Over the
past three years I have had the good fortune to have met, via the internet, a
group of people whose shared interest is that they once were – and in some
cases still are – contributors to a particular website. For me it was a writing
apprenticeship. For many of them it was another source of income for people who
were already professional writers with a significant body of work in print. Of
those who have ceased to be contributors to that site, several have gone on to
create and manage successful sites of their own. One of these, the excellent Decoded Science, contains articles
intended to clarify for the non-specialist information emanating from academia.
Following on from the success of the first such site its owner has proposed an
expansion of the idea to cover a wide range of subjects each with its own
“decoded whatever” niche site.
With my
usual lack of temerity I suggested that one such site might be called “Decoded
Ireland”. This led one of the participants in the discussion to introduce
the subject of taxonomy – in “decoded” terms, the problem of cross-over between
categories whenever an attempt is made to assign things to a collection.
Specifically, does Irish History belong in a collection headed “History” or in
one headed “Ireland”?
My
instinctive response to this question is to assert that it is not possible to
separate a place – and inter alia its
people – from its history. In other words Irish History may be a sub-category
of History but it is first and foremost a key element of any discourse about Ireland and the
Irish. How can such an assertion be justified?
Where Does American History Begin?
I shall
begin my argument by looking not at Irish history but at the history of America. Did
American history start with Columbus or the Pilgrim Fathers? Evidently not: America (or the Americas) was populated by various
indigenous peoples before those events so the continent’s history must include
the history of those people as well as of the Europeans who came later. And
those Europeans brought with them their own past history which profoundly
influenced their subsequent behaviour.
During a
recent BBC documentary about Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon spoke of his shock
when a much earlier documentary, produced in the USA in 1969 drew a huge amount of
opprobrium with sponsors pulling out because of the inclusive nature of the
political message it contained. Simon confessed that prior to this he had no idea that the
whole population of the USA
did not share the liberal ideals with which he had been brought up in the North
East and which he took for granted. To me that is an illustration of the
different histories of the states in the North and the South of the US. And not
just the Civil War, but the different histories that migrants to the North and
to the South brought with them from Europe.
But
American history is perhaps different from that of other places in a very
particular way: many of the “founding fathers”, as those early settlers are
often referred to, came to America
to start a new life because they did not like aspects of life in Europe. This is true, too, of many of those who came
later: the way their original homeland was being governed left them destitute
or persecuted or treated as second class citizens. They were driven by the
belief that they could make a better life for themselves and their families in
this new land of opportunity. So the culture, the politics and social attitudes
that shaped the new land inevitably diverged from the pattern of history that
continued to evolve in their former homes. And it must follow also that the
history of those former homes is different from what it might have been had
they remained.
Roman and Other Influences on Britain
Going
further back in time and looking at the British Isles, can it not be said that
differences between England and the rest of the mainland and islands of this
highly influential archipelago are the result of the Roman occupation? This was a period
during which there was much greater assimilation between the invaders and the
indigenous people close to the points of invasion than was the case beyond the borders of modern England. As a consequence Celtic influences remain strong in Scotland, Ireland and Wales 1500 years
after the Romans’ departure. The North and South of the archipelago were
similarly subjected to different influences by subsequent invasions and
occupations. Thus the Viking influence is stronger in the North whilst the
Norman influence is stronger in the South. Ireland,
like England,
suffered, if that is the right word, at the hands of both these later occupying
forces.
Finally, when
looking at Irish history it is impossible to ignore the fact that Ireland as an
independent nation is less than a century old. Its creation was followed by a
brief but bloody civil war that is still within living memory for some of its
oldest citizens and continues to have a strong influence on the nation’s
politics and culture. And yet despite that independence it retains a strong
affinity with the remainder of the archipelago. Meanwhile, the part of the island of Ireland
which remains within the United Kingdom,
was the source of violent rebellion that spilled onto the streets of England and the
Republic as recently as the 1970s and ‘80s. Indeed, as I write, protesters are
issuing death threats to politicians in Northern Ireland over a decision to
cease flying the Union flag on public buildings except on certain days, an
issue that must seem incomprehensible to the majority of outsiders.
