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INTRODUCTION

We are trying to make ourselves heard

Like the lover who mouths obscenities

In his passion, like the condemned man

Who makes a last-minute confession

Like the child who cries out in the dark.

Michael Longley1

1.1 Ends of the Century

Irish history, it has been observed, is often written as a morality tale, with a preformulated structure and established patterns of triumph and travail.2 Written in the aftermath of the paramilitary ceasefires of 1994 and 1997, revised in the wake of the St Andrews Agreement of 2006, and revised once again in the (relative) calm after the storms of Brexit and COVID, this story of Ireland might easily assume some of the characteristics of its predecessors in the field: a narrative of heroism and villainy with a happy resolution. The quality of the fairy-tale ending may not be fully perceived for some years yet, and the interaction of the book's themes may not coincide with the typology of other stories of Ireland. Yet the period under consideration here does appear to represent a discrete phase within Irish political history: while the book lacks the robust predestinarianism of earlier stories, it may at least boast a shadowy symmetry.

The book begins and ends with the turn of a century. The book begins with the creation of militant republicanism and militant loyalism in the 1790s - in the essential context both of European revolution and of a great international conflict: 'the events of 1793-4, in their total effect, marked a turning point in the history of the protestant ascendancy', J.C. Beckett has noted; Thomas Bartlett has called the 1790s 'the crucible of modern Ireland when separatism, republicanism, unionism and Orangeism captured the Irish political agenda for generations to come'.3 The book closes with, if not the demise, then at least the modification of militant republicanism and militant loyalism in the 1990s and after. Again, the dual context for this development has been the European Revolution and the apparent resolution of a great international rivalry. America and France fired Irish republican zeal in the early 1790s: the French wars indirectly brought about the militarization of this republican enthusiasm after 1793. The fall of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s and the radical recalibration of the ideological and material conflicts between communism and capitalism have affected Ireland no less than the seismic political shifts of the 1790s. Militant republicanism can no longer appeal, even indirectly, to the resources of the Eastern Bloc; the British government no longer finds a wholly compliant partner in the United States (if ever it did).

Moreover, in both the 1790s and the 1990s, social and economic developments broke through their constitutional constraints. The end of the eighteenth century was characterized by the consolidation of the Catholic propertied interest and by its increasingly vocal opposition to a constitution that recognized property, but not Catholicism. The Irish Protestant constitution (even - especially - when revamped in 1782-3) proved unable to accommodate this newly arisen interest and was abolished by the British government through the Act of Union (1800). The end of the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first in Northern Ireland have been characterized by the proportionate growth of the Catholic population and their increasing political and cultural confidence: the Protestant-dominated constitutional arrangements of the period 1920-72 proved unable to accommodate Catholic aspirations, and, after the Second World War, increasing Catholic political and economic strength. The constitutional development of Northern Ireland after 1972 has involved a spasmodic retreat from effectively Protestant institutions, as Unionism has splintered and the political and cultural confidence of northern Protestants has waned. There is, however, some scattered evidence to suggest that this process was temporarily halted - at least in the years up to 2016. It would seem that 25 years of violence (1969-94) have brought not only some belated Catholic political victories, but (at least for a time) a more critical self-awareness and reorientation on the part of Ulster Protestants.

All this broaches the characteristic fin-de-siècle theme of decadence. The late eighteenth century witnessed the first symptoms of the decay of Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, albeit a decay well screened by a luxuriant social and political culture: the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have witnessed the formal decay of Protestant predominance in Northern Ireland (screened again by an exotic political culture). Whether the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have also witnessed the final departure of what has been euphemistically labelled the 'physical force' traditions of loyalism and republicanism is similarly uncertain. If there is, arguably, a symmetry in this story of Ireland, then its lines necessarily remain blurred.

1.2 Modes and Frameworks of Interpretation

Until recently the most common framework applied to modern Irish history has been that associated with the varieties of Irish nationalism. Work written in this broad tradition has become less common, given the steady professionalization of Irish history writing since the 1930s, but some of its features live on. The Irish history profession evolved alongside the development, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, of the Irish Revolution, and there was an inevitable overlap or exchange. In 1886, at the time of the first Home Rule Bill, historians from several traditions debated the achievement of Grattan's parliament, the assembly abolished in 1800 through the Act of Union: nationalist commentators saw an economic and cultural flowering in Ireland as a result of legislative independence, while unionist commentators stressed the merits of Union. Heroes of the campaign to repeal the Union, such as Thomas Davis, were lauded in celebratory biographies (Charles Gavan Duffy, Thomas Davis (1890)). General histories of Ireland (such as that by Mary Hayden) deployed a straightforward morality, emphasizing the benefits of self-rule and the brutality of British imperial government. This work has supplied several starting points even for some contemporary Irish historiography: an emphasis on the nobility of nationalist endeavour, on the suffering of the Irish people under British rule, and on the inevitable success of the national struggle. Such work, in its most direct expression, fell victim to the popularization of a more 'scientific' historical methodology with the creation, in 1938, of the influential journal Irish Historical Studies; intellectual proponents of an uncritical militant nationalism were also embarrassed by the bloodier aspects of the IRA campaigns after 1969. The paramilitary ceasefires in 1994 and 1997 have, however, permitted the renewal of a nationalist historical perspective on modern Irish history.

An alternative and, since the mid-1960s, a highly influential interpretative approach has been labelled as 'liberal'. Such work has its origins as a reaction against the most elaborate and unconvincing nationalist rhetoric, and - certainly in the view of critics such as Bradshaw - has substituted a rationalist aridity for nationalist floridity.4 The characteristics of this work tend to be an intolerance of intolerance - a disdainful attitude towards popular political institutions and culture - combined with a much more sensitive approach to the diversity of modern Ireland than that adopted by the traditionalists. Nationalists tend to see Ireland as an ethnic nation subjugated by a neighbouring imperial power (Britain); 'liberals' place greater emphasis on the 'varieties of Irishness' and are warier about the crude application of national labels.5 'Liberals' tend not to accept that Ireland was bound by a simple colonial relationship with Britain.

The counter-revisionist critics of this dominant tendency within Irish historical scholarship fall into a variety of camps (not all of which are discrete). Counter-revisionism may at once be a reassertion of patriotic certainties: in this sense, counter-revisionism may be seen as an Irish expression of the historiography of the radical right prevalent in the 1980s and after. By extension, counter-revisionism may be seen as part of the broader 'greening' of Irish society at this time, as evidenced by the election of Mary McAleese as President of Ireland (in 1997), and - in terms of popular culture - by the phenomenal success of Neil Jordan's film Michael Collins (1996) and Michael Flatley's Riverdance (Flatley appeared on posters clad in the national colours, and the pounding rhythms of his dancers suggested a militant Celticism to some - friendly - critics). However, the counter-revisionist tendency is as sophisticated as the revisionism that it seeks to subvert, and it is also arguable that counter-revisionism represents a post-modernist assault on the enlightenment verities of mainstream Irish history. In this interpretation, revisionism is a liberal construction, and therefore as flawed and as dangerous as other constructionist readings. Indeed, just as some crusading...