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Historiographical debate: Representations of the past in Ireland: whose past and whose present?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Steven G. Ellis
Steven G. Ellis*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University College, Galway
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Extract

In modern history there are few countries which present the historian with the kind of interpretative challenge offered by Ireland. The general outlines of the problem are well known—the impact on the island of successive waves of colonisation; the endemic unrest, religious strife, and political instability, exemplified in recent times by the partition of the island between two states; and the interaction and conflict since the middle ages of two cultures and two peoples, Gaelic and English. These salient features of Irish history raise the question of an appropriate historiographical framework within which the island’s history might be interpreted—if we accept that Ireland’s historical experience cannot be understood in isolation. In an article published in this journal three years ago, I outlined an alternative perspective on the history of late medieval Ireland which, it seemed to me, also held possibilities for other periods of Irish history. In the course of the discussion, the article also urged the modification or replacement of particular terms and concepts which have traditionally been used by historians but which, I argued, are an obstacle to a more balanced, pluralistic understanding of Ireland’s past. The article has since attracted a reply by Dr Brendan Bradshaw, on which the journal’s editors have kindly allowed me to comment.

Type
Historiography
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 108 , November 1991 , pp. 289 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1991

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References

1 ‘Nationalist historiography and the English and Gaelic worlds in the late middle ages’ in I.H.S., xxv, no. 97 (May 1986), pp 1–18 Google Scholar. The implications of this perspective on Irish history are explored over a rather longer period in Ellis, S.G.: ‘The inveterate dominion: Ireland in the English state: a survey to 1700’ in Nolte, Hans-Heinrich (ed.), Internal peripheries in Europe: the dark side of development (Göttingen, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

2 ‘Nationalism and historical scholarship in modem Ireland’ in I.H.S., xxvi, no. 104 (Nov. 1989), pp 329-51Google Scholar. Many of the points raised here were first outlined by Bradshaw in a recent book review (in E.H.R., civ (1989), pp 472-4)Google Scholar of my Reform and revival: English government in Ireland, 1470–1534 (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

3 See now Barnard, T.C., ‘Crises of identity among Irish Protestants, 1641–1685’ in Past and Present, no. 127 (May 1990), pp 39–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 The best analysis of the problem is Bottigheimer, Karl, ‘Kingdom and colony: Ireland in the westward enterprise, 1536–1660’ in Andrews, K.R., Canny, N.P. and Hair, P.E.H. (eds), The westward enterprise: English activities in Ireland, the Atlantic and America, 1480–1650 (Liverpool, 1978), ch. 3Google Scholar.

5 Andrews, , Canny & Hair, Westward enterprise. A recent synthesis of the literature is Nicholas Canny, Kingdom and colony: Ireland in the Atlantic world, 1560–1800 (Baltimore, 1988)Google Scholar. See also Canny, Nicholas and Pagden, Anthony (eds), Colonial identity in the Atlantic world, 1500–1800 (Princeton, N.J., 1987)Google Scholar.

6 Recent discussions of the general European dimensions of this problem are Fernández-Annesto, Felipe, Before Columbus: exploration and colonisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492 (London, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Phillips, J.R.S., The medieval expansion of Europe (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar.

7 A good example of this genre is Steeg, Clarence L.Ver, The formative years, 1607–1763 (New York, 1964)Google Scholar.

8 See, e.g. the discussion in Bridge, Carl, Marshall, P.J. and Williams, Glyndwr, ‘Introduction: a “British” empire’ in International History Review, xii (1990), pp 2–10 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Lloyd, T.O., The British empire, 1558–1983 (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar; Marshall, P.J., ‘The whites of British India, 1780–1830: a failed colonial society?’ in International History Review, xii (1990), pp 26–44 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. With regard to Zimbabwe, it is perhaps significant that the centenary of the founding of Rhodesia (1990) was largely ignored there in favour of celebrations for the tenth anniversary of the founding of the present state.

10 Muller, C.F.J. (ed.), Five hundred years: a history of South Africa (3rd ed., Pretoria, 1981), pp 190, 201, 252, 315–17, 323, 332, 379, 389, 453, 523–5, 529, 551, 555–6, 564Google Scholar. In terms of international law of course, the parallel between Northern Ireland and Bophuthatswana is not an exact one because Northern Ireland is not a sovereign state, whereas Bophuthatswana, although it now claims sovereignty, is not recognised as such by the world community.

