History:Richard English has followed up his award-winning Armed Struggle: the History of the IRA with another survey of a vast topic: the past origins, past and present progress and future potential of that elusive and yet everyday phenomenon: national identity in Ireland and its expression in culture, State policy, popular thought and sentiment, its roots in medieval Irish society, the 18th-century enlightenments of France, Scotland, England and America and last, but not least, its expression in the form of campaigns of sometimes great violence over the last two centuries.
This is a very ambitious endeavour, and English brings it off with great panache. One refreshing aspect of this macro-historical essay is the author's determination to marry the historical narrative account with the outpouring of theoretical literature on nationalism by political scientists, social psychologists and cultural analysts since the second World War. In particular the arguments of Deutsch, Gellner, Anderson, Breuilly, Marx and many other theoretical writers both past and present are canvassed. English finally accepts the arguments of Anderson and Gellner - that nationalism is a child of the modern world, certainly in its modern manifestation as a phenomenon of collective mentality. Modern nationalism is a reaction to a world of mass literacy and mass society, he concludes, but it commonly bears the birthmarks of its premodern ancestries.
He acknowledges willingly, as many modernist thinkers will not, that many national identities have premodern, aristocratic and religious roots; in the case of Ireland, although the Gaelic Irish were not Irish nationalists, their identity was taken up by the Catholic Irish of the 17th century and later fashioned into a story or ancestral myth that became real even if of questionable historical authenticity. Again, the great land-grab of Irish land that occurred after 1690 generated a traditional sense of dispossession, which fed a strong if confused sense that the landholding system was illegitimate. Similarly, the long process of subordination and assault that Irish Catholicism endured in the 17th and 18th centuries generated a political and religious backlash against the reformation and the British government that has scarcely yet spent itself.
THUS, WHEN IRISH nationalism arrived in full-blown form during the period of the French Revolution, it was well-equipped at its beginning with memories of confiscation, land-grabbing, persecution and stubborn resistance to spoliation. English succeeds in arriving at a sensible reconciliation of perennialist and modernist views of the phenomenon of nationalism. The book ranges from late classical and early mediaeval times, but tends to concentrate on the period since 1600, with much emphasis on the late 18th century and the two centuries since then. He is strong on the alliance between Old English and Gaelic Irish that emerged in the 17th century, although oddly, he does not mention Geoffrey Keating. He is excellent on the role of the Observant orders of monks and their role in blunting and finally reversing the progress of Anglicanism in Ireland. The account of Irish land-hunger is pithy and accurate: "Ultimately, in the eyes of many Irish tenants, the only fair rent was no rent at all." The strange balancing act between advanced liberal stances and a sympathetic alliance with a counter-revolutionary Catholic Church that characterised Daniel O'Connell's brilliant career is treated carefully. The account of the Famine avoids demonising the British government, although it admits British responsibility for letting such a situation develop in the first place. He is interesting on the influence of Thomas Carlyle on John Mitchel and his romantic comrades and Jeremy Bentham's impact on Daniel O'Connell and his lawyer colleagues. Parnell's brittle alliance between agrarians, priests, Fenians and English liberals is well- described and its ingenuity appreciated.
Again, his treatment of the revolution that occurred in Ireland between 1913 and 1923 is balanced - some might think it too balanced. English has a way with phrases; he speaks of Pearse as being "a remarkable, confused and lastingly compelling man". Again, the tit-for-tat executions and murders of the Irish Civil War gave rise to two sets of heroic martyrs, or "rival Valhallas". Sean Lemass becomes "a kind of lightweight Daniel O'Connell", in a phrase that is probably meant to be a compliment. He is, if anything, over- generous to independent Ireland's many flaws and inequities, and better, perhaps on the essential chronic insecurity that characterised the unionist Ulster community both before and after the partition of 1920. He is accurate on the sneaking sympathy for Nazism and anti-Semitism that characterised much of the IRA in the 1930-1950 period, and what he refers to as the chronic "solipsism" of much of IRA thinking over the decades. His account of the hideous IRA campaign in Northern Ireland is accurate, and he is very generous to Adams in his role as leader of his comrades from armed struggle to constitutional contestation.
THERE ARE SOME false notes. English has coined the adjective "Sinn Féinish" to describe certain political stances; the term "Dublin Dáil" sounds odd and there is little evidence to suggest pre-Viking Ireland was divided ethnically, as distinct from being riven by the endless quarrels of petty kings. Strangely, there is little account of the Republic's economic turnaround since 1987. However, in an ambitious work of this kind, these are minor complaints. This is a courageous and successful attempt to synthesise the entire story between two covers for the neophyte and for the exhausted specialist alike.
Tom Garvin is professor of politics at University College Dublin and Burns Scholar at Boston College. His most recent book is Preventing the Future: Why Was Ireland So Poor for So Long? (Gill & Macmillan, 2004)
Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland By Richard English Macmillan, 625pp. £25