Irish Foreign Policy: 1919 to 1973

Abstract

On the cusp of the twentieth century; Ireland was obsessed with memorialisation. This condition reflected a transnational zeitgeist that was indicative of a crisis of memory throughout Europe. The outcome of rapid modernisation, manifested through changes ushered in by such far-reaching processes as industrialisation, urbanisation, commercialisation and migration, raised fears that the rituals and customs through which the past had been habitually remembered in the countryside were destined to be swept away. The future of memory was deemed uncertain. Preoccupation with memory is pervasive in the writing of the period. It is apparent, for example, in the philosophy of Henri Bergson-namely in Matter and Memory [Matiere et memoire (1896)], the psychology of Sigmund Freud (as evident in several of his landmark essays) and, perhaps most famously; in Marcel Proust' s classic novel A la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927), originally translated as Remembrance of Things Past. 1 Writing in the early-twentieth century; the sociologist Emile Durkheim maintained that group identity requires a sense of continuity with the past. 2 This embryonic notion of social memory