Gone, alas, are those happy days when – in the Renaissance or perhaps nineteenth-century Germany – a polymath scholar could confidently and single-handedly write works of history spanning not merely a few measly centuries but periods of a thousand years and more. It is not simply that we now ‘know’ so much more and that the siren calls of complexity have drowned out the great single melodies of yesteryear but that we have also – and this is perhaps a more important matter – simply lost our nerve so that, sheltering anxiously behind the protective walls of detailed archival and other research, we cower anxiously within our own manageable patches of the past lest some bossy critic lambast us for a lack of expertise or, in the killer phrase of today, a lack of ‘scholarship’. Of course there has been a considerable gain in accuracy, in technical expertise, in getting the small things right, but at the expense of grand invigorating sweeps through great swathes of the past capable of making revealing points which only the longue durée can reveal. If a rare tolerably modern survivor of what now seems a lost and ancient kind of skill has enjoyed a brief moment of glory – one thinks inevitably of Fernand Braudel – their time in the sun has proved short, their writings hacked into dust by scholars who thought that anyone who claimed to study more than a decade at a time must inevitably be guilty of a species of scholarly fraud.
What has become the nearest thing in modern historical scholarship to the grand old single-author surveys of yesterday is the composite enterprise, a series of volumes either by particular individuals or consisting of essays by numerous scholars, the series as a whole dealing with either a very long period or a very large geographical area. These fall into two main types: firstly there are large-scale works presenting biographies of various lengths and dealing with either men and women of all periods and nations or more specifically with biographies relating to single countries, professions, or time spans, and secondly we have two sub-categories, either volumes by single authors joined together in an overall series of some kind or sets of volumes, each volume consisting of shorter essays by different specialists addressing various aspects of a greater national or subject-related theme.
As with life and its exigencies it is, however, by no means easy to discover why some of these often mighty undertakings have, not only been ‘successful’ in a scholarly sense but have, no less importantly, been ‘successful’ as to matters such as punctuality and organisation more generally. What do not seem to be the crucial or decisive elements are funding and resources as a whole. Both the original Dictionary of National Biography which began publication in 1885 and its successor, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography all of whose sixty volumes appeared together in 2004, were backed by tolerably substantial teams. But this has also been the case with the serially published Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (which took no less than thirty-five years to reach the letter ‘F’) and with equivalent enterprises in Germany and elsewhere not notable for their overall speed of delivery. By contrast the highly successful Dictionary of Irish Biography published in nine initial volumes in 2009 and backed by what in the Irish context must be accounted reasonable – though by no means lavish – funding constitutes, like the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a palpable triumph both as to contents and efficiency. Nor does this kind of success necessarily involve heavy-handed historical pomposity. Indeed, both the Dictionary of Irish Biography and its English equivalents have proved themselves quite capable of nimbleness and lightness of touch as typified by the wonderful entry by J. A. Hamilton, a circuit judge, in the original D.N.B. (by no means a po-faced product of Victorian sensibilities) on King George IV: ‘That he was a dissolute and drunken fop, a spendthrift and a gamester, “a bad son, a bad husband, a bad father, a bad subject, a bad monarch, and a bad friend”, that his word was worthless and his courage doubtful, are facts which cannot be denied’ – phrases not only amusing, but accurate as well.Footnote 1 And although one might imagine that any series consisting of single-authored works should prove to be fairly reliable in the matter of completion and delivery, this too has by no means always been the case, as the tardy appearance of volumes in both the original and the new Oxford history of England all too forcefully demonstrates.Footnote 2
Turning to Ireland more specifically, the chief precursor, if that is quite the right word, to the enterprise at present under review is A new history of Ireland which began publication in 1976 and did not produce its final volume until 2005, and this despite having a full-time team of administrators and the like overseeing its affairs and with funding provided by, among others, a wealthy American donor. It goes without saying that it was undoubtedly a larger undertaking than the four-volume work under review, but it was also a prime example of how a hankering after perfection can defeat itself and can sometimes also endanger overall balance and standards generally. While in no way denying the high quality of many of the contributions to A new history of Ireland, the experiences of that enterprise can hardly be said to have encouraged those embarking on a more modest, but not dissimilar, undertaking. Indeed, A new history had, before its completion, almost begun to consume its own children, as more diligent contributors began to die before their essays appeared and other parties had to be imported to make sure that these had not already begun to seem ‘out of date’. And still other contributors, worried that their pieces would lie unread in what they politely referred to as ‘that remarkable scholarly enterprise’ with ‘a limited circulation outside academic circles and university libraries’, proceeded to publish their essays in separate books of their own, designed and priced to reach the kind of audience they sought.Footnote 3
By contrast, the new Cambridge history of Ireland has successfully sailed through the perilous academic seas in which previous enterprises found it difficult to find a following wind. And, looking at such undertakings as a whole, one can only conclude that the crucial factor in achieving such success is ‘leadership’, though an efficient body of contributors must also play a role for, as almost anyone involved at any level with academia as a whole can be only too well aware, a few stubborn recalcitrants can achieve wonders in wrecking enterprises otherwise seemingly loaded with great initial advantages. And in this new Cambridge enterprise there are over a hundred contributors, four of whom edited a volume each, with one of these four, Thomas Bartlett, acting as overall supremo. However, while many cooks might be accounted ‘too many’, this has proved to be the appropriate number here, the right number given effective but sympathetic overall editorial control. Nor, should it be said, is such effective control either easy to find or easy to exercise depending as it does upon just the right mixture of interest, sympathy, and firmness – not least the last of these. In the end, however, this is, above all, a collective achievement and all those involved deserve the highest praise.
