First of all let's banish the
idea that there are Irish history teachers nowadays frothing at the mouth
attributing all Ireland's ills to successive waves of British colonisation.
While this may have been the case in the past - particularly the first few
decades after independence - times have changed and such stuff is seldom if ever
seen today.
Ireland's earliest post-independence history teachers would have been products of the Gaelic Cultural Revival, invariably members of Sinn Féin, possibly War of Independence veterans and by and large Republicans of one hue or another perfectly content with the severing of the Act of Union - and moreover, quite satisfied to justify that stream of events in classrooms to the upcoming generation.
For the bulk of the population, decolonisation and the final evacuation of British forces was greeted with a generalised euphoria. Why would it not? We had finally secured the right to draft our own laws and set up our own parliament.
To expect in turn that the secondary school history syllabus and the teachers delivering it, would in such circumstances, cast anything but a critical eye on the whole tortured relationship between Ireland and the English monarchy is to engage in the wildest fantasy - scarcely a family was left untouched by the upheavals of the revolutionary years (1913-1922) for one thing and emotions were still understandably raw.
If you've ever read any of John Mitchel's work you can form a reasonable impression of the tone in which Ireland's history was presented in our classrooms during the inter-war period - which is to say not at all favourable to the English connection.
A woman I know in her 80's told me she was bid to learn whole passages of "Jail Journal" off by heart - which is Mitchel's account of his banishment to Van Diemen's after his trial for treason in 1848, protesting ultimately at the government's famine-time policies. That, if nothing else, will tell you how the "classical nationalist" interpretation of Irish history was passed on to a generation which are today the grandparents of Ireland's current school-going ages.
The "thaw" only began in earnest with the succession of Séan Lemass, the eclipse in power of De Valera, Ireland's opening up to FDI in the late 60's, entry to the EU and the outbreak of the Troubles - all of which for various reasons led to a "toning down" of the way in which history was taught; jettisoning the perennial 'blame-game' narrative in favour of more "disinterested" and "dispassionate" "objective" analysis - my own take on this is that we've gone too far and have in fact by adopting this approach done an even worse disservice to our past.
No doubt we will all settle on some satisfactory medium - but the above is the bare outlines of how to "square it all and make sense", i.e. what the generalised "feel" is among Irish for the former colonial connection, at least among their parents and grandparents generation.
"Genocide" is an un-satisfactory descriptive as its carved out of the human rights discourse of the UN derived post-Holocaust era and carries with it all those loaded connotations, which it obviously sought to address, of post-Darwinian racially inspired notions of "fitness to govern" which permeated and poisoned the thinking and actions of statesmen everywhere in the first half of the twentieth century; many of whom "in the West" were happy to set up fanciful hierarchies of the world's races based entirely on colour - the "yellow peril", the "white man's burden" etc.
It is not used in secondary schools here as a descriptive category for the famine years, nor remotely as any term of reference as it amounts to an anachronistic insertion of one era's value system atop another thus skewering and occluding the real nature of the relationship between Westminster and Ireland and in fact, the whole tenor of the times.
The only way to understand this period and to critically assess the nature of the British government's response is to immerse yourself in the primary documentation; see how the world looked from the vantage point of all participants, what concepts were deployed, what justifications used - some are happy to use the word "genocide", personally I find it unhelpful; jarring, surreal and context-scrambling.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to detach the famine from the political history of the country or indeed pass intelligible comment on it today without inevitably making some kind of political statement.
The politics of Repeal itself changed drastically during its course leading to a split which would define the nature of nationalist sentiment in the country for the next two generations; only resolving itself (arguably) at independence.
The constitutionalist politics espoused by O' Connell were repudiated by the Young Ireland Confederates over disillusionment with the Whig policy responses to mass starvation culminating in an abortive rebellion plot which was nipped in the bud but from which sprang the Fenian movement while the millions who emigrated to the United States provided the financial backbone for the Land League, the IRB, the Gaelic Revival, the 1916 Rising and De Valera's War of Independence fund-raising.
O' Connelite parliamentarian tactics were continued via Parnell and the Home Rulers and while often Fenian goals, tactics & membership would overlap with this type of constitutionalism the essential bifurcation between the physical force and political wings of Irish nationalism had their origins in differing famine-era legacies and interpretations.
It was an absolutely central defining point in the creation of Ireland's political culture apart from its other obvious economic, social and demographic ramifications.
Some may find this surprising but British historians are in general far more critical of government policy during the famine than their Irish counterparts. Roy Jenkins Gladstone & Douglas Hurd's Robert Peel were both unsparingly critical I found (certainly more so than the average Irish fare) while A.J.P. Taylor (most famously) referred to it as a de facto genocide in the midst of a glowing review of Woodham-Smith's Great Hunger - a book that was castigated by Irish academics and likened to "a great novel".
