Contentious Issue Of Revisionism In Irish Historiography

Revising History has always been contentious in Ireland, ‘Revisionism’ has a widespread impact only when it is understood to influence the community in a substantial way. Over the last three decades in Ireland revisionism remains, a strong, and at times savage, historiographical debate as proceeded alongside the Northern Troubles and the Anglo/Irish relations of the past. Which has led to a contemporary political divide which is based just as much on the past as on current social divisions, and where that past was asserted as a decree for political action, the appeal to history was ever present in public discourse. The pressure on the past to explain and justify the present intensified the historiographical debate in Ireland and other countries.

Revisionism is essentially peering into history and challenging the strongly held perceptions that the majority of people and history texts held hence ‘revising’ history. Revisionism doesn’t necessarily make it true; it merely uses a different method of researching and analysing the past while the past event did or did not happen, the way they are told about now is never neutral. Revisionism is merely the attempt to re-analyse history from a different standpoint it can come from many different perspectives there are many points of perspective in history especially in Ireland as the contradicting sides have different perspectives. For instance, in an Irish context, you have historians that look at Irelands past through a unionist perspective but other historians may look at the same history from a Marxist class analysis and these analysis would have conflicting views of how these events occurred and would probably differ from the traditional perception of Irish history. Hence why Irish History and Revisionism in Irish history would be perceived as so contentious.

Revisionism became the dominant vision of Irish historiography for a period from the 1930’s through to the 1980’s, however, Revisionism came under attack for its incapability to deal with the more traumatic events of the Irish past. Events of great atrocity get played down and Revisionism tends to shy away from criticising the English/British for their actions in Ireland. But sometimes as during the famine, it is simply the fact of the matter that Britain did little to alleviate the starving and misery in Ireland whilst at the same time continuing to export food from the nation. some suggest that the Famine merely fast-tracked demographic trends already under way before 1845. The first post-Famine interpretation came in 1860, with John Mitchel’s. The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps). Mitchel’s cohesive nationalist analysis created a powerful narrative of the Famine. Mitchell created the history of Ireland from Cromwell to the 1848 rising as a catalogue of English oppression of the Irish people. Mitchel created an image of the famine as starvation in the midst of plenty. He presented the bitter prospect of thousands of Irish people starving to death while Ireland sent its remaining produce to feed the population of England. Mitchel’s account transformed the events of the famine into a terrible indictment of English ‘colonial’ rule and as a skilful use of propaganda the disaster became connected to the movement of Irish nationalism. ‘’The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine’’ Mitchel’s accounts of Irelands treatment under English rule were used to jump start a revolutionary mindset and make people strive for a free state.

Mitchel however disgusted some modern Revisionist historians they believed his language was forceful in tone and he had an extremist perception of the English and they disagreed with his accusations against the English and their treatment of the Irish. One of his extreme accusations against the British/English was that the famine was an attempt of genocide that the amounted British policies were set in stone to wipe out the Irish. He misunderstood what was really happening in the critical of food and the supply of Irish grain exports decreased substantially during the famine years. Although these implications could have been set up earlier and indeed they would have saved more lives if more of the crops were kept for the Irish and if the English had sent more resources but the exaggeration in Mitchel’s writing suggesting a genocide was uncalled for his extremist nationalistic view. His view although taken on by many nationalists was not accurate as the arguments regarding the role of the British government are not viable. In the summer of 1847, in the wake of the almost total second failure of the potato crop, the British government established soup kitchens throughout Ireland. At the peak of this scheme, over three million people, that is, forty per cent of the population, were receiving free rations of food Although this aided Ireland for a while and brought down mortality rates greatly it was a short lived aid that was never intended to be a long time commitment and with the closing of these soup kitchens mortality rates began to rise again. Some relief schemes that were organised by the English were set in stone to aid the Irish but actually made the mortality rates go up as the set in place work schemas 1846-7 which coincided with the period of highest Famine mortality due to the weak Irish that were forced to undertake this physical labour. This idea of revisionism is not to be confined to Irish history and does not necessarily undermine either version of the past. It does, however, provide a useful question in setting out to explore the historiography of the Famine.

Why does the traditional, nationalist version of the events in Irish history still dominate a powerful hold over the popular imagination in Ireland? The popular understanding of the Famine in Ireland still follows a traditional, nationalist concept. The narrative has followed through generation to generation we play the ‘blame’ game, and this is generally aimed at key groups that were present at the time either within the British government or within the landlord class. They may or may not have tried to offer aid, but we are made to understand they didn’t do enough. But from our understanding of nationalist history at the time this crucial concept that Britain left us starve and didn’t support us aptly and many people perished this powerful narrative still exists today. ‘Revisionism’ or no matter what other name you want to give it the new history is often identified with efforts by the same historians to propagate a different political agenda. ‘present-mindfulness’, in some contexts an innocent historical perspective, has non-the-less became a coded phrase for history with a purpose, a political purpose meant to change, not uphold currently existing ideologies or institutions. Institutions used the propaganda set in place by men like Mitchel to jump start the nationalist perception of the English. The catholic church, a powerful conformist authority within the society had remodelled itself in the post-famine ‘’devotional Revolution’’ as had many others hooked on to this idealist situation. Irish nationalism was presented as a potent home brew of tradition, and Catholicism a revolutionary transformation of Irish society and the Irish state that was sparked from the Irish revisionism of certain events that caused a contentious rift in Ireland between the unionists and the nationalists.

Revisionism has divided historical debate in Ireland and has stifled the more hypothetical and idealistic approach to history which has developed elsewhere. Revisionism has dominated Irish historiography since the 1930s, and more intensely since the 1960s. However, as every year more and more historians recognize the past new theories come to light and more research is undertaken, it is unlikely that this dominance will continue forever.

Bibliography

• Whelan Kevin, ‘The revisionist debate in Ireland’ boundary 2, Volume 31, Number 1, Spring 2004, pp. 179-205 (Article) Duke University Press
• Barlow, matthew. 2019. 'In Defence Of Irish Revisionist Historiography'. Matthew Barlow. https://matthewbarlow.net/2015/02/11/in-defence-of-irish-revisionist-historiography/.
• John Mitchel, The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps) (Dublin: Irishman Office, 1861). This originally appeared serially in Mitchel’s newspaper, the Southern Citizen, in 1858; it appeared in a U.S. edition in 1860, and in a Dublin edition in 1861.
• Donnelly, James S. 'The Great Famine: Its Interpreters, Old and New.' History Ireland 1, no. 3 (1993): 27-33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27724090.
• Whelan Kevin, ‘The revisionist debate in Ireland’ boundary 2, Volume 31, Number 1, Spring 2004, pp. 179-205 (Article) Duke University Press
• 'Beyond Revisionism: Reassessing the Great Irish Famine'. 2019. History Ireland. https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/beyond-revisionism-reassessing-the-great-irish-famine/.
• Haynes, Mike, and Jim Wolfreys. 2008. History and Revolution. London: Verso.
• Boyce, D. George George, and Alan O'Day. 2012. The Making of Modern Irish History. Hoboken: Routledge.