Ireland in the Nineteenth Century: Regional Identity (review)

This collection of essays derives from a conference held by the Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland and focusing on "regionalism." Deriving a concept of regionalism from American geographer Michael Bradshaw, the editors argue that an evolutionary model is a useful basis for understanding Irish regionalism. Using Bradshaw's concepts of core, periphery, and nation, they claim, provides one way of indicating the contested nature of regional identity in nineteenth-century Ireland. The editors then attempt to place the contributions into the categories of core, periphery, and nation, and to structure the book accordingly. While they focus on regionalism in their introduction they do not discuss how, in an Irish context, the concept "region" might be formulated. Is it more than "The West," "The South," "The North"? What role do economics, agriculture, religion, language, and even sport play in this formulation? Given Ireland's geographical size how useful is regionalism as a concept in the exploration of identity? In Ireland is "local" consciousness more significant than "regional" consciousness? Perhaps one way of fully exploring "regionalism" in Ireland is an interdisciplinary approach that takes account of a multi-layered world view and the formulations that go to make up that world view. The editors have tried to provide a theme for the collection but because "region," "regionalism," and "identity" remain undefined, the contributors, where they use these concepts, do so without reference to any other article in the collection or to the introduction. What we have instead is a collection of essays, on mainly literary topics, that focus on specific individuals and themes in the nineteenth century. Within that context this collection does provide us with a stimulating array of new material, all of a very high standard and all the contributions are worth reading in their own right.

The collection opens with one of two essays on the Great Exhibitions of the 1850s, at the Crystal Palace in 1851, Cork in 1852, and Dublin in 1853. Leon Litvack in an extensive, illustrated essay explores how Ireland was represented at these exhibitions. The exhibitions in Cork and Dublin, while inspired by the Crystal Palace Exhibition, were also expressions of an attempt to shape national identity. Litvack argues that the Irish exhibitions in particular gave a "lead to a quest for a national identity" (57). The fact that the Irish "masses" did not attend the Dublin exhibition in any great number, as A. Jamie Saris's article on the Great Exhibition of 1853 points out, leaves one to wonder how inclusive or acceptable this attempt to create a national identity actually was. Saris's article analyses the role of the most successful businessman in Ireland in the nineteenth century, William Dargan, in funding the Exhibition. Dargan's business exploits, particularly his investment in railways in Ireland in the 1830s, probably did more to unify the country than any "identity project." Dargan's own involvement in developing Ireland as a tourist site might have been explored more fully in this essay. How did the selling of Ireland help to shape identity? The thought of Queen Victoria purchasing a considerable amount of "Celtic" jewellery at the Exhibition, without doubt failing to understand its origin, encapsulates the fundamental misunderstanding of the Irish by the English. But then Irish consumers also bought this jewellery. One wonders what they thought they were buying into.

Two contributors discuss the Dublin University Magazine (DUM). In a stimulating article, Elizabeth Tilley argues that the DUM, while focusing on the condition of being Anglo-Irish, could not sustain any stable meaning for the term. By the 1860s the growing number of Gothic stories, and articles on the occult and supernatural, together with the journal's inability to be fixed in its identity contributed to general uneasiness within the Anglo-Irish community. Eva Stoter examines the ways in which the DUM and the Nation turned to "Germany...