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WORK TITLE: Empire and Revolution
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
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COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/staff/profile/4513-professor-richard-bourke * https://aeon.co/users/richard-bourke * https://www.ft.com/content/d9214956-62b2-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male
EDUCATION:University College Dublin, bachelor’s degree; University of Cambridge, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Queen Mary University of London, England, professor, co-director of Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought; former co-director of Popular Sovereignty Network.
MEMBER:Royal Historical Society (fellow).
AWARDS:John Carer Brown Library Associates fellowship, 2004; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellowship, 2006-07; William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Foundation fellowship, 2009; James M. Osborn Fellowship, 2010; Andrew W. Mellon Foundation fellowship, 2011; fellow at Wissenshaftskolleg zu Berlin, 2o14-15; co-recipient, Istvan Hont Memorial Book Prize in Intellectual History, 2016.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Journal of Modern History and Historical Journal. Contributor to books, including The Cambridge Companion to Burke, edited by David Swan and Chris Insole, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
SIDELIGHTS
Richard Bourke, who was educated at University College Dublin and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, is a professor in the history of political thought at Queen Mary University of London. A particular focus of his work is the political thought of the enlightenment and the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He has coedited several anthologies and is the author of books Edmund Burke and on political thought in Ireland.
Peace in Ireland
In Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas Bourke examines political conflict in Northern Ireland from 1968 to 2003. Marked by violent events such as car bombings and targeted killings, the Troubles have sometimes been seen as a war of loyalties or religions. But Bourke argues that the Troubles should be considered a war of ideas which stemmed from conflicting views on the meaning and value of democracy and equality. As the author shows, equating democracy simply with the will of the majority has proved problematic: majority governments in both Northern Ireland and the Republic have acted similarly, denying equal rights to minorities (Catholics in the North, and Protestants in the Republic) and thus contributing to continued injustice. And a resulting demand for political justice has, in the author’s view, been the primary motivation for the decades of fighting.
London Telegraph contributor Ruth Dudley Edwards observed that the author “brings a clear and informed mind to a well-worn issue; and he has an interesting thesis,” but went on to question Bourke’s perspective as a London-based intellectual who had not spent significant time actually living in Northern Ireland. Writing in the London Independent, Stephen Howe found originality in much of Bourke’s analysis. “This intriguing analysis,” said a contributor to Contemporary Review, could be considered “a study into the limits of democracy and its devotion to majority rule.”
The Princeton History of Modern Ireland
Edited with Ian McBride, The Princeton History of Modern Ireland contains essays on the political, social, cultural, religious, and literary history of Ireland from the sixteenth century to the postmodern era. Writing in Choice, P.C. Kennedy praised the editors for their “postrevisionist perspective” in featuring the work of younger scholars whose work has “moved beyond the long-standing focus on Irish nationalism and statehood.” Topics include the Irish language; feminism; the Irish diaspora; media and culture; political violence; and economics; as well as essays on historic events including colonization; Ireland under the Union; independent Ireland, and Northern Ireland.
Harrison Wick, writing in Booklist, hailed the The Princeton History of Modern Ireland as a “commanding volume” and a “comprehensive resource” for both general and specialized readerships. Irish Times contributor Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh expressed similar admiration, stating: “The scholarship is formidable; all the chapters are grounded in the most up-to-date research, all are substantial, the best sparkle with original insights.”
Empire and Revolution
In Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke Bourke provides a thorough overview and analysis of Burke’s philosophy and career. Born in Dublin in 1729, Burke was a noted author, orator, political theorist, and statesman, serving as a member of the British parliament in the House of Commons. His views reflect the moral complexities of a tumultuous era of philosophical and political revolution. Burke supported the colonists’ cause in the American War of Independence and supported rights for Irish Catholics. But he also supported property and class rights and defended the rights of imperial sovereignty. He became known as the father of modern British conservatism, admired by the political right but reviled by the left as an apologist for empire. The author strives to show his subject as a more nuanced thinker than polemicists have accepted. He discusses Burke’s major philosophical work, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, published in 1757, and goes on to consider the philosopher’s thought and actions relating to the United States; Britain; India; France; and Ireland. In the end, the author presents a view of Burke as a supporter of natural rights, property rights, and responsible government.
