Thirty years’ work in Irish history (IV)

Abstract

To face a bibliographer's task of assembling the titles and appraising the content of scholarly books on twentieth-century Ireland is to think of a number of works which one would like to see and which do not yet exist. First among these, surely, would be a History of Ireland in the twentieth century which would be social and economic as well as political, analytical as well as chronological, and include the historical background from 1914 or 1921, or perhaps even from 1891, of both the Irish republic and Northern Ireland; it would take due account of the historical inheritance as well as of the new influences and forces which belong uniquely to the twentieth century and affect all states everywhere.

Introduction: New Histories of the Irish Revolution

“…While it showed that some valuable work had recently been undertaken on 'Ireland's revolutionary years' (spurred on in part by the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising), looking back from the perspective of five decades, the review suggests that the Rising itself, along with its associated personalities and organisations, had somewhat overshadowed the revolution qua revolution. 45 In fact, as already noted, IHS itself had actively helped to shape this historiography. After all, it was only in 1948 (ten years after the journal's inauguration) that it amended its constitution to allow scholarly articles to cover subjects up to 1910, thereby excluding the years of the revolution.…”