11 The standard histories of South Africa include Muller, Five hundred years; Davenport, T.R.H., South Africa: a modern history (Johannesburg, 1978)Google Scholar; Elphick, Richard and Giliomee, Hermann (eds), The shaping of South African society, 1652–1840 (2nd ed., Cape Town, 1989)Google Scholar.

12 See now Thompson, Leonard, A history of South Africa (Yale, 1990)Google Scholar; also the discussion in Van Heerden, Drees, ‘First there is history—then come the facts’ in Sunday Times (Johannesburg), 8 July 1990, p. 18 Google Scholar.

13 Above, n. 10; Rathebe, S.L.L. (ed.), A nation on the march (Melville, S.A., 1987)Google Scholar. This officially-inspired history of the Republic of Bophuthatswana is an interesting and instructive example of ‘history in the making’.

14 Hechter, Michael, Internal colonialism: the Celtic fringe in British national development, 1536–1966 (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Nolte, (ed.), Internal peripheries; Davies, R.R. (ed.), The British Isles, 1100–1500: comparisons, contrasts and connections (Edinburgh, 1988)Google Scholar; Robbins, Keith, Nineteenth-century Britain: England, Scotland and Wales, the making of a nation (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar. I am indebted also to many of the papers at the 1988 Anglo-American Conference of Historians on ‘Multiple kingdoms and federal states’, some of which have been published in recent issues of Historical Research.

15 ‘Nationalism’, p. 350, for quotations in this paragraph.

16 See most recently, Foster, R.F., Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London, 1988)Google Scholar; Hoppen, K.T., Ireland since 1800: conflict and conformity (London, 1989)Google Scholar; Lee, J.J., Ireland 1912–1985: politics and society (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar. And for longer chronological spans, Foster, R.F. (ed.), The Oxford illustrated history of Ireland (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar; Bottigheimer, K.S., Ireland and the Irish (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Ranelagh, J.O’Beirne, A short histoiy of Ireland (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; de Paor, Liam, The peoples of Ireland from prehistory to modern times (London, 1986)Google Scholar. The early appearance or reprinting of many of these works in paperback editions, and the wide interest which they have aroused on radio and television, also suggests that Bradshaw’s claims about the emergence of a universally-acknowledged ‘credibility gap ... between the new professional history and the general public’ (‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, pp 341, 350) are very much exaggerated.

17 Elsewhere, Edwards claimed that ‘the older, more moderate and even imperialist nationalism which distinguished the writings of fair-minded historians . . . continued after 1922 in the works of MacNeill and Curtis, in those of MacNeill’s disciples Hogan and Hayes-McCoy, and in those of Curtis’s pupils Bryan and Otway-Ruthven’: Ireland in the age of the Tudors (London, 1977), p. 193 Google Scholar.

18 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, pp 334–8 (quotations, pp 336, 338, n. 23). Professor Quinn, for instance, tells me that his own early writings were influenced by his socialist outlook. See in particular his contributions to Chambers’s Encyclopedia (London, 1950), v, 51-2, vii, 719–29Google Scholar.

19 These comparisons are further developed in Ellis, S.G., The Pale and the Far North: government and society in two early Tudor borderlands (Galway, 1988)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Crown, community and government in the English territories, 1450–1575’ in History, lxxi (1986), pp 187–204 Google Scholar; idem, ‘“Not mere English”: the British perspective, 1400–1650’ in History Today, xxviii (1988), pp 41-8Google Scholar. Apropos of Bradshaw’s charge of inconsistency in my work in purveying an argumentum ad nacionem against Irish historiography, while condoning similar tendencies among historians of England (E.H.R., civ (1989), pp 473-4)Google Scholar, it should be noted that these articles constitute a parallel critique of Anglocentric presentations of English and British history.

20 Ellis, ‘Nationalist historiography’, pp 6–10.

21 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, p. 331; Ellis, loc. cit., pp 12–16.

22 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, p. 329. Unfortunately, this is not the only instance of misrepresentation in the reply: see below, p. 302, n. 45; cf. Bradshaw, pp 333–4 and n. 12 (where my article is also misquoted — providing ‘the Irish state with respectable historical precedents’, p. 334) and Ellis, p. 2.