I
Of course, no single reviewer can nowadays pretend to competence in all of the areas and periods (amounting to almost 1500 years) dealt with by these volumes. But while no one would assume that ignorance is bliss, the present reviewer (whose expertise, such as it is, lies in the years after 1680, and more especially in the nineteenth century) found it a strangely liberating experience to read those parts of the Cambridge history of Ireland about which he knew least – a very large proportion indeed: the whole of the first volume and parts of the second. This does not of course make his views and opinions about the essays dealing with earlier periods either particularly knowledgeable or reliable. But it does mean that these early essays gave forth to him at least both the freshness of something relatively new and the impressive achievement of complicated learning effectively absorbed and deployed. Indeed, the technical skills required of those dealing with early Ireland evince admiration for the fact that those concerned, having acquired such expertise, still possess enough commitment and drive to deploy it to considerable interpretative effect. And although it is impossible to discuss every single essay in these four volumes, what is striking about those dealing with the medieval period is the extent to which a comparative paucity of evidence has created opportunities for presenting historical interpretations of a notably convincing kind. In the first place, nothing can be wasted, with the result that recalcitrant sources – recalcitrant particularly in linguistic and other technical respects – have to be milked for all they are worth, with the result that information is often successfully extracted from material that more louche modernists would probably discard without a thought. In the second place it has meant that because Irish medievalists (like medievalists in general) have tended to see the past as a wide and inclusive phenomenon, their findings have often been based upon a fruitful interaction between different areas of interest and technical insights of various kinds. On the basis of the essays printed here, there would, for example, seem to be far less compartmentalisation among historians of medieval Ireland than is the case with colleagues dealing with more modern periods. Thus the pieces by Edel Bhreathnach on ‘Communities and their landscapes’, John Carey on ‘Learning, imagination and belief’, and Jane Hawkes on ‘Art and society’ move far beyond what an innocent and poorly-informed modernist like myself would have expected into realms of interpretation where past writings, artefacts, and actions are integrated into a revealing whole. To some extent this is of course the inevitable result of the fact that for these earlier periods many of our sources consist – to a much greater extent than is the case later – precisely of those art objects and formulaic writings of various kinds the meanings of which can be unlocked only by the deployment of complicated and heavy-duty skills of various kinds. But it is more than this. If necessity has here been the mother of invention, it has also very fruitfully moulded the minds of historians into particularly receptive directions, receptive that is to inputs from studying a wide variety (if a relatively small number) of available sources. Also striking is the manner in which both those who have left records, and those who have studied them, can show us how very international – at least in certain respects and among a restricted number of individuals – some sections of early Irish society were. As Bhreathnach so forcefully puts it, Ireland, in the five or six centuries before the year 1000,
although an island undoubtedly far from the great centres of power – Rome, Constantinople, Aachen – and immersed in its own vibrant culture, was nevertheless not an isolated place. Rome and Aachen and other centres ... attracted many Irishmen to their courts and these scholars in turn contributed to the intellectual life of these places. No doubt few of the inhabitants of Ireland were aware of Columbanus’ correspondence with the Pope or Johannes Scottus Eriugena’s philosophical tracts being expounded in the Carolingian court school, but all shared in the high reputation of Ireland engendered on the Continent by such men (i, 46).