Deriding previous views of Burke as “caricatures rendered by the fattest of brushes,” Financial Times contributor Gavin Jacobson hailed Empire and Revolution as “the finest of intellectual portraits” by comparison. The book “brings the intricacies of Burke’s mind into sharper relief than previous accounts,” said Jacobson, and demonstrates that the philosopher “cannot be situated with comfortingly simple categories of left and right, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary, liberal or conservative. And at a time of soaring disenchantment with politicians, it is a reminder of why we value intellectual independence.” M. Blitz, writing in Choice, praised Empire and Revolution as a “carefully argued book [that] deserves to be read by anyone with a serious interest in Burke.” Noting the book’s thorough scholarship, thoughtful organization, and convincing argument, Gavin Murray-Miller observed in H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online that the author presents “an interesting reappraisal of one of modern history’s most ambiguous political thinkers.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 1, 2016, Harrison Wick, review of The Princeton History of Modern Ireland, p. 11.
Choice, June, 2016, M. Blitz, review of Empire and Revolution: the Political Life of Edmund Burke, p. 1545; July, 2016, P.C .Kennedy, review of The Princeton History of Modern Ireland, p. 1668.
Contemporary Review, March 1, 2004, review of Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas, p. 188.
New Statesman, January 5, 2004, Maurice Walsh, “An Immodest Proposal,” p. 41.
ONLINE
Aeon, https://aeon.co/ (May 22, 2017), Bourke profile.
Financial Times, https://www.ft.com/ (May 22, 2017), Gavin Jacobson, review of Empire and Revolution.
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, https://networks.h-net.org/ (May 22, 2017), Gavin Murray-Miller, review of Empire and Revolution.
Irish Times Online, http://www.irishtimes.com/ (May 22, 2017), Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, review of The Princeton History of Modern Ireland.
London Independent Online, http://www.independent.co.uk/ (May 22, 2017), review of Peace in Ireland.
London Telegraph Online, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ (May 22, 2017), Ruth Dudley Edwards, review of Peace in Ireland.
Queen Mary University of London School of History Web Site, http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/ (May 22, 2017), Bourke faculty profile.*
Richard Bourke
Professor in the History of Political Thought, Queen Mary University of London
Richard Bourke is a professor in the history of political thought at Queen Mary University of London. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement and Prospect magazine, among others. His most recent book is Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke (2015).
Professor Richard Bourke
Professor in the History of Political Thought
Location Arts Two 4.05
Email: r[dot]bourke[at]qmul.ac.uk (link sends e-mail)
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 8345
Richard Bourke took his first degree at University College Dublin and completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge. He is co-director of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought, and previously co-directed the AHRC-funded Popular Sovereignty Network. In 2016 he was joint winner of the István Hont Memorial Book Prize in Intellectual History (link is external). He has held a number of visiting positions in Germany and the USA, most recently an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship at the Huntington Library in San Marino, and a Visiting Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin. He has reviewed and commented on current affairs for The Financial Times, Prospect Magazine, Standpoint, The Nation, The Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement and the BBC.
Research
Richard Bourke’s work has focused on the history of political theory, particularly on enlightenment political thought, but also on ancient intellectual history and political ideas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has also written widely on Irish history, above all on the Troubles. In addition he has written on various issues in contemporary political thought, ranging from nationalism and conservatism to political judgment and popular sovereignty. His principal publications include Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke (link is external) and Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas (link is external). He has also co-edited Political Judgement (link is external), The Princeton History of Modern Ireland (link is external), and Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective (link is external). He is currently working on the philosophy of history since Kant, and on the history of democracy.