23 Ellis, ‘Nationalist historiography’, p. 11.

24 Ibid., pp 330–32 (quotation, p. 331).

25 Griffiths, R.A., ‘The English realm and dominions and the king’s subjects in the later middle ages’ in Rowe, John (ed.), Aspects of government and society in later medieval England: essays in honour of J.R.Lander (Toronto, 1986)Google Scholar; above, n.19. With regard to the fourteenth century, a similar plea that the English of Ireland be studied as part of English history has recently been made in Frame’s, Robin illuminating survey, ‘England and Ireland, 1171–1399’ in Jones, Michael and Vale, Malcolm (eds), England and her neighbours, 1066–1453: essays in honour of Pierre Chaplais (London, 1989), pp 151-5Google Scholar.

26 Kearney, Hugh, The British Isles: a history of four nations (Cambridge, 1989), p. 1 Google Scholar.

27 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, p. 332 (cf. ibid., p. 330). Bradshaw cites Art Cosgrove, ‘The Yorkist cause, 1447–60’ in idem (ed.), A new history of Ireland, ii: Medieval Ireland, 1169–1534 (Oxford, 1987), pp 557-68Google Scholar in support of his arguments, but Cosgrove’s discussion at this point does not bear out Bradshaw’s interpretation.

28 The Irish constitutional revolution of the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1979), p. 161 Google Scholar. In a footnote Bradshaw allows that James I’s attorney-general, Sir John Davies, had in 1613 interpreted this and similar statutes as implying a union of two kingdoms.

29 Quoted in Chrimes, S.B., Henry VII (London, 1972), p. 247 Google Scholar. For a discussion of the constitutional position of the English dominions in the later middle ages, see Griffiths, ‘English realm and dominions’, esp. pp 85–7.

30 Stat.Ire., i, 156.

31 Irish constitutional revolution,p. 161.

32 P.R.O., C 65/146, c. 18 (The statutes of the realm, 28 Hen. VIII, c. 18), SP 60/3, ff 201–4 (L. & P. Hen. VIII, xi, no. 521); S.P Hen. VIII, ii, 369. Cf. S.P. Hen. VIII, i, 439. See also Ellis, S.G., ‘Henry VIII, rebellion and the rule of law’ in Hist. Jn., xxiv (1981), pp 513-31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In passing we may note that Bradshaw’s deployment (Irish constitutional revolution, pp 160–61) of the Reformation legislation to develop a contrast between the establishment of state sovereignty in both England and Ireland and the establishment of national sovereignty in England only rests on a similar anachronism. Since the political community of the lordship was English, not ‘Anglo-Irish’, it follows that the Reformation marked the establishment of national sovereignty in Ireland too.

33 The address is printed in Bryan, Donough, The great earl of Kildare (Dublin, 1933), pp 18–22 Google Scholar (quotation at p. 22).

34 A helpful recent discussion of the problem is Frame, ‘England and Ireland’, pp 151–5.

35 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, p. 344.

36 Cal. Carew MSS, Book of Howth,pp 181–4. Cf. Ellis, Tudor Ireland, ch. 4, which discusses this and other aspects of English nationality.

37 Parliament rolls, 14 Edward IV, c. 3 (Stat. Ire., Edw. IV, ii, 188–94), 10 Henry VII, c. 38 (Stat. Ire., i, 55); B.L., Lansdowne MS 159, ff 5–18 (L. & P. Hen. VIII, iv, no. 2405); Bryan, Kildare, p. 20; White, N.B. (ed.), The ‘Dignitas Decani’ of St Patrick’s cathedral, Dublin (Dublin, 1957), p. 175 Google Scholar. Cf. L. & P. Hen. VIII, xiii (i), no. 872(2), reporting that the citizens of Waterford had set up the colours of St George on a castle they had captured in Baltimore haven. See also McKenna, J.W., ‘How God became an Englishman’ in Guth, D.J. and McKenna, J.W. (eds), Tudor rule and revolution (Cambridge, 1982), pp 25–43 Google Scholar.

38 Cal. anc. recs Dublin, i, 239–42,272, 324 (quotation at p. 242).

39 Berry, H.F. (ed.), Register of wills and inventories of the diocese of Dublin in the time of Archbishops Tregury and Walton, 1457–1483 (Dublin, 1898), p. 23 Google Scholar.

40 Alen’s reg., pp 258–9.

41 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, pp 331–2.