Indeed, all of the contributions to this first volume of the Cambridge history, sometimes overtly, some implicitly, highlight how strikingly international the worlds of Irish learning and (to an extent) Irish politics were in the middle ages, much more so, in fact, than in the centuries that followed. While, therefore, the Reformation may have generated continuing connections between Catholic families in Ireland and relatives who had settled in continental Europe, Ireland’s official political and intellectual culture began, in certain respects at least, to adopt a more insular and less European stance than had once been the case. It is, for example, notable that Eriugena’s greatest successor among Irish philosophers, George Berkeley, though a thinker of the first importance, was far more a product of what might loosely be called the Anglosphere than the philosophical traditions of Europe which his ninth-century predecessor espoused. Indeed, despite the international reputations of Irish Protestant scholars like James Ussher in the seventeenth century, there can be little doubt that, at least as regards the world of learning, the Reformation was, in the case of Ireland, a confining rather than an expansionary phenomenon. And although the broad outlines of the political and cultural narratives with regard to medieval Ireland still largely depend upon analyses of the shifting power relationships and boundaries between areas of predominantly Anglo-Norman control and those in which traditional Gaelic structures remained dominant, the contours of our understanding of these relationships has, as the Cambridge authors ably demonstrate, become more refined as a result of continuing and revealing research.
Part I of the first volume – devoted to the broad cultural themes of ‘Christianity, invasion and conquest, 600–1200’ – concludes with an exciting chapter by Colin Veach on ‘Conquest and conquerors’, in which he emphasises the impact of what he calls ‘the inflexible philosophy of government introduced by King John’ who ‘created an incipient colony expressly tied to English law and custom. There was to be no legal accommodation with the Irish, no hybrid marcher law. The English king was to be the fount of all authority, and those in Ireland were either under his protection or outside the law. Ireland came to be ruled by an intrusive royal government with a bureaucrat’s black and white view of the world.’ All this in a land ‘which demanded local lordship exercised with subtlety and adaptability’. Indeed, Veach’s conclusion that, as a result, the contradictions at the heart of the conquest ‘would drive Irish history for years to come’ might stand as a central text both for the centuries that followed and for his successor contributors to the volumes under review (i, 181).
And certainly this general theme does form a kind of rolling bass to both Part II (‘English lordship in Ireland: 1200–1550’) and Part III (‘Religion, economy and culture: 1000–1550’), with consistently interesting essays by the relevant contributors: notably ‘Angevin Ireland’ by Nicholas Vincent, Brendan Smith’s examination of the years 1320 to 1450, the analysis of ecclesiastical affairs by Colmán Ó Clabaigh, and Katharine Simms on ‘Gaelic culture and society’. The volume concludes with an incisive general discussion by Robin Frame on ‘Contexts, divisions and unities: perspectives from the later middle ages’, which pulls together many of the topics and themes underlying the central arguments of his fellow contributors.
While volume one concludes at a roughly ‘traditional’ end point about the middle of the sixteenth century – A new history framed its second volume with the more precise and customary dates of 1169 and 1534 – the Cambridge history then embarks on a rather eccentric attempt to break between volumes II and III, and III and IV, at dates (admittedly the rather rough dates of 1730 and 1880) that owe little to past verities and depend upon the idea that the primacy of political history must be dethroned in favour of something more modish and up-to-date. Whether this works or adds much to our perception of the Irish past or, as one of the editors, James Kelly, puts it, offers ‘a more complete and integrated reading’ I leave others to judge, though a kind of ‘let-out’ clause about ‘displacing the binary reading explicit in how’ a period ‘was conceived of by those who lived it, and presented by those who were’ (iii, 18) its formative and ideological interpreters seems to offer something to please all chronological tastes. Another of the editors, Jane Ohlmeyer, explains, rather mysteriously, that neither the opening nor the closing dates used are ‘significant as the beginning or the end of anything’ (ii, 5). In which case the obvious response is: why then give them at all, why not just let the whole analysis flow along according to criteria in which mundane things such as dates have ceased to have much meaning and become, at best, no more than second-order phenomena of inherently vague and indeterminate significance. One suspects, rather cynically perhaps, that, not only is one observing some rather acute cases of intellectual discomfort assuaged by the having and eating of cakes all in one gulp, but that, with ‘only’ four volumes at their disposal, the editors found it difficult to mould their essays into ‘old-style’ period volumes and so, making virtue out of necessity, erected a shiny bright philosophical scaffolding with which to construct and present the enterprise as a whole. As it is the volumes do get longer as the centuries roll by, a reflection no doubt of the state of scholarship and of the authors available. Volume one devotes 683 pages to a period of 950 years or 0.72 pages per year; volume two devotes 806 pages to 180 years or 4.5 pages a year; volume three devotes 875 pages to 150 years or 5.8 pages per year; while volume four wins the numerical jackpot with 1006 pages to about 137 years or 7.3 pages per year. The perhaps rather unworthy thought comes to mind that break years of say 1800 or 1921, besides seeming rather unfashionable, would have caused even greater differential inflation and had, therefore, to be rejected at least as much on the practical grounds of production and presentation as for any other reason. But, then again, perhaps one should not harbour thoughts of so unduly critical and cynical a nature.
