Courtney McGrailYoung Ireland and the Writing of Irish History
by James Quinn
(UCD Press, €30 pb)
Felix M. Larkin
In its initial phase, from 1842 to 1848, it was the organ of the Young Ireland movement and was managed by the three people most closely identified with that movement – Thomas Davis, John Blake Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy. It promoted an overtly nationalist narrative of Irish history which captured the imagination of its readers and held sway in Ireland for over one hundred years afterwards.
When Moody and R. Dudley Edwards inaugurated a more sober and objective approach to the writing of Irish history with the launch of Irish Historical Studies in 1938, their purpose was to counter the widespread acceptance of the prevailing view of Irish history derived from The Nation.
That view of our history was flawed because it was partial and rooted more in literary endeavour than in the detailed archival research which is the hallmark of professional history. In the words of P.S. O’Hegarty – who, of course, largely shared the Nation’s outlook – the newspaper was written “almost entirely with propagandistic intent, appealing to tradition” in order to make the ordinary Irishman “politically-minded out of pride in the knowledge of the historic past of his country”. The Nation’s motto was: “To foster a public opinion and make it racy of the soil.”
Whereas the United Irishmen in the 1790s had formulated a political agenda which reflected the progressive ideals of the Enlightenment movement, Young Ireland looked towards an idealised past for inspiration.
Nationalism
The Nation accordingly forged a strong sense of Irish nationalism based on the supposition that the Irish were a distinct people who could trace their origins back into pre-history and had struggled gallantly in arms since time immemorial to maintain their nationhood against waves of invaders – to quote Davis, “against Dane and Saxon and Norman”.
This thinking closely paralleled that of other romantic nationalist movements in Europe at precisely the same time – especially, in Germany. These movements, like Young Ireland, made skilful use of newspapers, pamphlets and cheap books to propagate their ideas and thus create a mass solidarity which Benedict Anderson has termed an “imagined community” – in other words, a nation. It can accordingly be said that The Nation “invented” modern Irish nationalism in the 1840s.
In line with the values of European romantic nationalist movements, The Nation emphasised the primacy of the physical force tradition in Irish history. The attempted insurrection of 1848 was the logical consequence of this, but it fizzled out after a rather pathetic little skirmish at Ballingarry, Co. Tipperary – sometimes referred to colloquially as “the battle of Widow McCormack’s cabbage patch”. That effectively destroyed the Young Ireland movement, but its influence lived on through the public acceptance of its nationalist narrative of our history.
James Quinn has analysed Young Ireland’s approach to the writing of Irish history with great skill. This is a remarkably well-crafted study, grounded in deep research and written with an elegance of expression which is rare today in works of scholarly history. It is a major contribution to the intellectual history of our country.
There is a nice irony in the fact that Quinn was, with James McGuire, the joint editor of the Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Irish Biography (DIB) published in 2009. One of the projects which The Nation had hoped to undertake was the compilation of an Irish biographical dictionary which would highlight the heroes of the past.
This project was not, however, realised by the Young Irelanders. The DIB is an exemplary piece of scholarship, not the propagandistic effort which The Nation might have produced. Nevertheless, the idea began with The Nation.