Grand Opportunity: The Gaelic Revival and Irish Society, 1893-1910 (review)

A survey after the 2008 Irish referendum that defeated the European Treaty of Lisbon found that three-quarters of those who voted "no" said that they believed that Ireland could renegotiate the treaty, a scenario that would require the European Union to bow to the wishes of one percent of its membership. Self-confidence—indeed, some might say self-importance in certain areas—is a noticeable Irish trait, and not least at times in Irish Studies where Irish cultural struggles can seem to take on a momentous significance. It is a significance attested to, moreover, by the vehemence of the manner in which these struggles were said to have been contested. Consider the period between 1890 and 1923, which saw the fall of Parnell; the Gaelic League; the cooperative movement; Sinn Féin; Irish Ireland; the Anglo-Irish literary revival; the rise of fiction by the Catholic intelligentsia; the Boer War and World War I: women's suffrage; the 1916 Rising; the war of independence; and the Irish Civil War. Enough conflict there, one might think, for a dozen nations.

In the light of all this, Timothy G. McMahon's Grand Opportunity: The Gaelic Revival and Irish Society, 1893–1910 is a decidedly audacious book. Its author argues against a view that places greatest significance on the conflicts and controversies about the attempted revival of the Irish language that centered around the Gaelic League and its allied movements, in favor of a moderate and balanced assessment of its achievements and limitations. McMahon's book, thus, manages to seem both irenic and radical at the same time. Its interest is not so much in the ideology of Gaelicism as in its "popular phase." In addition, it is written in an accessible style, sometimes focusing on individual life studies such as that of Eoghan O'Growney, the author of seminal Irish-language instruction books. It traces his career from his early Irish-language writing for the Tuam News to his successful revival of Irish-language studies at the Irish national seminary at Maynooth in the 1890s, in spite of his own poor abilities as a lecturer.

Early on, Grand Opportunity presents substantial background social history and, as such, might well serve as an introduction to the period. In its closing chapters, it outlines with clarity and detail many of the activities and functions of the Gaelic League, such as the competitive cultural gatherings or feiseanna that culminated in the national Oireachtas, and the then-popular phenomenon of processions—particularly the Dublin language procession held annually between 1902 and 1913, which at its height drew more than 20,000 participants. These events tended to be more generally social than strictly Irish-language events, with "the number of entries [in a particular contest] in an inverse relationship with the sophistication of contestants' command of Gaelic." In other words, it was the competitions that required little command of the language that got the most entrants. If they did not much enhance the national proficiency in the Irish language at least the events "did provide a new note of social life in communities across Ireland." Ironically, the Gaelic League, because of its town-based structure, seems to have been least successful precisely in the rural Gaeltacht areas where spoken Irish was strongest.

McMahon begins by adverting to the body of theorizing that has taken place in recent decades concerning the social origins of Irish nationalist discontent. Among them, of course, is "blocked mobility": the frustration of rising expectations of those in the lower middle class leading to nationalist or cultural nationalist commitment. He argues that some of this work has not been grounded in empirical research into, for example, the membership of the Gaelic League itself. He attempts to fill the gap by providing data on the membership both of officers and members of the League during the period of his study. He does not, however, fully press home his earlier critique...