The second volume bears the dates 1550–1730 and deals with the period when the Reformation begins to furnish additional complexities to the ‘Irish experience’ beyond even those that had characterised the years that had gone before. Not only, however, did political, social, and cultural relationships within Ireland acquire a sharper edge, but the manner in which Ireland fitted into a wider set of international contexts became more contested than ever before. Above all, the Reformation produced in Ireland a highly unusual state of things which has in effect shaped Irish political and cultural life ever since. And that state of things was the long political dominance of a group (Episcopalian Protestants) that formed a small minority of the population as a whole. This was a situation highly unusual by continental or, indeed, international standards, for, while oppression of a minority by a majority was common enough, the reverse (made possible by Ireland’s constitutionally unusual position) was certainly not. It also meant that it was the relationships between three religious communities – adherents of the established Church of Ireland, various kinds of (often theologically warring) Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics who still constituted about 75 to 80 per cent of the people as a whole – that provided the overarching background and context to both political power play and the generation of cultural and social identities of various kinds.
Into this historically perilous ocean Jane Ohlmeyer, the editor of volume two, steers her flotilla of twenty-eight scholars to considerable effect. While the first volume was divided into three main sections here there are five – ‘Politics’; ‘Religion and war’; ‘Society’; ‘Culture’; and ‘Economy and environment’ – an arrangement that works well. Although the first three of these may be said to deal with territory already tolerably known, they do so to considerable effect, not only by containing sensible and intelligent essays but by being up to date with the latest scholarship. Again, it is impossible to mention, let alone analyse, each essay and no discourtesy is intended or implied if some are noted and others are not. Striking for sheer ebullience of argument and analysis is Ciaran Brady on ‘Politics, policy and power, 1550–1603’, while Ted McCormick makes sense of the complexities of ‘Restoration politics, 1660–1691’ and Ivar McGrath of the forty-odd years that follow. The conjunction of religion and war in the title of Part II is the inevitable outcome of contemporary Ireland’s contested state with Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, Colm Lennon, and Robert Armstrong examining and (to great effect) elucidating the often violent political and social interplay which eventually led to what Armstrong denominates the establishment of ‘a confessional Ireland’ in the years between 1641 and 1691. Part III (‘Society’), though perhaps the most variegated, contains exciting and revealing essays of various kinds, some general in import (such as that by Clodagh Tait) and others more specific, on the family by Mary O’Dowd, domestic life by Susan Flavin, and art and architecture (which might well have been placed in Part IV) by Jane Fenlon, with a final lively piece on ‘Ireland in the Atlantic world’ by William O’Reilly.
The final two parts contain some of the most original pieces, largely because of the approach adopted by the writers, but also because the matters discussed have tended to feature less prominently in historical discussions of the period. It is very welcome that two essays are devoted to language, print and literature in Irish – by Marc Caball on 1550–1630 and by Bernadette Cunningham on 1630–1730 – while Deana Rankin deals with the eventual explosion of publications in English throughout the century after 1630. Especially interesting is the essay by Brendan Kane on a topic only tangentially discussed in the past (and then more in relation to a later period) namely ‘A world of honour: aristocratic mentalité’ which penetrates certain parts of the fabric of early modern Ireland in new and revealing ways, as does Ian Campbell’s piece on political thought and intellectual history, even if he does at times seem to interpret his brief in rather restricted terms.
