D. G. Boyce, R. Eccleshall and V. Geogheghan (eds.)
(Routledge, £40, £25 in Ireland)
Niche marketing is no longer confined to fancy automobiles and exotic salad dressings but is part and parcel of the post-Thatcherite academic industry. The increasingly ramshackle knowledge industry has developed a complex hierarchy identified more by image than content. Within the arcane sub-universe of academic prestige, the edited book has a rather ambiguous image falling below the single-authored work and the article in a prestigious journal but somewhat above publications in less prestigious journals or by fly-by-night publishing outfits. Publishers are notoriously wary of edited works and, more often than not, a hefty subsidy is necessary to convince them that such books are marketable. This book breaks new ground in offering a subsidy to Irish purchasers — an example of the deontas culture reminiscent of Archbishop Trench’s Irish Bible.
It makes no claim to be a history of Irish political thought but the foreword posits an agenda of sorts which postulates the divided nature of Irish society as a fundamental constraint upon Irish political thought. It is here that the silences of the text begin to be intrusive. Irish history and society ‘invited a different response’, its political thought has ‘peculiar characteristic(s)’ and has ‘remarkable differences’ from those of England. There is something of a misplaced assumption of universalism here as in the assertion that ‘Ireland lacked a settled society, a deep-rooted constitution and a defined culture’. The reader is presented with a weary stereotype of wild shamrock manners as opposed to the ordered civil society of England. Edward Thompson, where are you now when we need you? But one should perhaps not argue on this terrain but compare like with like. Irish history respoded to the dynastic machinations and imperial ambitions of others and this applies to many other areas of Europe and the world. Edward Said makes this connection in Culture and Imperialism by grouping Ireland together with India, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and much of Africa which were sites of contention and struggle against outside domination. It is within this context that the Irish experience should be assessed and not through comparisons with an assertive and dominant neighbour.
Whatever the merits of the individual chapters, they do not gel into any cohesive whole. The reader is struck by what is absent, and will, perhaps unfairly, bemoan the lack of consideration of their own particular hobby-horse. For myself I miss any discussion of the post-independence decades in the South and, more generally, of the suppressed world of more recent writings in Irish. It is also a pity that the editors did not use the opportunity to commission a chapter on the long-running debate on William Molyneux’s treatise The Case of Ireland’s being bound by Acts of Parliament in England stated which made the case for the natural rights of the Irish people based on the ideas of John Locke. Given this caveat, the individual contributions have to be judged on their own merits and not seen as part of an overall editorial and theoretical project, since beyond the pressures of the marketplace, no such project exists.
Brendan Ó Buachalla’s opening chapter presents a carefully researched analysis of the world of Irish royalism in the seventeenth-century and evokes parallels with a widespread pattern of political prophecy which in Ireland lasted well into the nineteenth century. Its role as a political ideology and focus of mobilisation has probably been vastly underestimated. The intrepid reader might like to find startling parallels with the world view of twentieth-century Ulster Unionism as uncovered by Jennifer Todd in the final chapter of the book. Irish Jacobitism survived on the idea of historic wrongs which would be righted by the return from abroad of the rightful king and Unionism can be seen as the mirror image of this: a fearful and exaggerated loyalty to an uninterested crown and a largely imaginary constitution in an effort to keep the unruly natives at bay. Jennifer Todd continues her analysis of Unionism which she has pursued with clarity elsewhere. Her contribution lays bare its intolerant and closed nature, held together by a combination of exclusion and repression.
The sole chapter on republicanism (by Richard English) sets out to prove that the two selected representatives of that tradition — Ernie O’Malley and Peadar O’Donnell — were failures. The text is suffused with negative judgements on both men who, according to English, failed to comprehend the complexities of Irish society. This is hardly the monopoly of republican activists and as failures go they were to prove influential figures in the history of twentieth-century Ireland. O’Donnell was a much respected person, although many disagreed with his political analysis. He represented a tradition of resistance and activism without which Irish society would be immeasurably poorer. The attendance at his funeral a few years ago attested the affection and respect in which he was held. Just because he did not succeed does not make him a failure. O’Malley may have been committed to ‘obdurate political action’ but such action is one of the motors of history and is not to be carelessly despised. The touchstone of an awareness of the complexities of Irish society may well crumble at the touch. Did de Valera, that great pragmatist in communion with the very soul of Ireland, leave much of a legacy? What awareness of complexity do his descendants in Fianna Fáil display?
The chapter by D. George Boyce is an example of revisionism at its best. The pejorative meaning currently attached to the term should not blind us to the fact that all good historical analysis is revisionist and Boyce does us a service in analysing the complexities and contradictions of conservative thought in Victorian Ireland. The crisis of nineteenth-century Protestant conservatism was one of identity and material interest; unable to ride the tiger of history, this class helped create the conditions for its own demise. Boyce subtly reminds us that the divisions of contemporary Irish society have deep historical roots and a resistance to change. Other chapters in the book are more for the specialist academic than the general reader. Few will buy this book for its overall content and message. It seems a very expensive way to acquire a little knowledge.
Jim Smyth