42 Quoted in Ellis, Tudor Ireland, p. 235, from Queen Mary’s instructions to Lord Deputy Sussex for the plantation of Leix and Offaly. As Professor Ralph Griffiths has demonstrated (‘English realm & dominions’, pp 83–105), nationality in the English dominions was determined by birth and allegiance. Necessarily, therefore, some such qualifying epithet as ‘English by blood’ would be a normal part of the political vocabulary of English communities outside England. On the Englishry of Wales, see Davies, R.R., Lordship and society in the march of Wales, 1282–1400 (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar, esp. pp 306–8; and for Englishmen bom in Calais, see Morgan, P.T.J., The government of Calais, 1485–1558’ (unpublished D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1966), pp 50–55, 126–7Google Scholar. University College, Galway, undergraduates taking courses through the medium of Irish happily use the parallel Gaelic terminology dividing the population into Gaedhil and Gaill: despite the ambiguities of these terms, students seem perfectly capable of distinguishing between those born in Ireland and those in Britain according to context, without the need to resort to words like ‘Angla-Éireannaigh’.

43 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, p. 330; idem, Irish constitutional revolution, p. 29.

44 See now also, Frame, ‘England & Ireland’, pp 151–2.

45 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’ misrepresents me as insisting that the Gaelic resurgence ‘had no historical reality in this period’ (p. 330); and responds with a discussion about ‘gaelicisation’. Similarly, in a recent book review, he suggests that in my Reform and revival ‘the notion of a Gaelic resurgence is dismissed as a kind of optical illusion cherished by nationalist historians’ (E.H.R., p. 473), and this elicits a similar response from him. In fact, ‘Nationalist historiography’ suggested that the Gaelic revival needed to be considered in the context of the movement in Scotland (pp 4–10), and Reform and revival argued that Yorkist and early Tudor kings succeeded in halting and reversing the movement in Ireland.

46 The Pale & the Far North.

47 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, p. 331. Cf. idem, Irish constitutional revolution, pp 23–6,40-42.

48 ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, p. 331 (my italics).

49 Recent works which deal with this problem for the English territories in the later middle ages include Bartlett, Robert and MacKay, Angus (eds), Medieval frontier societies (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar; Goodman, Anthony, ‘The Anglo-Scottish marches in the fifteenth century: a frontier society?’ in Mason, R.A. (ed.), Scotland and England, 1286–1815 (Edinburgh, 1987), pp 18–33 Google Scholar.

50 For the early modern period a recent comparative discussion of dominant minorities and acculturation is Canny, Kingdom & colony, ch. 2.1 should perhaps add that I am perfectly willing to use the term ‘gaelicisation’ in this restricted sense, as part of the wider phenomenon of acculturation, if this definition can command general assent. Yet there seemed no point hitherto in evading the issue by engaging in a kind of Humpty-Dumpty speak.

51 See Ellis, Reform & revival, pp 6–7, 55–6, 129–31, 139,193; Niocaill, Gearóid Mac, ‘The interaction of laws’ in Lydon, J.F. (ed.), The English in medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1984), pp 105–17 Google Scholar.

52 Dr Bradshaw has himself assembled some of the evidence for this from an unexpected quarter and for other purposes in his ‘Manus “the Magnificent”: O’Donnell as Renaissance prince’ in Cosgrove, Art and McCartney, Donal (eds), Studies in Irish history presented to R. Dudley Edwards (Dublin, 1979), pp 15–36 Google Scholar. See also Craith, Mícheál Mac ‘Gaelic Ireland and the Renaissance’ in Williams, Glanmor and Jones, R.O. (eds), The Celts and the Renaissance: tradition and innovation (Cardiff, 1990), pp 57–89 Google Scholar.

53 On Wales, the work of R.R. Davies, Glanmor Williams, Ralph Griffiths, and T.B. Pugh springs to mind, on northern England the work of Anthony Tuck, Anthony Goodman and Mervyn James.

54 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, p. 338.

55 The Irish dimensions of this process are explored in Ellis, ‘Inveterate dominion’ idem, The Pale and the Far North, pp 4,20-30.

56 Cf. the references in notes 7 and 11 above. For a pioneering study of the impact of British expansion on native Americans, see Pearce, R.H., Savagism and civilisation: a study of the Indian and the American mind (rev. ed., Berkeley, 1988)Google Scholar. The tensions between the different historiographical treatments of Raleigh’s career emerge in a recent collection of essays, Jones, H.G. (ed.), Raleigh and Quinn: the explorer and his Boswell (Chapel Hill, 1987)Google Scholar.