The final part ‘Economy and environment’ looks generally at economic life as a whole (Raymond Gillespie) and more specifically at plantations (Annaleigh Margey) and the Down Survey and the Cromwellian land settlement (Micheál Ó Siochrú and David Brown). It also contains one of the real gems of the volume: an environmental history of Ireland, 1550–1730, by Francis Ludlow and Arlene Crampsie. This last piece attacks, as far as the reviewer is aware, a field much less travelled in the Irish context than those with which the other essayists are concerned and opens up new vistas which historians would do well to take into their future considerations. ‘In sum’, write the two essayists, ‘natural and written archives confirm a notable environmental context for the 1641 rebellion, in which volcanically induced climatic shocks in an era of low solar activity can be plausibly suggested as a trigger for violence in the context of the great societal transformations in the preceding decades.’ (ii, 636). Sensibly the essayists eschew any kind of precise environmental determinism, but their suggestion that ‘the chance occurrence of very severe weather’ at a time of profound social change and tension ‘played a part in the timing and scale of events’ is surely something deserving very serious attention indeed. Perhaps, therefore, it is time that historians of Ireland add another string to their bows by, as the medieval economic historian Bruce Campbell has suggested, beginning to recognise nature as a protagonist in human history.Footnote 4
The volume concludes with a thoughtful essay by Nicholas Canny about the ways in which the history of early modern Ireland has been understood by subsequent generations and how changing interpretations have reflected not only, to use Ranke’s well-worn phrase, ‘what actually happened’ but the preoccupations of the interpreters and the circumstances in which they came to the conclusions they did. He also reminds us that the purpose of historical research ‘is to get closer to the truth rather than to confirm people in their prejudices’. And while we all say ‘amen’ to that, we must also surely keep at the back of our minds that other truth which always whispers into our ears: the ‘fact’ that, historically speaking, one generation’s ‘truth’ can often turn to ashes when perceived through the later, and perhaps more refined, lenses of generations as yet unborn.
II
With the increase in the number of contributors in volumes three and four, and the consequent increase in length, editorial control becomes at once more difficult and more important. Both James Kelly and Thomas Bartlett rise triumphantly to the challenge of identifying appropriate scholars, agreeing the titles of their essays, encouraging them while the work was in progress, and (by no means least) making sure that they delivered more or less on time. The result has been a considerable achievement for all concerned and a demonstration that tasks which have often proved difficult – indeed sometimes almost impossible – can, with efficiency and good will, be brought to a successful and indeed triumphant communal conclusion.
Volume three deals with the period roughly designated as running from 1730 to 1880 and, while it and the final volume follow the broad model set down by their two predecessors, they necessarily do so on a considerably more ample scale. Thus, the third volume is divided into six parts – ‘Politics’; ‘Economy and demography’; ‘Religion’; ‘Shaping society’; the ‘Irish Abroad’; and ‘The Great Famine and its aftermath’ – with no less than twenty-eight separate essays by twenty-six writers. Three of the essays are by James Kelly, the editor of the volume, and one is by Thomas Bartlett, the editor of volume four and, of the project as a whole. These are clear signals that those in charge of the enterprise have not confined themselves to exhorting others but have themselves led from the front. And the energising influence of the editors is evident in the success with which they have drawn very different essays from a large number of contributors who, like historians everywhere, are by no means always in agreement concerning the topics and periods about which they write. Not only that but a beneficent lack of rigorous procrusteanism, combined with effective and doubtless tactful editorial control, have generated a variety of conceptual approaches while never allowing differences to undermine the overall project which, as a result, successfully maintains an energising diversity which never falls apart or gets out of hand. Thus some of the essays adopt a broad interpretative sweep, others – and often very fruitfully – present what is in effect pioneering work based on close reading and the use of primary sources.