There's a long tradition of this in British historiography beginning in the immediate aftermath with J.S. Mill (England and Ireland), the speeches of Earl Grey (son of the Reform PM) and even the late 19th c. Conservative backbencher historian W.E.H. Lecky who reasoned that Balfour's policy of 'killing Home Rule with kindness' would be best served by "being honest about past oppressions" as only through such could you entice the Irish to stay in the Union.
Additionally, while out of office, in the 19th c. at least, there was always the electoral gambit of wooing Irish MP's into an unofficial pact by promising reform in support of parliamentary votes - cranking up the ante by publishing literature on the scandal of previous Tory/Whig mismanagement of Ireland was par for the course; "Justice for Ireland", in fact, was the out of office battle cry of the Whigs throughout the 1830's and 40's - so there was no shortage of British writers critical of their own government's policy. The "Condition of Ireland" question was a millstone around Westminster necks for the entire duration of the Union - "our national scandal" as Gladstone often referred to it, and when independence came, no surprise it was greeted with a sigh of relief in many quarters.
On the other hand, if you pick up a general treatment of the British Empire, invariably Ireland will be dealt with very cursorily as though it were an unproblematic extension of such - the "kingdom not colony" treatment, which is reflected in many of the contemporary attitudes of non-Irish commentators who seldom view these events through the prism of a teleological nationalist struggle.
Conversely, when it comes to the basic question of representation, Irish historians are so chronically hamstrung ideologically by the "anti-nationalist" tenets of revisionism that even a right-wing Thatcherite like Douglas Hurd sounds positively Fenian by comparison. This is why I've been gravitating more and more towards British biographers of key English statesmen during this period - as, unlike Irish revisionist historians, they're not affected with the (perceived) domestic need here to put a lid on contemporary separatist republicanism; the "Troubles" has simply re-defined history writing here for over a generation.
We've had classic "flip-flops" since the Arms Crisis, Bloody Sunday and internment in the early 70's, with F.S.L. Lyons and Conor Cruise O' Brien (to name but two) radically altering the tone of their presentation when it comes to adjudicating on key periods in Irish history. The general thrust of "revisionism" has evolved from its 1930's (Trinity College based) "values-free" objectivism to a far more strident expunging of nationalist sentiment wherever it may be found. When Christine Kinealy (herself married to a northern Unionist) bucked this trend and produced what she called a "post-revisionist" re-evaluation of many key areas of famine policy (i.e. one broadly sympathetic with 1840's Irish nationalism) she was publically lambasted by an orthodox revisionist from Queens, Belfast (L. A. Clarkson) in the following scandalous manner -
A Death-Dealing Famine: The Great Hunger in Ireland | Reviews in History
There are needless to say multiple gaping lacunae left over from over-exposure to this type of "critical" lens -
Serious question marks remain primarily over the lack of emphasis on -
(1) land issues in the immediate post-Union period (generally diverted into the false problem of Malthusianism; i.e over-emphasis on population pressures);
(2) the dearth of proper research on Whiteboy movements and their grievances (Beames work published over thirty years ago now);
(3)nothing of real substance produced on the tithe question in the late 30's;
(4) the relationship of British radicals & the Chartists with the politics of Repeal is always studiously avoided, particularly, and most scandalously by Nowlan;
(5) the continual misrepresentation of the actual criticisms of Mitchel, simplistically atomising him as an Anglophobe who cried "genocide" which he didn't exactly (he was a self-confessed proud Saxon);
(6) no analysis to speak of re: Sharman Crawford's Tenant League which sought to deliver the three F's down south;
(7) the conversion of O' Brien and "1848" into a figure of parody;
(8) the complete absence of Gaelic language sources or a general sympathy with the world-view of Irish-speaking cottiers;
(9) the continual misrepresentation of rundale clachans as outmoded and inefficient examples of small-scale farming - they were the last vestiges in fact of the Gaelic order derb fine system;
(10) the studious ignoring of sympathetic British voices (Mill, Bentinck) which in many cases were more radical than mainstream middle-class Catholic Repealers & finally ..
(11) the mysterious inability to see how industrialisation in Britain with its subsequent loss of grain sovereignty (supplemented by the Irish market) & expansion of the manufacturing base pressured bread prices to such a degree that the period (even before the blight struck) was known as the "hungry 40's" giving rise to ferocious Chartist unrest and rendering it politically untenable for Peel to discontinue Irish grain exports into English ports - for fear of a revolution (half an English labourer's wages could be spent on bread at this time).
All these questions and more, studiously avoided by Irish researchers despite a plethora of new titles since the 150th anniversary - all, by and large, with the odd notable exception (Gray, Nally, Scally & Kinealy) following the same jaded formulae of exposition as outlined & carved in stone by Moody, Williams, Daly, Konnell & Bourke et.al.
