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A new history of Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Extract

The completion in 1967 of thirty years of Irish Historical Studies has been the occasion for a stocktaking (still in progress) of the achievement of those years in Irish historiography. They are coming to be seen as an era of remarkable advances in specialist research, in professional technique, in historical organisation, and in the publication of special studies, source materials, bibliographies and aids to research. Though this research has been unevenly spread, it has produced an impressive body of new knowledge on many periods and topics. The conditions for scholarly work on Irish history have thus been transformed; and there is a world of difference between the prospects for Irish historiography in 1938 and now.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1969

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References

1 ‘Thirty years’ work in Irish history’, above, xv, 359–90 (Sept. 1967), xvi, 1–32 (Mar. 1968).

2 See McCaffrey, L.J., ‘The American Committee for Irish Studies’, above, 15, no. 60, pp 446–9 (Sept. 1967)Google Scholar; Curran, Joseph M., ‘First Annual Report from the American Committee for Irish Studies, 1967–8’ above, 16, no. 62, pp 203–6 (Sept. 1968).Google Scholar

3 Many years ago I urged the need for a combined operation on the Irish migration to America by Irish and American historians working at both the transmitting and receiving end of the process (‘Irish and Scotch-Irish in eighteenth-century America’ in Studies, xxxv, no. 137, p. 90 (Mar. 1946)); I still believe that this would be a rewarding enterprise. The history of Fenianism presents a challenge that might be met by a similar approach. And among many historical questions to which answers are lacking I should like to know whether the group-consciousness that was being shown in the 1890s by Americans who called themselves ‘Scotch-Irish’ was a reaction against that Irish-American nationalism so brilliantly interpreted by Brown, T.N. (Irish-American nationalism, 1870–1890 (1966)Google Scholar; see above, xv, 438–45); how far the two movements had common characteristics; and whether the Scotch-Irish movement supported resistance to the Irish home-rule movement which Irish-American nationalism did so much to promote.

4 See Martin, F.X., ‘The Thomas Davis Lectures, 1953–67’, above, 15, no. 59, pp 276302 (Mar. 1967).Google Scholar