These verses were written by the Irish poet to express his grief at the impact of the Williamite victory at the battle of the Boyne and all that followed for Ireland. They were chosen two hundred years later by the historian Edmund Curtis to make clear his attitude towards Ireland’s past. In 1923, just after home rule was secured for what was officially known as Saorstát Éireann (Irish Free State), he published his history of medieval Ireland, and where a dedication would normally be printed he inserted ‘The Absentee Lordship’ and followed it with these verses. In doing this, Curtis left no doubt that in his view medieval Ireland was a lordship wrongfully attached to the English crown and that it should rightfully have been a kingdom under its own native dynastic ruler. For this he was subsequently denounced as unhistorical, and to this day, especially in the view of the so-called revisionists, he is commonly regarded as not only out of date, but dangerous as well. It was argued that Curtis used the medieval past to justify the emergence of a self-governing state in Ireland. To quote just one example, Steven Ellis, the best of the medieval revisionists, wrote in 1987 that ‘historians like Edmund Curtis concentrated on such topics as friction between the Westminster and Dublin governments, the Gaelic revival, the Great Earl uncrowned king of Ireland, the blended race and the fifteenth-century home rule movement’.

Dorothy Macardle’s vast The Irish Republic first appeared in 1937, the year in which her inspiration and her patron de Valera unveiled Bunreacht na hÉireann, his own monument to pragmatic republicanism. Macardle, in Joseph Lee’s phrase the ‘hagiographer royal to the Irish Republic’, is rather out of fashion as a narrator of and commentator on the emergence of independent Ireland; it appears to be largely committed republicans and those who study them who now acknowledge and draw on her ‘classic’ work. The book itself is long out of print. Yet in its construction, its breadth of treatment, its declared ambition and its obvious subtexts, it stands apart both from militant republican writing of the period and from more formally dispassionate academic works. It is also a monument to the emergence of the ‘slightly constitutional’ politics of the first generation of Fianna Fáil, the party created by de Valera to bring the majority of republicans across the Rubicon from revolutionary to democratic politics. Finally, in its faithful and adoring exegesis of most of de Valera’s twists and turns during his tortuous progress from armed opponent to consolidator of the twenty-six-county state, it provides a possible historical template for laying aside the armed struggle which has contemporary resonances for a republican movement attempting to talk its way into a new form of non-violent politics in Northern Ireland without passing under the yoke of unequivocal decommissioning: in that context, a senior Irish official recently pointed somewhat wistfully to de Valera’s statement of 23 July 1923 (as reproduced by Macardle) that ‘the war, so far as we are concerned, is finished’ (p. 787).

Late in 1868 the Dublin doctor, author and nationalist George Sigerson (c. 1836–1925) published, under the title Modern Ireland, a collection of widely quoted articles he had written for the Daily Chronicle during the previous year. Among the bewildering flood of Irish commentary on British rule, his was notable for its clear exposition and its moderate tone. From the perspective of the Liberal Party, on the verge of being returned to office, Sigerson’s observations were valuable in representing the views of a moderate, middle-class Irish element which might co-operate in implementing a liberal policy acceptable to all parties in both England and Ireland. His credentials as a nationalist were impeccable, yet he had not been seduced by the Fenian inclination towards violence. The book prompted modest praise from critics and enjoyed a reasonable success in the book trade, going through several printings and two editions.

One man who read the first edition was John Wodehouse, first earl of Kimberley (1826–1902), the immediate past viceroy of Ireland, who annotated profusely as he read. His notes are unusual in that they are extensive (52 of 393 pages were annotated), spread throughout the text, and generally lengthy (averaging twenty words per annotated page). A few involve the kinds of ethnically disparaging remarks to which he was prone. However, the majority deal with substantive issues with which Kimberley as viceroy had had to deal (Fenianism and land improvement) or would be dealing later that year as part of Gladstone’s first government (disestablishment and land reform).