Ireland's earliest post-independence history teachers would have been products of the Gaelic Cultural Revival, invariably members of Sinn Féin, possibly War of Independence veterans and by and large Republicans of one hue or another perfectly content with the severing of the Act of Union - and moreover, quite satisfied to justify that stream of events in classrooms to the upcoming generation.
For the bulk of the population, decolonisation and the final evacuation of British forces was greeted with a generalised euphoria. Why would it not? We had finally secured the right to draft our own laws and set up our own parliament.
To expect in turn that the secondary school history syllabus and the teachers delivering it, would in such circumstances, cast anything but a critical eye on the whole tortured relationship between Ireland and the English monarchy is to engage in the wildest fantasy - scarcely a family was left untouched by the upheavals of the revolutionary years (1913-1922) for one thing and emotions were still understandably raw.
If you've ever read any of John Mitchel's work you can form a reasonable impression of the tone in which Ireland's history was presented in our classrooms during the inter-war period - which is to say not at all favourable to the English connection.
A woman I know in her 80's told me she was bid to learn whole passages of "Jail Journal" off by heart - which is Mitchel's account of his banishment to Van Diemen's after his trial for treason in 1848, protesting ultimately at the government's famine-time policies. That, if nothing else, will tell you how the "classical nationalist" interpretation of Irish history was passed on to a generation which are today the grandparents of Ireland's current school-going ages.
The "thaw" only began in earnest with the succession of Séan Lemass, the eclipse in power of De Valera, Ireland's opening up to FDI in the late 60's, entry to the EU and the outbreak of the Troubles - all of which for various reasons led to a "toning down" of the way in which history was taught; jettisoning the perennial 'blame-game' narrative in favour of more "disinterested" and "dispassionate" "objective" analysis - my own take on this is that we've gone too far and have in fact by adopting this approach done an even worse disservice to our past.
No doubt we will all settle on some satisfactory medium - but the above is the bare outlines of how to "square it all and make sense", i.e. what the generalised "feel" is among Irish for the former colonial connection, at least among their parents and grandparents generation.
"Genocide" is an un-satisfactory descriptive as its carved out of the human rights discourse of the UN derived post-Holocaust era and carries with it all those loaded connotations, which it obviously sought to address, of post-Darwinian racially inspired notions of "fitness to govern" which permeated and poisoned the thinking and actions of statesmen everywhere in the first half of the twentieth century; many of whom "in the West" were happy to set up fanciful hierarchies of the world's races based entirely on colour - the "yellow peril", the "white man's burden" etc.
It is not used in secondary schools here as a descriptive category for the famine years, nor remotely as any term of reference as it amounts to an anachronistic insertion of one era's value system atop another thus skewering and occluding the real nature of the relationship between Westminster and Ireland and in fact, the whole tenor of the times.
The only way to understand this period and to critically assess the nature of the British government's response is to immerse yourself in the primary documentation; see how the world looked from the vantage point of all participants, what concepts were deployed, what justifications used - some are happy to use the word "genocide", personally I find it unhelpful; jarring, surreal and context-scrambling.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to detach the famine from the political history of the country or indeed pass intelligible comment on it today without inevitably making some kind of political statement.
The politics of Repeal itself changed drastically during its course leading to a split which would define the nature of nationalist sentiment in the country for the next two generations; only resolving itself (arguably) at independence.
The constitutionalist politics espoused by O' Connell were repudiated by the Young Ireland Confederates over disillusionment with the Whig policy responses to mass starvation culminating in an abortive rebellion plot which was nipped in the bud but from which sprang the Fenian movement while the millions who emigrated to the United States provided the financial backbone for the Land League, the IRB, the Gaelic Revival, the 1916 Rising and De Valera's War of Independence fund-raising.
O' Connelite parliamentarian tactics were continued via Parnell and the Home Rulers and while often Fenian goals, tactics & membership would overlap with this type of constitutionalism the essential bifurcation between the physical force and political wings of Irish nationalism had their origins in differing famine-era legacies and interpretations.
It was an absolutely central defining point in the creation of Ireland's political culture apart from its other obvious economic, social and demographic ramifications.
Some may find this surprising but British historians are in general far more critical of government policy during the famine than their Irish counterparts. Roy Jenkins Gladstone & Douglas Hurd's Robert Peel were both unsparingly critical I found (certainly more so than the average Irish fare) while A.J.P. Taylor (most famously) referred to it as a de facto genocide in the midst of a glowing review of Woodham-Smith's Great Hunger - a book that was castigated by Irish academics and likened to "a great novel".
