AND SO BEGAN THE IRISH NATION
In memoriam
F.X.M. et G.R.E
magistrium optimorum
And so began the Irish Nation
Nationality, National Consciousness and Nationalism in
Pre-modern Ireland
BRENDAN BRADSHAW S.M.
Life Fellow of Queens College Cambridge, UK
First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Bradshaw, Brendan.
And so began the Irish nation: nationality, national consciousness and nationalism in pre-modern Ireland / by Brendan Bradshaw.
pages. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4724-4256-7 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-3155-6439-5 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-3171-8915-2 (epub) 1. National characteristics, IrishHistory. 2. National characteristics, IrishHistoriography. 3. NationalismIrelandHistoriography. 4. IrelandHistoriography. I. Title.
DA925.B64 2014
941.5dc23
2014022845
ISBN 9781472442567 (hbk)
ISBN 9781315564395 (ebk-PDF)
ISBN 9781317189152 (ebk-ePUB)
Contents
Acknowledgements
The author and publisher would like to thank the following journals and publishers for their kind permission to reprint the chapters in this volume:
About the author: Interview in History Ireland, i (1993) no. i, 525.
Nationalism and historical scholarship in modern Ireland, originally published in Irish Historical Studies, xxvi (no. 104), 32951.
Revising Irish History, originally published in D. Ceallaigh (ed.), Reconsiderations of Irish History and Culture: Selected Papers from the Desmond Greaves Summer School 198993, Lirmheas, Dublin, 1994, 2741.
The Tudor Reformation and Revolution in Wales and Ireland: the origins of the British Problem, originally published in Bradshaw and John Morrill (eds), The British Problem, c. 15341707, MacMillan Press, London, 1996, 3965.
The beginnings of modern Ireland, originally published in Brain Farrell (ed.), The Irish Parliamentary Tradition, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1973, at 6887.
Native reaction to the Westward Enterprise: a case-study in Gaelic ideology, originally published in K.R. Andrews et al. (eds), The Westward Enterprise, Liverpool UP 1978 at 6580.
Geoffrey Keating: apologist for Irish Ireland, originally published in Bradshaw et al. (eds), Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, Cambridge UP 1993 at 16690.
The Elizabethans and the Irish; a muddled model, originally published in Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Summer/Autumn 1981, 23344.
The Ulster Rising of 1641, originally published in Daltn OCeallaigh (ed.), New Perspectives on Ireland, Lirmheas Dublin, 1998 at 98113.
Irish Nationalism: An Historical Perspective, originally published in Bulln, 5:1, 2000, at 522.
Cromwellian reform and the origin of the Kildare Rebellion, originally published in R.H.S. Trans., 27 (1977), 6993.
A Treatise for the reformation of Ireland 155455, originally published in The Irish Jurist, 1981.
Preface
The chapters collected here reflect an abiding interest on my part in the history of national consciousness in Ireland, especially in the course of the calamitous early modern period when the late medieval undeveloped sense of a collective Irish identity became suffused with patriotic sentiment and acquired a political edge to do with notions of national sovereignty and representative self-government. Most of the chapters have already appeared in print but many of them in journals or edited collections that are unlikely to be generally familiar to academic historians. In addition, a long introductory chapter provides an historical overview tracing the history of national consciousness in Ireland from its first beginnings as reflected in the poetry of the early Christian Church to its early modern flowering. This is provided as a way of setting the individual case studies in context. The section on historical method is introduced by a short note explaining my understanding of certain key terms. It also includes a substantially reworked piece on historical method that was read as a paper to the Desmond Greaves Summer School in 1989. A new chapter on the War of the two Kings in 168991 closes the collection.
Apart from the convenience of having the chapters assembled between the covers of a single volume the collection aims to serve a second purpose. One of the chapters which appeared in Irish Historical Studies as far back as 1989 set me in the eye of a storm on the subject of the worth of the academic tradition of Irish historical scholarship established in the early 1940s. I fear a lot of the criticism the chapter attracted had at least an implicit ad hominem dimension, alleging that I wrote from the perspective of an unreconstructed nationalist or even more hurtfully as an IRA fellow-traveller. I trust that these chapters show that my position is based on sound historical scholarship and is intellectually well-grounded.1
Finally, I wish alas far too late to express my gratitude to the dedicatees of the volume, the two senior academics that I had the good fortune to be assigned to me as research supervisors way back in the mid-1960s and early 1970s: Fr Frank Martin, O.S.A. who supervised my fledgling M.A. thesis and Sir Geoffrey Elton who supervised my Ph.D at Cambridge. Neither of them I feel sure would have wished to be identified with the position from which these chapters are written. I am all the more grateful to them therefore for allowing me the intellectual space to find my own voice as a historian. Were it not for Fr Franks infectious enthusiasm and his ambition for his students, I should never have had the temerity to apply for the research scholarship at Corpus that funded my first three years of research at Cambridge. I owe Sir Geoffrey an especial debt of gratitude. It was he, when my funding at Corpus ran out, who guided me towards a Title A Fellowship at St Johns, to a teaching fellowship at Queens later and shortly thereafter to a teaching post in the faculty of history.
However the content of these chapters may be assessed, I hope at least that the stamp of the teaching of Fr Frank and Sir Geoffrey will be recognised in the editorial apparatus that accompanies them.
