Ireland: Contested Ideas of Nationalism and History

16. The Great Famine: Legend and Reality (1957)

Chapter Sixteen The Great Famine Legend and Reality () The course taken by Irish nationalism during the nineteenth century was largely determined by men and circumstances peculiar to Ireland; its general direction, however, was profoundly affected by wider European influences. Like other nationalisms of the period, Irish nationalism owed to the Romantic Movement its eagerness in seeking out history as an indispensable ally; and during the second half of the century it came to be conceived in historical terms, taking as its intellectual basis an interpretation of Irish history. Most nationalists sought, and found, in Irish history the justification and inspiration of their political opinions, Mitchel and Pearse, Davitt and Connolly being the most prominent and providing the most lasting contribution. In doing so, they reflected a general shift of emphasis in European thought. History, which for the philosophes was an irrelevant absurdity, became for nineteenth-century thinkers the essence of political philosophy, a change the extent of which can be measured by comparing the American Declaration of Independence of  with the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in . Both Americans and Irish rejected the authority of the British Crown and established a republic; but whereas, in , the appeal of the colonists was to the Rights of Man (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness), in  it was the “historic rights of the Irish people, which in every generation ... have asserted their right to national freedom” that provided much of the intellectual basis for the Rising. Thomas Jefferson assumed the self-evident truth of John Locke’s political philosophy when drawing up the Declaration of American Independence; the men of  270 turned to history for their justification. In doing so, Pearse, no less than Connolly, was a child of the nineteenth century, during the course of which the related historicisms of Hegel and Marx had supplanted the rationalism of Locke and Bentham. The eventual success of the Irish revolution inevitably brought with it the enshrinement of the successful interpretation of Irish history. In popular textbooks, in some newspapers, and in many schools this view of Irish history came to be accepted almost without criticism and any departure from it seemed to betray the actions of . Meanwhile, in the Six Counties of Northern Ireland, the government was at some pains to create a history of its own. The Six Counties sought their reflection in the past, and a historical monster called “The Province” made its appearance, not merely in the sixteenth century, but also in the second millenium B.C.1 The results were as bizarre as those of Marxists who attempted to canonize Sir Thomas More and Sir William Petty in a calendar of Marxist forerunners. All this and similar attempts to use history for political purposes may cause alarm but certainly not surprise. What is surprising indeed is for a government to sponsor a work of free historical research, leaving the authors at liberty, if the facts warrant, to strike at the most strategic point of the “official” interpretation. When this happens, there is cause for congratulation. It is difficult to believe that before the publication of The Great Famine,2 in , there had been no detached treatment of this central episode in Irish history. Yet such was the case. No significant addition had been made since almost the time of the Famine itself, when circumstances did not favor detachment. The main lines which the history books were to follow for over a century were in fact laid down in  by John Mitchel’s friends, Father John Kenyon and Devin Reilly. It was Father Kenyon who categorically claimed that “the plentiful harvests of golden grain [were] more than sufficient—ever since the potato blight—to support, and to support well, our entire population,” while, a month or so later, Devin Reilly’s letter to the Nation declared that the Irish people were being “coolly and gradually murdered” by the British government. The definitive expression of this view was given by John Mitchel in his writings, notably The Last Conquest of Ireland (), An Apology for the British Government in Ireland (), and History of Ireland (). Arthur Griffith in his introduction to Mitchel’s Jail Journal () accepted this interpretation of the Famine, and it received its latest expression in  in P. S. O’Hegarty’s History of Ireland under the Union, from which the following quotation is taken (p. ): The Great Famine: Legend and Reality 271 In the known facts of the...