Boyce D. George O - Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy

THE MAKING OF MODERN IRISH HISTORY

This book is about the writing of modern Irish history: how it has been influenced both by the changes in professional historical methods in the last half-century, and by the involvement of history with political ideologies.

The book is arranged so that the reader is guided through the main topics in Irish history since the eighteenth century. Each chapter offers a review and an analysis of major work published on a particular event or issue, together with a discussion of the historical controversies involved. Each contributor then offers their own interpretation of the subject and an analysis of how interpretations have changed over the last thirty years. In this way the book makes a substantive contribution to key issues in modern Irish history as well as contributing to the debate on revisionism.

The editors have written a comprehensive introduction which outlines the history of the revisionist controversy and places Ireland within a historical and contemporary context. The combination of synthesis and original analysis make this book ideal for both students and historians alike.

D. George Boyce is Professor of Politics and Head of Department at the University of Wales, Swansea. His most recent publications include Ireland 18281923 (1992) and The Irish Question in British Politics (1988). Alan ODay teaches at the University of North London and holds the title of Professor at Concordia University, Montreal. He is the author of The English Face of Irish Nationalism (1994) and Parnell and the First Home Rule Episode (1986).

THE MAKING OF MODERN IRISH HISTORY

Revisionism and the revisionist controversy

Edited by
D. George Boyce and Alan ODay

First published 1996

by Routledge

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

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Reprinted 1997

Transferred to Digital Printing 2006

1996 selection and editorial matter, D. George Boyce and Alan ODay.

Individual contributors, their contributions

Typeset in Palatino by LaserScript Ltd, Mitcham, Surrey

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN 0-415-09819-X (hbk)

ISBN 0-415-12171-X (pbk)

CONTENTS

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Paul Bew is Professor of Irish Politics at the Queens University of Belfast. He is author and co-author of eleven books including Ideology and the Irish Question (Oxford, 1994) and Northern Ireland, 19211994 (Serif, 1994). He is currently working on the Ireland volume in the Oxford History of Modern Europe series, under the general editorship of Lord Bullock and Sir F.W. Deakin.

D. George Boyce is Professor in the Department of Politics, University of Wales, Swansea. He has published in the field of modern British and Irish political history. His Nationalism in Ireland is now in its third edition (Routledge, 1995) and his most recent book is Political Ideas in Ireland Since the Seventeenth Century, co-edited with R. Eccleshall and V. Geoghegan (Routledge, 1993).

S.J. Connolly is Reader in History at the University of Ulster at Coleraine. He has written Priests and People in Pre-Famine Ireland 17801845 (Dublin, 1982), Religion and Society in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Dundalk, 1985), and Religion, Law and Power: The making of Protestant Ireland (Oxford, 1992). He is currently editing the Oxford Companion to Irish History.

Mary E. Daly is Associate Professor of Modern Irish History at University College Dublin and joint editor of the journal Irish Economic and Social History. Her publications include, Dublin: The Deposed Capital, 18601914. A Social and Economic History, (Cork, 1984); The Famine in Ireland (Dublin, 1986) and Industrial Development and Irish National Identity, 192239 (Dublin, 1992).

John Hutchinson is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities at Griffith University, Brisbane. He studied History at the University of Edinburgh and took a doctorate in Sociology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic revival and the creation of the Irish nation-state (London, 1987) and Modern Nationalism (London, 1994), and has co-edited (with Anthony D. Smith) Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 1994) for the Oxford Readers series. He is presently working on the subject of nations in world historical perspective.

Alvin Jackson is Lecturer in Modern History at the Queens University of Belfast. He is the author of The Ulster Party: Irish Unionists in the House of Commons, 18841911; he has also written Sir Edward Carson, and Colonel Edward Saunderson: Land and loyalty in Victorian Ireland. He has been a Postdoctoral Fellow of the British Academy and Lecturer in Modern Irish History at University College Dublin.

David S. Johnson is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the Queens University of Belfast. He has published widely on nineteenth-and twentieth-century Irish economic history and is the author of The Interwar Economy in Ireland (Dublin, 1985).

Liam Kennedy is reader in Economic and Social History at the Queens University of Belfast, co-editor of An Economic History of Ulster, 18201939 (Manchester, 1985) and author of The Modern Industrialisation of Ireland, 19401988 (Dublin, 1989).

Alan ODay is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of North London and Professor of History at Concordia University, Montreal. His publications include The English Face of Irish Nationalism (London, 1977; reprinted 1994), Parnell and the First Home Rule Episode (Dublin, 1986) and with D. George Boyce he edited Parnell in Perspective (London, 1991).

INTRODUCTION

Revisionism and the revisionist controversy

D. George Boyce and Alan ODay

What is the popular image of historical revisionism today? A retelling of Irish history which seeks to show that British rule of Ireland was not, as we have believed a bad thing, but a mixture of necessity, good intentions and bungling; and that Irish resistance to it was not as we have believed, a good thing, but a mixture of wrong-headed idealism and unnecessary, often cruel violence. The underlying message is that our relations with Britain on the Irish question the Irish have been very much at fault. This is the popular image of historical revisionism.

Desmond Fennell

REVISING HISTORY

Revising national history is perilous, especially if cherished legends are debunked or heroes pushed off their pedestals. History is viewed as having the functions of inculcation of the young with a sense of their own national past and of recounting a public morality tale legitimising the state, nation or community. It can give self-respect to a diaspora suffering from disorientation, alienation or a sense of inferiority. One commentator notes of Britains Irish community