NEW
PERSPECTIVES ON IRELAND
Colonialism
and Identity
Ed.
Daltún Ó Ceallaigh
REVIEWS
IRISH
DEMOCRAT (November/December 1998)
This is the latest selection of papers from the
Desmond Greaves’ summer school, plus some essays which were written especially
for the book. The essays explore such topics as the conquest, settlement and
colonisation of Ireland by the Anglo-Normans from the late 12th century onwards,
the settlement and colonisation of the 16th and 17th centuries and,
separately, the Ulster rising of 1641.
The last volume in this series contained Anthony Coughlan’s seminal
political and biographical study of Desmond Greaves. This one contains an
equally important examination by Tony Coughlan of the economic and political
work of Raymond Crotty. Roy Johnston also contributes a ground-breaking piece on
the much neglected subject of science, technology and national development. The
volume concludes with a topical and incisive contribution by Jack Bennett about
the North and identity.
In his introduction Ó Ceallaigh contrasts what he describes as “constructive” and “destructive” revisionism. While the latter forms part of the ideology of neo-unionism, constructive revisionism or “reconsiderations” (as opposed to mere anti-revisionism) starts with a criterion of service to the community and conscientiously proceeds from there to the task of investigation and evaluation. It does not call for historical cover-ups, but rather recognises that there is no contradiction between commitment and scholarship. The essays in this important volume follow these principles to admirable effect.
Kevin
McCorry
An
Phoblacht-Republican News
(14 January 1999)
In the second volume of selected papers from the annual Desmond Greaves
Summer School, Daltún Ó Ceallaigh as editor continues the task set out in the
first volume of what is titled the Reconsiderations Series to tackle
destructive revisionism.
In his short but concise introduction Daltún explains clearly the
differences between destructive and constructive revisionism. “Destructive
revisionism ranges from the communal self-deprecation (as distinct from
self-critique) of certain insecure cosmopolitans in academe to that sad coterie
of embittered anti-nationalists who go to make up the Sunday Independent school
of Irish history and politics, with its admixture of emeritus, extramural and
amateur ...
“Constructive revisionism, or reconsiderationism (rather than
mere anti-revisionism) does not call for any sweeping under the carpet of
important information or a sensible reading of it ... [and]… should
be ultimately to improve and enhance rather than discredit and depress”.
A F O’Brien’s essay ‘Ireland - conquest, settlement and
colonisation’ exposes the racism that was developed to justify England’s
expansionism in Ireland, from the native Irish being portrayed as “the perfect
Barbarian exhibiting all the characteristics of his savagery - poverty, sloth,
incontinence, treachery, brutality, and cruelty” to the 16th
Century opinion that the policy of plantation was concerned primarily with the
“advancement of true religion among a heathen or heathenish people”, “the
substitution of civil standards for barbarous customs” and with “the
cultivation of crops or the exploitation of resources that were not available at
home”.
Tribute is paid in another article to that radical economist Raymond
Crotty, while Jack Bennett tackles the imagined identities of "Protestants
in Ulster'. If republicans today were to be armed with the facts in both these
essays they would be well-equipped to ridicule much of what passes as
intellectually informed debate in political circles.
In a well-written article Jack proves that despite all the recent
efforts to fit them out with one, they (Ulster Protestants) have no social
identity apart from that they share with other people around them - that is
their Catholic neighbours. The anti-Irishness of some in the Protestant
community is a recent phenomenon. On the question of two cultures he quotes Dr
Anthony Buckley of the Ulster Folk Museum: “The distinctiveness of Protestant
and Catholic cultural forms is often quite minimal. There has long been in the
expression of political and religious differences a great deal of
borrowing, to the extent that any attempt to project present-day symbolism into
the past and call them distinctive traditions is almost impossible”.
Breandán Ó Buachalla’s ‘The Gaelic Response to Conquest’, despite
being a demolition of Michelle Ó Riordan's book The Gaelic Mind and
the collapse of the Gaelic world, could also be said to be a synopsis of his
ground-breaking book Aisling Ghéar which used to its fullest extent the
Irish literature of the period, 1500-1700, He rubbishes a lot of what was
written by historians regarding the Irish intelligentsia and the interpretations
they made of the period’s Irish literature.
Brendan Bradshaw’s ‘Ulster Rising of 1641’ again is a review, this
time of Ulster 164l - Aspects of the Rising edited by Brian MacCuarta.
Bradshaw highlights the superiority of ‘revisionist historians’ with Roy
Foster attributing the Irish public’s failure to “turn the comer” as being
the reason for a credibility gap between him and his ilk and that same public.
While praising the editor Bradshaw takes issue with many of the contributors for
failing to rise above the revisionist “agenda and for failing to grasp the
major lessons of the period and the centrality of this event to both Ireland’s
and England’s history. The linked grievances of land and religion, subsumed
under the political one relating to the treatment of Ireland as a colony, hold
the key to the Ulster Rising of 1641. And it is because of this treatment that
Ireland emerged as the destabilising element within the British conglomerate.”
The neglected subject of ending the imperialist objectives of the
scientific community in Ireland is discussed by Roy Johnston in ‘Science,
Technology and Nationality’. In what I found to be a difficult essay to
get to grips with Johnston calls for scientists to be involved in the
nation-building process and for unity among them as a national scientific
community which could lobby government and result in proper policy formulation.
Added to the first volume in the reconsiderations series, this volume can
be an invaluable tool in tackling the lies of the ‘revisionist’ school of
historians. Daltún Ó Ceallaigh and those associated with the Desmond Greaves
Summer School are to be praised for their contribution to Ireland’s war
against the imperialist mindset.
Aengus Ó Snodaigh