Ireland's Revisionist Historians: A Generation of Vipers

by Nick Folley - None Thu May 18, 2006 01:02 fiardia at hotmail dot com

In a sense, the tide is turning - revisionists are no longer having it all their own way, and their assertions are being effectively and intelligently challenged at every twist and turn. My personal feeling is that revisionists have done a good deal of damage to our psyche as a nation - a bit like telling an abused child it's responsible for what happened to it. Revisionists who argue that English Colonial rule was / is beneficial to Ireland are simply rehashing old colonial ideas about 'civilizing the savages' and the social Darwinism of the 19th century. It is of course as deeply insulting as it is untrue to say we are an inferior race unfit to rule ourselves, but many of the comments about 1916 and the subsequent Irish state made by revisionists are basically trying to say as much. It is most ironic, of course, that revisionists such as Roy Foster should write of a 'nationalist myth', a history harnassed for political ends, while revisonists themselves are the prime example of the same. Their political agenda can easily be spotted for what it is when you consider their opposing treatments of 1916, say, and the Irish in the First World War. Whereas the 1916 leaders are presented as bloodthirsty fanatics, and their victims fleshed out in considerable detail, the First World war Irish are euologised and their victims nameless and faceless. Revisionists are all for constitutional nationalism and peaceful means of achieving political objectives until it comes to Britain's aims. Then it becomes perfectly alright to send hundreds of thousands of men to their deaths, to create many more widows and orphans (a frequent charge laid against the 1916 leaders, see for example Kevin Myer's Irishman's Diary last January) in furtherance of a political aim. If constitutional means are so desireable, why did Britain go to war with Germany in 1914? Could they not have prevailed through parley on the Germans to pull out of Belgium? The Belgians could perhaps have held a number of referenda several dozen generations later to gain a limited measure of self-government. Of course, if all this seems to ridiculous to contemplate, it should help clarify Ireland's situation re. Home Rule. The difference is that the Germans did not succeed in hanging on in Belgium (hardly 'poor' or 'little' itself - it had vast colonies in the Congo) whereas the British did so in Ireland.

by rand Wed May 17, 2006 15:37

I think revisionist vipers can be found in all countries.
But every history will always get revised anyway as info and theories arrive.

Historians particulary like challenging dominant dogmatic views.

by toussaint - none Tue May 16, 2006 23:37

some interesting points, which i would agree with. bot pretty superficial on the whole, and a misreading of toibin, who i read as being extremely critical of foster. the bit about 'this was about politics more than anything' is not meant as a compliment.