation in an effort to strengthen its legitimacy, effectiveness, efficiency, and fairness. This article begins with a definition of UN reform and…