James Kelly sets the tone of the third volume in a sparkling ‘Introduction’, establishing both the historical and the historiographical backgrounds, as well as the aims of the volume as a whole. He also makes the important point that Daniel O’Connell, of all the modern leaders of Irish political life, was the only man with a European rather than a merely Hiberno-British/American reputation. This is something insufficiently noted in what can sometimes seem the rather narrow geographical confines of modern Irish historical studies. Indeed, according to one authority, the mere mention of the name ‘O’Connell’ in the Rhineland or Westphalia of the 1830s and 1840s was capable of awakening ‘in der Bevölkerung ebensosehr wie auf der Regierungsseite die Vorstellung der Gegenschaft zum bestehenden Staate’.Footnote 5
After Vincent Morley, James Kelly and Thomas Bartlett lay out the chief contours of Irish politics in the eighteenth century and during the revolutionary years of 1791 to 1815, Patrick Geoghegan and Maura Cronin analyse the character of both high and popular politics in the first half of the nineteenth century. Morley’s piece is especially rich in its use of Irish-language material, while primary references enhance the work of the other contributors to this part of the volume. The heavy lifting as regards the sometimes technical matters of economic and demographic shifts is undertaken by David Dickson, Andy Bielenberg, Brian Gurrin, and Sarah-Anne Buckley (the last discussing the interesting matter of ‘Women, men and the family, 1730–1845’), all of whom perform the difficult task of rendering what has become, in some respects, a highly technical area of historical discourse into language that can be more widely understood. Because this involves discussion and analysis of the extent to which Ireland shared, or had at least begun to share, in the ‘modernisation’ of the economy of the United Kingdom as a whole, it might have been natural to continue directly into an examination of the Great Famine and its aftermath. However, the organisation of undertakings like this Cambridge history can render the progression of chapters a matter of some difficulty. And so these great social developments are ‘interrupted’, if that is quite the right word, by discussions of religion, its overall condition, the changes it experienced, and, in particular, the extent to which the character and nature of both Catholic and Protestant belief were increasingly moulded by the varied and complex forces of the modern world. And it is especially in this section that the editors’ relaxed yet disciplined approach to the character of the enterprise appears to especially fruitful effect, with Thomas O’Connor and Ian McBride dealing with the Catholic church and Protestant Dissenters in the century or so beginning in 1690, while Colin Barr and Andrew Holmes discuss the eighty or so years that followed.
Part IV – ‘Shaping society’ – is inevitably broader in character and includes excellent discussions of literacy (Aidan Doyle), Enlightenment (Michael Brown and Lesa Ní Mhunghaile), art and architecture (Christine Casey), and sport (James Kelly), but also of more loosely related topics such as ‘Civil society, c.1700–c.1850’ (Martyn Powell), ‘The growth of the state’ (Virginia Crossman), and an interesting, if rather idiosyncratic, piece on ‘Bourgeois Ireland, or, on the benefits of keeping one’s hands clean’ (Ciaran O’Neill). Part V, on the Irish abroad, looks especially at the ‘strange case’ of the ‘Scots/Irish’ (Patrick Griffin), at the Irish in the British Empire (Barry Crosbie), and, in an especially valuable and solidly-based essay by Liam Chambers, at ‘The Irish in Europe in the eighteenth century, 1691–1815’. And then, in Part VI, we follow up the ground laid down in Part II with three outstanding pieces on the Famine and its aftermath which together constitute a kind of bridge to the final volume that follows. Here the heavy lifting on the Famine itself is undertaken by Peter Gray who makes use of his own outstanding work on the matter, while Kevin Kenny looks at what the Famine so obviously accelerated (though of course it was something that had long existed), namely emigration c.1845–1900. Douglas Kanter follows with an excellent analysis of the state of Irish political life in the decades immediately after the Famine, and Toby Barnard concludes a distinguished, up-to-date, and highly successful volume with a reflective ‘Afterword’.
III
Nor is there any slackening of quality or pace in the final volume, the length and scope of which makes succinct analysis virtually impossible. Here the division into four parts follows broadly, but not strictly, chronological lines. The volume also contains a pioneering and revealing contribution by Thomas Bartlett, namely, a ‘photographic essay’ entitled ‘The Troubles’ which presents a series of fifty reproductions of images ranging from 1969 to 1990 relating to developments in Northern Ireland in these years with a brief caption for each item. Not only do these pictures provide concrete and sometimes gut-wrenching reminders of events many would like to forget but they also furnish a revealing commentary on phenomena about which words simply break down and feelings and emotions alone would seem to be able to do duty for comprehension and understanding.
More conventional, but full of both scholarly and humane insight, is the volume’s opening essay by Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh who, in a highly effective tour d’horizon, notes how popular culture – the ‘mass media, sport, music, fashion’ – became ‘utterly permeable within the archipelago’ and how ‘the notion of national sovereignty in the context of ever-deepening European (EU) integration and global trade liberalisation’ now bears ‘little resemblance to what nationalists had understood it to mean (and to promise) a century earlier’ (iv, 27–8). And this of course points also to the fact that many of the contributors to this final volume are required to grapple with the historical as well as the political fact that in 1921 the island of Ireland was divided into two separate jurisdictions. Sometimes they do this overtly, with chapters on Northern Ireland (by Susannah Riordan and by Paul and John Bew) or on the south (by Anne Dolan and Michael Kennedy), while sometimes a more or less ‘all-Ireland’ approach is adopted by authors dealing with economic, social, and cultural matters.
