The period 1900-1960 witnessed changes in the economic, industrial, political, social, technological and everyday life of Ireland of unprecedented scale and accelerated pace. From the agriculturally-based economy of the 1900s the country was embracing industrialisation by I960.1 Dundalk was the leading provincial industrial town in Ireland over that period. This thesis sets out examines the effect successive British and Irish government economic and social policies had on the population of the town. It looks at population trends, industry, work, living conditions, class structure, education, housing, family, community and interdenominational relationships and the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy on their congregation. It also examines, at urban, county and national levels, the political and military upheavals from 1916 through to World War II, when the domination of Civil War politics began to wane. Advances in technology, from horse to bicycle to motor car, broadened the scope of social interaction. Radio, cinema and later television brought outside influences into a class conscious, inward-looldng, isolated society. As a consequence of partition in 1922 Dundalk became a ‘border town’ separated but never isolated from outside/British influences. So by the 1950s cultural norms were being challenged as exposure to ‘the social forms of advanoed capitalist consumer societies [were] raising Irish expectations and creating demand for a new economic order’.2 Neither of the above phenomenon were isolated and change in one area altered the relationship of each to the next. Thus, it can,be seen that the principal aim is to comprise a ‘total history’ or ‘micro history’ of Dundalk between 1900-1960. As the thesis is primarily concerned with people, oral history methodology has been employed to integrate the recollections of those who lived through the period with conventional written sources. A secondary function of the study is an evaluation of oral evidence as a historical source.