Girvin sees the original application by the Republic of Ireland to join the EU in 1961 as the end of the nationalist adventure that had begun 160 years earlier. Everything since then has become a footnote to that decision. But in its halcyon years, Irish nationalism was a model for the rest of the world. Why then were the practical achievement of early nationalist self-governments so paltry, collapsing in the economic and social disaster of the 1950s.