As with the earlier volumes, the standard is invariably high, sometimes enviably so. Matthew Kelly looks at radical nationalism in the period 1882–1916 during which ‘non-violent collective action could segue into either physical resistance ... or clandestine violence’ with the result that it is sometimes ‘hard to fathom’ the extent to which the Easter Rising ‘embodied the radical ideas that had animated separatist nationalism over the previous generation’ (iv, 33, 60). Conor Mulvagh discusses how the variegated experiences of home rulers at Westminster ‘gave to Ireland, north and south, a political tradition that would find expression throughout the twentieth century and beyond’ (iv, 88). Alvin Jackson provides a modified version of a previously published piece on unionism between the 1880s and 1916 which is, as always, full of insight and includes a wonderful reference to the unionist activities of the Dublin-born (and musically talented) composer, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, who confronted hapless –and presumably male – candidates for entry into the Royal College of Music with the brusque enquiry ‘and what d’ye think of Home Rule, me bhoy?’ (iv, 112–13). Terence Dooley analyses the land question in the last decades of British rule and concludes that, for all the changes then inaugurated, much remained to be done – especially in the Free State – ‘in terms of land transfer and land redistribution’ (iv, 144). Caitriona Clear looks at the complicated world of social conditions between 1880 and 1914 and notes the (to me) unknown but striking fact that while the number of (presumably Catholic) ‘ordained and professed men’ rose by 7 per cent between 1881 and 1911 that of ‘nuns or female religious’ rose by no less than 63.5 per cent (iv, 165–6). This part of the volume concludes with two outstanding pieces: the first by Roy Foster on the ‘Irish literary revival’, which packs much information and insight into a short space and makes the essential point that ‘Literary history does not proceed in a consistent, incremental course, nor by a linear progression; there are saltatory leaps, and developments obscured by anxieties of influence’ (iv, 171) (a notion the reviewer would like to extend to pretty well all kinds of history); the second, by Brian Ó Conchubhair, analyses that three-steps-forward-two-steps-back relationship between ‘The Gaelic League and Irish Ireland’.
Part II takes the story to 1945 with excellent essays by David Fitzpatrick on ‘Ireland and the Great War’, Fearghal McGarry on ‘Revolution, 1916–1923’, on the economies of north and south (by Susannah Riordan and Anne Dolan), and by Philip Ollerenshaw on ‘Neutrality and belligerence: Ireland 1939–1945’. With Part III we come to that period a large part of which is within the memory of those still alive, not least the reviewer, who came to Ireland from Germany in April 1947, aged five. Whether this is an advantage or a drawback is a matter not always easy to decide. Certainly it casts a distinctly remembered light upon Brian Girvin’s two pieces on ‘Stability, crisis and change in post-war Ireland, 1945–1973’ and ‘Ireland transformed? Modernisation, secularisation and conservatism since 1973’, both of them not only full of insight but triggering powerful memories as well: of Catholic churches so full on Sundays that masses were held every half hour with one priest saying mass and another simultaneously in the pulpit giving a sermon; of – at least in the early years – generally terrible food, especially outside Dublin; of small vans driving down the street emblazoned with the symbol and name of the ‘Swastika Laundry’; of pubs closing remarkably early except for the so-called ‘bona fides’ surrounding Dublin like a ring of welcome fortifications; of the ‘ban’ on Catholics going to Trinity College; of primitive but exhilarating conditions at University College Dublin when it was still in Earlsfort Terrace; of Dublin’s terrible slums, something which has since undergone change but alas not much in the way of improvement. One wonders, therefore, whether a historian can properly review essays that deal so closely and so well with a past which he has himself – at least to some extent – experienced.
But that is perhaps to behave rather like cyclists who suddenly have doubts as to how and why their peddling keeps them and their machines at once upright and in motion. And there can, indeed, be no doubt that the essays that conclude the final volume of this wonderful undertaking lose nothing in comparison with those that have gone before: sparkling accounts of Northern Ireland since 1965 by Paul and John Bew, of the modern Irish economy by John O’Hagan, of the crucial topic of ‘migration since 1914’ by Mary Daly (a subject which she has made very much her own), very welcome essays on broadcasting and popular culture by Robert Savage and Paul Rouse respectively, and an extremely valuable piece by Michael Kennedy (the great expert on the matter) on ‘Irish Foreign Policy: 1919 to 1973’.
