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Brahmins and carnivores: the Irish historian in Great Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

D. G. Boyce
D. G. Boyce*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Theory and Government, University College of Swansea
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Extract

This paper is concerned with the teaching of Irish history in Great Britain, with the students, the teachers and their subject. Each merits a brief mention before any detailed discussion, in order to draw attention to the problems that exist, and to clear up any misunderstanding or ignorance about the task that is to be performed.

In the great controversy between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine occasioned by the French Revolution, Paine made at least one telling remark in his refutation of Burke’s defence of tradition and usage: he declared that an hereditary monarch was about as sensible as an hereditary mathematician. An hereditary Irish studies student in Great Britain makes about as much sense as both. Much nonsense is talked about the inherited genes of the Irish in Britain, on the assumption that (somehow) an interest in, and ability to comprehend, Irish studies can be transmitted from one generation of Irish immigrants to another. This may be the case; but if it is, it probably takes its rise from social rather than hereditary factors; and it is no more likely to produce an intelligent, perceptive student of Ireland than of France.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 99 , May 1987 , pp. 225 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1987

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References

1 An earlier version was read at a conference held at St Peter’s College, Oxford, 20-22 Sept. 1985, under the auspices of Anglo-Irish Encounter. It was at this conference that the British Association for Irish Studies was formed.

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3 Referred to above, n. 1.

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16 At a seminar in the History Department, University College of Swansea, May 1985.

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21 This paragraph is based on Allan Massie, broadcast on B.B.C. Radio 3, 9 Nov 1984.

22 E.g. Hechter, Michael, Internal colonialism: the Celtic fringe in British national development, 1536–1966 (London, 1975).Google Scholar

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24 Morgan, K.O., ‘Welsh nationalism: the historical background’ in Journal of Contemporary History, 6 (1971), p. 156 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Robbins, Keith, ‘Religion and identity in modern British history’ in Stuart Mews (ed.), Religion and national identity (Studies in Church History, 18, Oxford, 1982), pp 465–87Google Scholar, and Coupland, Reginald, Welsh and Scottish nationalism (London, 1957), ch. VI, ‘Religion and politics’Google Scholar

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29 Howell, , Land & people, p. 45 Google Scholar. See also Colyer, Richard J., ‘The land agent in nineteenth–century Wales’ in Welsh History Review, 8 (1976–7), pp 401–25.Google Scholar

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32 For which see Deane, Seamus, ‘Arnold, Burke and the Celts’ in Celtic revivals (London, 1985), pp 17-27 Google Scholar

33 For which see O’Neill, Shane, ‘The politics of culture in Ireland, 1890-1910’ (unpublished D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1982), pp 114-17Google Scholar

34 For the background to such themes, see Houghton, Walter E., The Victorian frame of mind (New Haven and London, 1957)Google Scholar. Another fruitful comparison is the history of the Boys’ Brigade which, like Fianna Éireann, sought to infuse patriotism, military drill and religious observation into the country’s youth.

35 For a rare but illuminating example of this approach, see Dewey, Clive, ’Celtic agrarian legislation and the Celtic revival: historicist implications of Gladstone’s Irish and Scottish land acts, 1870-1886’ in Past and Present, no. 64 (1974), pp 30-70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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