Emerald isle
admires a concise and elegantly written account of the story of Ireland over five centuries
A Short History of Ireland 1500–2000 By John Gibney Yale University Press, 296 pages, £16.99
The demand for books on Irish history seems to be insatiable. The field is already well served by several longer tomes. Among them, Roy Foster’sModern Ireland (1988) endures and Thomas Bartlett’s Ireland: A History (2010) is outstanding. Not only that: the last few years has seen the proliferation of multi-authored ‘ handbooks’ and ‘companions’ to Irish history, reaching a climax with the launch in Dublin Castle at the end of April of a multi-volume Cambridge History of Ireland. In this crowded field, what sets John Gibney’s work of synthesis apart is its skilful combination of readability and, despite its modest length, breadth.
Gibney is well known in Ireland as a historian and critic with eclectic interests. He already has several books under his belt, the most recent being a History of the Easter Rising in 50 Objects (2016) and Dublin: A New Illustrated Historyy (2017), and he has honed his considerable communication skills as a walking tour guide and an outreach officer at Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery Museum. Those skills are in evidence in A Short History of Ireland.
This lively book is divided into five parts, one per century. In terms of page length, the 16th and 17th centuries are short-changed, but only marginally so. Hugh O’Neill (1550–1616), who held Elizabethan armies at bay for several years in the 1590s, is accorded as much space as Daniel O’Connell or Michael Collins – and rightly so. While standard politico-military history gets priority – with due recognition of the brutality wrought by conquest and plantation and its culmination in “the domination of Irish society by a wealthy Protestant landed class” – Gibney allows social and cultural history more room than most. There are good discussions, for example, on the early history of the Gaelic Athletic Association and on the fortunes of the Irish language. But while poets and poetry get a few mentions, there is nothing on music or on art, and important economic-historical topics – such as the dimensions of economic growth, and trends in wages and living standards – do not feature at all. One can’t have everything.
All five parts conclude with short didactic essays on topics “where historians disagree”. Controversial issues aired include early modern Ireland’s ‘ kingdom or colony’ status; the failure of the Protestant Reformation; the role of Irishmen in the British empire and the First World War; the influence that the recent Troubles, which lasted from the 1960s to the 1990s, had on the historiography of the War of Independence; and the role of revisionism – good and bad – in historical controversy. On the whole, these little essays are well done, and will prompt readers to look further than this very worthwhile and well-priced introductory survey.
Cormac Ó Gráda’s latest book is Famine in European History, co-edited with Guido Alfani (Cambridge University Press, 2017)