The final part, Part IV, takes ‘The long view, Ireland 1880–2016’ and in doing so offers pioneering and highly original essays on topics which do not always feature on the conventional historical menu. Lindsey Earner-Byrne certainly told me much about the ‘Family in Ireland, 1880–2015’ that I did not know in an essay enlivened by photographs of ‘Bath Night, Ballyfermot, Dublin, 1950s’, of the thirteen-strong Maguire family in 1960, an equally large Waterford family of the 1890s, and all twenty-one members of another Waterford family about 1923, no less than seven of whom seem to have been priests. Catherine Cox casts an informed, sober, and depressing eye on ‘Institutional space and the geography of confinement in Ireland, 1750–2000’ and questions whether the ‘assumption that with the passing of most of these institutions, the class-based responses to poverty, sexuality, criminality, alcoholism and household “disorder” ... have also been consigned to history’ (iv, 706). Guy Beiner adds to his distinguished reputation as a historian of remembering with a typically stimulating piece on Ireland’s simultaneous obsession and neglect of memory throughout the long twentieth century. And how right he is when he says that ‘a veneer of sophistication disguises the stark reality that the officially-sanctioned representations of memory displayed in the public sphere tend to feature a very narrow share of the diversity of historical experiences’ (iv, 72–3). There follows Daithí Ó Corráin’s splendid interpretative essay – enlivened with photographs, including a particularly striking one of Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin standing with his back to us but facing a large group of kneeling nuns – on ‘Catholicism in Ireland, 1880–2015: rise, ascendancy and retreat’ which concludes that, while it may be on the ropes, Irish Catholicism might still achieve ‘continued vigour within a more pluralist environment’, or at least become ‘an active minority’ maintaining ‘the faith for the occasional use of the many’ (iv, 764). Unsurprisingly Paula Murphy’s ‘Art and architecture in Ireland, 1880–2016’ also presents numerous fascinating and relevant illustrations of paintings, statues, and buildings, though nothing alas by one of my own favourite twentieth-century Irish painters, Muriel Brandt (1909–81), probably now somewhat unfashionable though no doubt, as with all really good artists, her day will once again come. And the volume, and indeed the whole undertaking, concludes with a characteristically intelligent – and acerbic – essay by Eunan O’Halpin, ‘Ireland looking outwards, 1880–2016’, which charts the road travelled over these years and in effect warns us not to be too smug about progress made or about what may yet be to come.
This, therefore, is a splendid achievement in every sense. The essays are of a high quality. A few small technical glitches aside, editorial control has been both effective and unobtrusive. Valuable bibliographies are provided for each essay. Of course reviewers would hardly be worth their salt if they did not find something critical to throw into the pot. In my case, I have two points to make in this respect. The first concerns the many extremely informative black-and-white illustrations, which, while perfectly adequate for the modern period, are insufficiently crisp and clear to offer much with regard to early Celtic illuminated manuscripts. The second, more serious, point is one that might, alas, be made of Irish historical studies as a whole: the virtually complete absence – a few passing references excepted – of any interest in the history of the natural sciences. Up to the 1940s three Irishmen had been awarded Nobel prizes: W. B. Yeats and Bernard Shaw for literature and for physics Ernest Walton who, as it happens, spent a much greater proportion of his life actually in Ireland than did the other two. But Walton is not, as far as I could see, mentioned at all. Nor are John Tyndall or William Rowan Hamilton. Nor is there even a mention of the lengthy presence at University College Cork of George Boole, whose Boolean algebra forms the basis of modern computing, nor, indeed, of the fact that eighteenth-century Gaelic scholars like the Dublin physician John Fergus or Seán Ó Fearghusa were men of the widest international literary and scientific culture, as the contents of Fergus’s extensive library of almost 2500 items, sold in 1766, demonstrates. Could not, within volumes totalling almost 3400 pages, room have been found at least to mention the presence in Ireland of Erwin Schrödinger or even the admittedly eccentric visits of the great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein? We hear of quite marginal literary and political figures, yet nothing about outstanding individuals such as these. And if, quite rightly, history is no longer simply the history of ‘great men’, merely throwing such individual babies out with the bathwater does not in itself amount to much in the way of progress.
But it would be quite wrong to allow such personal whinges in any way to obscure the impressive achievement that these four volumes constitute, an achievement for which the hundred and more contributors, the four editors and especially their chief, Thomas Bartlett, deserve the very highest praise. All have together brought a complex and mighty undertaking to a successful and timely conclusion. Both they and Cambridge University Press have succeeded in producing not only a scholarly and an exciting work but also one that is well designed: the four volumes being physically as well as intellectually attractive. Floreat Hibernia; floreat Cantabrigia.
