The Oxford History of Ireland edited by R.F. Foster
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 ISBN 019285271X
(The text of this edition first published 1989 in The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland)
If I check out my DNA profile on Ancestry, it tells me that I'm more than fifty percent Irish. My father's family is almost completely Irish (with a little Danish), while my mother is Scottish, English and Welsh. Because I grew up in my mother's home town rather than my father's, it is the Scottish connections that I absorbed growing up, so I know more history of Scotland than I do of Ireland. In fact the only Irish history I've absorbed is the internecine battles between Catholic and Protestant in Ulster which have been in the news, and the Dublin of James Joyce which has been in my books.
I mean to set out to correct that, and I have started (as you would) with the Oxford history. It's a relatively short book into which to pack a few thousand years of history, and so it's fair to say that parts of the book can seem like a list of "kings" rather than a true history. In fact in many ways, despite attempts by the authors to move away from an "old fashioned" history that focusses on political and military machinations, that's mostly what the reader gets, sometimes to their confusion as the roll-call of petty rulers adds up as one turns the pages.
History is what happens from day-to-day, and it's the job of the historian to try and knock events into shape to tell us a story - particularly in a book like this; a narrative of the creation of a people and a state. The authors in this book question the hackneyed themes of Irish history - the perfidy of the English and the iron control of the Catholic Church over the faithful, and the inevitability of sectarian conflict.
Rather than iron control from over the Irish Sea, this book portrays an England that, while seeking profit for sure, rarely had a coherent strategy for dealing with the land and the people that it had taken centuries to control. It was the internecine warfare between rival chieftains (probably a more appropriate term than kings) that led to the intervention in Irish affairs by the English, who arrived initially with thought of plunder and ongoing riches.
Once the English realised that Ireland was not as rich as was thought, it rapidly became an afterthought in English affairs, only brought to the forefront when rebellion threatened. The Irish began the long process of trying to accommodate themselves to English norms, if they lived East of the Shannon. The more unproductive lands of the West were, generally speaking, left to themselves, which created a wealth and status divide that existed well into the modern era.
It was really only after the Act of Union in 1800 that Irish nationalism began to grow, and that sectarianism became an issue. The Catholics looked for equality, and when moves were made in that direction the Protestants began to fear for their privileged place in society, and the downward spiral of English rule began, culminating in the creation of a "two-state solution" in the twentieth century, which left many of the festering issues unresolved.
This book is clear, but very dry and formal in style, which for me as a neophyte had too much detail without enough explicatory material to make full sense of it. That said, I now feel that I have an overall structure in my mind of Irish history with which to continue my journey.
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