There's a long tradition of this in British historiography beginning in the immediate aftermath with J.S. Mill (England and Ireland), the speeches of Earl Grey (son of the Reform PM) and even the late 19th c. Conservative backbencher historian W.E.H. Lecky who reasoned that Balfour's policy of 'killing Home Rule with kindness' would be best served by "being honest about past oppressions" as only through such could you entice the Irish to stay in the Union.
Additionally, while out of office, in the 19th c. at least, there was always the electoral gambit of wooing Irish MP's into an unofficial pact by promising reform in support of parliamentary votes - cranking up the ante by publishing literature on the scandal of previous Tory/Whig mismanagement of Ireland was par for the course; "Justice for Ireland", in fact, was the out of office battle cry of the Whigs throughout the 1830's and 40's - so there was no shortage of British writers critical of their own government's policy. The "Condition of Ireland" question was a millstone around Westminster necks for the entire duration of the Union - "our national scandal" as Gladstone often referred to it, and when independence came, no surprise it was greeted with a sigh of relief in many quarters.
On the other hand, if you pick up a general treatment of the British Empire, invariably Ireland will be dealt with very cursorily as though it were an unproblematic extension of such - the "kingdom not colony" treatment, which is reflected in many of the contemporary attitudes of non-Irish commentators who seldom view these events through the prism of a teleological nationalist struggle.
Conversely, when it comes to the basic question of representation, Irish historians are so chronically hamstrung ideologically by the "anti-nationalist" tenets of revisionism that even a right-wing Thatcherite like Douglas Hurd sounds positively Fenian by comparison. This is why I've been gravitating more and more towards British biographers of key English statesmen during this period - as, unlike Irish revisionist historians, they're not affected with the (perceived) domestic need here to put a lid on contemporary separatist republicanism; the "Troubles" has simply re-defined history writing here for over a generation.
We've had classic "flip-flops" since the Arms Crisis, Bloody Sunday and internment in the early 70's, with F.S.L. Lyons and Conor Cruise O' Brien (to name but two) radically altering the tone of their presentation when it comes to adjudicating on key periods in Irish history. The general thrust of "revisionism" has evolved from its 1930's (Trinity College based) "values-free" objectivism to a far more strident expunging of nationalist sentiment wherever it may be found. When Christine Kinealy (herself married to a northern Unionist) bucked this trend and produced what she called a "post-revisionist" re-evaluation of many key areas of famine policy (i.e. one broadly sympathetic with 1840's Irish nationalism) she was publically lambasted by an orthodox revisionist from Queens, Belfast (L. A. Clarkson) in the following scandalous manner -
A Death-Dealing Famine: The Great Hunger in Ireland | Reviews in History
There are needless to say multiple gaping lacunae left over from over-exposure to this type of "critical" lens -
Serious question marks remain primarily over the lack of emphasis on -
(1) land issues in the immediate post-Union period (generally diverted into the false problem of Malthusianism; i.e over-emphasis on population pressures);
(2) the dearth of proper research on Whiteboy movements and their grievances (Beames work published over thirty years ago now);
(3)nothing of real substance produced on the tithe question in the late 30's;
(4) the relationship of British radicals & the Chartists with the politics of Repeal is always studiously avoided, particularly, and most scandalously by Nowlan;
(5) the continual misrepresentation of the actual criticisms of Mitchel, simplistically atomising him as an Anglophobe who cried "genocide" which he didn't exactly (he was a self-confessed proud Saxon);
(6) no analysis to speak of re: Sharman Crawford's Tenant League which sought to deliver the three F's down south;
(7) the conversion of O' Brien and "1848" into a figure of parody;
(8) the complete absence of Gaelic language sources or a general sympathy with the world-view of Irish-speaking cottiers;
(9) the continual misrepresentation of rundale clachans as outmoded and inefficient examples of small-scale farming - they were the last vestiges in fact of the Gaelic order derb fine system;
(10) the studious ignoring of sympathetic British voices (Mill, Bentinck) which in many cases were more radical than mainstream middle-class Catholic Repealers & finally ..
(11) the mysterious inability to see how industrialisation in Britain with its subsequent loss of grain sovereignty (supplemented by the Irish market) & expansion of the manufacturing base pressured bread prices to such a degree that the period (even before the blight struck) was known as the "hungry 40's" giving rise to ferocious Chartist unrest and rendering it politically untenable for Peel to discontinue Irish grain exports into English ports - for fear of a revolution (half an English labourer's wages could be spent on bread at this time).
All these questions and more, studiously avoided by Irish researchers despite a plethora of new titles since the 150th anniversary - all, by and large, with the odd notable exception (Gray, Nally, Scally & Kinealy) following the same jaded formulae of exposition as outlined & carved in stone by Moody, Williams, Daly, Konnell & Bourke et.al.
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