Recent years have witnessed a very welcome flourishing of historical and political research on the questions of gender and sexuality in Irish history and Irish society. In particular, the shameful lack (until the publication in 1978 of MacCurtain and Ó Corráin’s pioneering collection of essays) of historical studies of women’s changing roles within, and contributions to, Irish society is now being remedied. No longer can it be said that Irish women are entirely ‘hidden from history’ (to borrow the title of Sheila Rowbotham’s famous 1973 book), although some lacunae in the literature are still noticeable — for example, the problem of lesbian invisibility remains. That said, the present selection of works is impressive in the range of issues, themes and theoretical perspectives it covers. Given that gender and sexuality have featured prominently on the political agenda of the Republic of Ireland since at least the early 1980s, these publications are both timely and much needed.

The first title reviewed here, Mary O’Dowd and Sabine Wichert’s Chattel, servant or citizen, is not specifically concerned with Ireland but has a much broader scope. Based on the proceedings of the twenty-first Irish Conference of Historians, it includes essays examining women’s status in Italy, Britain, France, Canada, Poland and the U.S.A., as well as several comparative essays. Among the essays with a specifically Irish theme are three in particular which deserve to be singled out.

Donnchadh Ó Corráin’s essay on ‘Women and the law in early Ireland’ makes use of Latin and vernacular legal tracts, contemporary genealogies and (to a lesser extent) vernacular literature to explore themes which include marriage, rights and responsibilities in relation to children, rights of inheritance, and sexual violence against women. Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha singles out the Law of Adomnán of A.D. 697 as a landmark in the written history of women in Ireland. Named after the abbot of Iona and scholar, it is ‘the earliest surviving law concerned primarily with [women’s] welfare, and very probably the first law with this focus to have been enacted in the country’.

Few Irish men and women can have escaped the mighty wave of anniversary fever which broke over the island in the spring of 1998. As if atoning for the failed rebellion itself, the bicentenary of 1798 was neither ill-coordinated nor localised, but a genuinely national phenomenon produced by years of planning and organisation. Emissaries were dispatched from Dublin and Belfast to remote rural communities, and the resonant names of Bartlett, Whelan, Keogh and Graham were heard throughout the land; indeed, the commemoration possessed an international dimension which stretched to Boston, New York, Toronto, Liverpool, London and Glasgow. In bicentenary Wexford — complete with ’98 Heritage Trail and ’98 Village — the values of democracy and pluralism were triumphantly proclaimed. When the time came, the north did not hesitate, but participated enthusiastically. Even the French arrived on cue, this time on bicycle. Just as the 1898 centenary, which contributed to the revitalisation of physical-force nationalism, has now become an established subject in its own right, future historians will surely scrutinise this mother of all anniversaries for evidence concerning the national pulse in the era of the Celtic Tiger and the Good Friday Agreement. In the meantime a survey of some of the many essay collections and monographs published during the bicentenary will permit us to hazard a few generalisations about the current direction of what might now be termed ‘Ninety-Eight Studies’.

Ireland’s uses of knowledge of the diaspora, much matured since the 1950s, now provide two master images from which to approach it: diversity and cohesion. On 2 February 1995 President Mary Robinson pinpointed its diversity as embodying the multifaceted nature of native Irish identities, and as a makeweight in domestic argument and experiment as to the recognition and acceptance of those identities. In March 1998 President Mary McAleese spoke of ‘our global Irish family’; she accepted such diversity, but sought its reintegration in a master image of cohesion, one obtaining both at home and abroad. The new Article 2 of the Irish constitution states that ‘The Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and heritage.’

In each case, desired standards are merged with claimed realities as to the diaspora. But any such emphasis whether on cohesion or diversity among the overseas Irish matches a growing body of work on the diaspora itself, much of it by the scholars within those communities. Critical work on this scale has not appeared before now. In the past collective work of this kind typically consisted of reprints and dissertations. One might question whether this scholarship answers the external burdens placed upon it.

The manpower alone here involved would suggest so. Over two hundred writers produce the Irish diaspora subjects in the four works here reviewed. And two of the editors, O’Sullivan, born in Kilmallock in 1944, a youthful migrant to Britain, and Glazier, an adult migrant to America, both epitomise the curiosity and enterprise of the newer emigrant scholars.