Memory Ireland: Volume 1: History and Modernity

10. De Valera’s Historical Memory

142 10 De Valera’s Historical Memory M A R Y E. DA LY Eamon de Valera is the most important political figure of twentiethcentury Ireland. His political career is unprecedented in terms of a longevity unlikely to be exceeded by any future Irish politician. The only surviving commandant in the Easter Rising of 1916, he was still active in public life as president when Ireland celebrated the Golden Jubilee of the Rising in 1966 and the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Dáil Éireann in 1969. His personal papers, now held in University College Dublin Archives,1 testify to an abiding interest in history. His correspondence is peppered with letters from fellow-veterans of the struggle for independence, and he was interested in books, lectures, and broadcasts relating to the events and period of his public life, collecting transcripts and recordings of Thomas Davis lectures, for instance. Patrick Murray has dubbed him an “obsessive historian” (2001, 37). He also became a one-man archivist and personal repository for historical records and memorabilia. Many were assembled as material for his official biography,2 but his collection went beyond material that related to his own career. It includes such miscellaneous records relating to nineteenth-century 1. Eamon de Valera left his papers to Dún Mhuire, the Irish Franciscan house of study in Killiney. The papers were transferred to the Archives in University College Dublin, where they are held under a UCD-OFM partnership agreement. 2. There are two official biographies, one in English, one in Irish. Although they have one author in common, they are not identical in text: Tomás P. Ó Néill and Padraig Ó Fiannacta ’s two-volume De Valera (1968–70) and the Earl of Longford and Thomas P. O Neill’s Eamon de Valera (1970). De Valera’s Historical Memory 143 Ireland as transcripts of the Commission into Parnellism and Crime, versions of the constitution of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, ballads relating to the Invincibles, and other historical miscellanea. He was the conduit for the transfer to the Irish state, and ultimately to Avondale House, of many Parnell memorabilia (University College Dublin Archives [hereafter UCDA] P150). As head of government he initiated the Bureau of Military History, which now provides an unrivaled oral history of the Easter Rising and the war of independence. In the 1930s he engaged in correspondence with his former political adversary Eoin MacNeill over the possibility of establishing Irish cultural centers throughout the United States, so that Irish-Americans and other Americans “might learn something about our past and present” (National Archives of Ireland, Department of the Taoiseach Files, S9215A). De Valera’s long and active life inevitably blurred the line between past and present, between history and contemporary events. Speaking at one symposium in his extensive calendar of commemorations, he remarked: From the age of five I have been conscious of the political happenings in this country and knew all about them. My earliest recollection was of an eviction. I remember hearing the report of the Mitchelstown shooting being read. I remember the Pigott forgeries and the report that Pigott had shot himself. I remember the divorce proceedings and the disruption that was caused in the Nationalist ranks at the time. I remember the Home Rule Bill being introduced in 1910 and the talk that the Nationalists would be in full control of the position. I remember its defeat. I joined the Volunteers and took the side I have been associated with. (in Moynihan 1980, 576) At a time when historians were much more wary of writing contemporary history than they are today,3 De Valera exemplified a form of living history —practitioner and interpreter, guardian of the record. Murray has shown how he carefully monitored and controlled the writing about events in which he was personally involved, noting that “[he]e seems to have derived more than ordinary satisfaction not only from having helped to make history, but 3. Until the late 1970s, Irish Historical Studies did not publish any articles dealing with Ireland post-1920. 144 Modernity, History, and Memory from constantly reliving it” (2001, 40). In this he was by no means unique; his contemporary and frequent sparring partner Sir Winston Churchill is an even more striking example of this process. Historians have been conscious of the importance that de Valera placed on history as justification for his political stance. Murray refers to “de Valera...