One of the main premises of postmodern historical theory is that historians construct the past, which does not lend itself to a single grand narrative that would provide a key to its meaning. Meaning can only be assigned on the basis of the concerns and predilections of those who examine the past from their own perspective. The essays in Constructing the Past illustrate some of the ways in which the meaning of the past changed, in early modern Ireland, according to who was writing and when they were writing. At times, these changes appear in a single author, as Alan Ford demonstrates in the case of Nicholas Bernard with regard to his differing interpretations of the thought of James Ussher, the seventeenth-century archbishop of Armagh. In Bernard's histories we encounter two very different religious thinkers under the same name, depending not on changes in the archbishop or even in the writer but rather on the change in the favored religious position in the transition from Cromwell to Charles II.

In his introduction to this volume of historiographical essays, Roy Foster characterizes the book as using new techniques to reexamine “the complex history of Irish identity-formation and the growth of nationalism” (4). The book is divided into three sections: “Foundations,” comprising three essays, including the one by Ford; “Revolutions,” which consists of four essays; and “Re-evaluations,” which contains the final two essays in the volume. Unfortunately, the editors provide no explanation for this tripartite division, and I am not sure that the material justifies it since all of the essays involve a measure of reevaluation. However, three major themes run through the essays, and in some ways these roughly correspond to the groupings supplied by the editors, even if these themes are not neatly contained within their appropriate sections.

One of the most significant points raised by these essays is that history was already seen as important to the Irish in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although, as Raymond Gillespie notes in his concluding essay, the value they placed on history has to be counterbalanced with their assumptions about what was natural, for example, ideas about God, monarchy, and human nature. Furthermore, the idea of Ireland as a separate kingdom was itself a historical construction that served the needs of seventeenth-century writers, as Bernadette Cunningham shows in the opening essay of this volume. She alludes to the ways in which seventeenth-century Irish historians ignored such inconvenient parts of the past as the 1541 act granting Henry VIII the title of King of Ireland and the claims of James I to that title. The value placed on history in the eighteenth century can be seen in the efforts, described by T. C. Barnard, of Sylvester O’Halloran, who had written extensively on medical subjects, to get his work on Irish history published—despite the best efforts of a publisher, John Murray, to dissuade him on the grounds that it would not sell enough copies—and in the willingness of both Protestants and Catholics to subscribe to it so that he could get it published.

The second point that these essays tend to collectively emphasize is that history became important to the Irish because of processes of change that affected Ireland throughout this period. Starting with the polemic that accompanied the civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century, Richard Ansell shows, in one of the most lucid essays in the book, how interpretations of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 became vital to political views in late seventeenth-century Ireland. Mark Williams discusses the Irish exiles as beginning the process of these historical formulations, but, of course, the revolution of 1689–91 hardened Protestant fears of Catholics and reminded Protestants of Catholic guilt in the earlier uprising. Yet 1641 would be interpreted much differently by Catholics and thus had no clear meaning, as was the case with other aspects of early modern Irish history. The same could be said of events occurring outside of Ireland, such as the French Revolution, for which Ultán Gillen demonstrates that reactions in Ireland differed widely and were not as easily predicted on the basis of a writer's background as one might think.

Finally, and perhaps most important, many of the essays here speak to the contemporary relevance of the works of Irish historians writing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Williams even addresses the ways in which seventeenth-century histories form a “bridge to the troubles of the present day” (28). R. Scott Spurlock's interesting and convincing revisionist approach to Cromwell's legacy in Ireland is particularly consistent with the current approach to politics and history in the Republic in which England no longer needs to be seen as the villain in a black-and-white narrative of the Irish past. Barnard writes of the ways in which eighteenth-century historians used ancient Irish history to bolster claims that Ireland had preserved civilization and a more pure form of Christianity than could be claimed by Catholics or Protestants, which is practically identical to the argument used by Thomas Cahill in How the Irish Saved Civilization (New York, 1996).

In short, these essays hold together remarkably well despite a great amount of diversity, although the reader must invest some effort in order to put together some of the connections. Such an effort would be well rewarded, however, with a deeper understanding not only of the Irish past but also of the myriad ways in which that past was put to use by writers of various political and religious stripes at a time when Ireland was making the transition to the modern world. Furthermore, this book serves as a reminder not to judge the past on the basis of present standards and that the writing of historiography, like the writing of history, is shaped by the period in which it is constructed.