57 Ellis, Tudor Ireland, esp. pp 4, 8, 9, 128–9, 267–8, 273, 281–2, 283, 290. The sixth is Carrickogunnell, which Bradshaw misdates to 1535 and for which in any case the evidence (P.R.O., SP 3/6, f. 109 (L. & P. Hen. VIII, Add., no. 1096); S.P. Hen. VIII, ii, 350–51, 361–3) does not support his characterisation of the episode as an ‘indiscriminate massacre of civilians and garrison alike’ (p. 338).

58 See, e.g., Frame, Robin (ed.), ‘The justiciar and the murder of the MacMurroughs in 1282’ in I.H.S., xviii no. 70 (Sept. 1972), pp 223-30Google Scholar; Lucas, A.T., ‘The plundering and burning of churches in Ireland, 7th to 16th century’ in Rynne, Etienne (ed.), North Munster studies (Limerick, 1967), pp 172–229 Google Scholar; Lydon, J.F., ‘The Braganstown massacre, 1329’ in Louth Arch. Soc. Jn., xix (1977-80), pp 5–16 Google Scholar; Cosgrove, Art, ‘The execution of the earl of Desmond, 1468’ in Kerry Arch. Soc. Jn., viii (1975), pp 11–27 Google Scholar.

59 S.P. Hen. VIII, ii, 201, 217–19; P.R.O., SP 60/2, f. 62 (L. & P. Hen. VIII, vii, no. 1404).

60 P.R.O., SP 3/14, f. 41 (L. & P. Hen. VIII, vii, no. 1064); P.R.O. 31/18/3/1, ff 127 (L. & P. Hen. VIII, vii, no. 1095), 139 (L. & P. Hen. VIII, vii, no. 1257).

61 P.R.O., SP 1/86, f. 160 (L. & P. Hen. VIII, vii, no. 1366), SP 60/2, ff 100–01 (L. & P. Hen. VIII, viii, no. 449).

62 Ellis, S.G., ‘Henry VIII, rebellion and the rule of law’ in Hist. Jn., xxiv (1981), pp 513-31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Tudor Ireland, pp 4, 129.

63 Canny, Nicholas, The. Elizabethan conquest of Ireland: a pattern established, 1565–1576 (Hassocks, 1976)Google Scholar, chs 6–7, is a notable exception.

64 S.P. Hen. VIII, iii, 18, 27–8.

65 White, D.G., ‘Henry VIII’s Irish kerne in France and Scotland, 1544–1545’ in Ir. Sword, iii (1957-8), pp 213-25Google Scholar; Davies, C.S.L., ‘Provisions for armies, 1509–50: a study in the effectiveness of early Tudor government’ in Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xvii (1964-5), pp 234-48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 B.L., Caligula B. V, ff 2–36 (L. & P. Hen. VIII, xxi (i), no. 1279), Add. MS 32,655, ff 26–8 (L. & P. Hen. VIII, xix, no. 684); P.R.O., SP 49/8, ff 183–6 (L. & P. Hen. VIII, xx (ii), no. 400).

67 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, pp 341, 350.

68 Ibid., pp 346, 348.

69 (Cambridge, 1944).

70 (London, 1931).

71 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, p. 348.

72 Ibid., p. 349.

73 Notwithstanding the revolutionary changes of the seventeenth century and the recent influx of immigrants from the erstwhile British Empire, the English nation was relatively homogeneous, with a pronounced degree of continuity in its culture and administrative institutions going back to medieval times. By contrast, the Irish experience was of pronounced institutional discontinuity. Moreover, Butterfield’s alleged conversion to Whig history took place at a time when the United Kingdom was threatened by the particularly odious Nazi tyranny which already controlled most of Europe. Surely the threat to Irish liberty implied by Bradshaw is of a very different order.

74 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, pp 346, 348, 349. Is it mere coincidence in this context that Bradshaw’s version of nationalist history matches the parody which he constructed of my arguments about the dangers of this perspective on the past — ‘that in Ireland national historiography operates as a function of nationalist ideology, that the enterprise of recovering the nation’s historical past is conducted in the interest of underwriting and perpetuating a current mythology’ (E.H.R., p. 473 (my italics))?

75 Bradshaw, ‘Nationalism & historical scholarship’, p. 351.

76 In connexion with this paper, I am deeply grateful to Professor David Quinn and Alison Quinn for their recollections about Irish historians and their writings in the 1930s. Earlier drafts were read by a number of friends. I should particularly like to thank Ciaran Brady, Robin Frame and Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh for their comments and suggestions.