Eighteenth-Century Political Thought
Enlightenment Intellectual History
Ancient Political Thought
Twentieth-Century Political Ideas
Political Judgement
Democracy
Modern Nationalism
Irish History
Current PhD Students
Conor Bollins – The Eighteenth-Century Population Debate in Relation to Theories of Social and Political Stability
Catherine Hulse – Popular sovereignty, law, and ideology: Rousseau and the French Revolution after the Terror
Undergraduate teaching
HST6401 - The Enlightenment (I) and (II)
HST4603 - The Foundations of Modern Thought: Introduction to Intellectual History
Postgraduate teaching
HST7305 - Democracy: Ancient and Democracy: Modern
Postgraduate supervision
Professor Bourke welcomes applications from candidates wishing to undertake doctoral research in the following areas:
History of Political Thought
Enlightenment Intellectual History
Modern Irish History
Publications
Recent Selected Publications
Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke (link is external) (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. xxiv + 1044 pp.
Editor, with Quentin Skinner, and contributor, Popular Sovereignty in Historical Context (link is external) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)
Editor, with Ian McBride, and contributor, The Princeton History of Modern Ireland (link is external) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 448 pp.
Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas (link is external)(London: Random House, Pimlico, 2003, 2nd edition with new Preface, 2012), xvi + 462 pp.
‘Party, Parliament and Conquest in Newly Ascribed Burke Manuscripts’, Historical Journal (link is external), 55:3 (September 2012), pp. 619–52.
‘Burke, Enlightenment and Romanticism’ in David Dwan and Chris Insole eds., The Cambridge Companion to Burke (link is external) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 27–40.
‘Languages of Conflict and the Northern Ireland Troubles’, Journal of Modern History (link is external), 83:3 (September 2011), pp. 544–78.
‘Pocock and the Presuppositions of the New British History’, Historical Journal (link is external), 53:3 (September 2010), pp. 747–70.
Editor, with Raymond Geuss, and contributor, Political Judgement: Essays for John Dunn (link is external) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), viii + 354 pp.
Fellowships and Awards
Joint winner of the István Hont Memorial Book Prize in Intellectual History (link is external) (2016)
Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (link is external) (2014-15)
James M. Osborn Fellowship in English Literature and History (link is external), Beinecke Library, Yale (2010).
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Fellowship (link is external), UCLA (2009).
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship (link is external), Historical Institute, University of Munich, Germany (2006–07).
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship (link is external), Huntington Library, San Marino (2011).
John Carter Brown Library Associates Fellowship (link is external), Brown University (2004).
Membership of professional associations or societies
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (link is external)
Editorial Positions
Board of Advisors, Journal of British Studies (link is external), Cambridge University Press
Series Co-Editor, Ideas in Context (link is external), Cambridge University Press
European Advisory Board, Princeton University Press (link is external)
Editorial Board, (link is external)Modern Intellectual History (link is external)
Editorial Board, History of European Ideas (link is external)
Recent broadcasts, public lectures and interviews
Edmund Burke (New Books Network (link is external))
Sovereignty (In Our Time) (link is external)
What was the Old Regime? (link is external)
The Prudence, Principles and Passion of Edmund Burke: A Conversation with Richard Bourke (link is external)
Talking History (Edmund Burke) (link is external)
Edmund Burke (The National Review) (link is external)
Edmund Burke and the Origins of Conservatism (link is external)
Popular Sovereignty (link is external)
British Conservatism: The Grand Tour (link is external)
Edmund Burke (In Our Time) (link is external)
Edmund Burke on Politics (link is external)
Appearances in the media
Richard Bourke has commented on both past and current affairs, particularly on British, Irish and European politics, as well as on the history of ideologies like democracy and conservatism, for a range of print and other media, including BBC television, the BBC World Service (link is external), BBC Radio (link is external), Press TV (link is external), RTÉ Radio (link is external), Financial Times (link is external), The Irish Times (link is external)and Prospect Magazine (link is external). He has also written essays and reviews for such periodicals as the Times Literary Supplement (link is external), Political Quarterly (link is external), The Literary Review (link is external), Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte (link is external)and Revista de História da Biblioteca Nacional.
The Princeton history of modern Ireland
P.C. Kennedy
53.11 (July 2016): p1668.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
The Princeton history of modern Ireland, ed. by Richard Bourke and Ian McBride. Princeton, 2016. 526p bibl index afp ISBN 9780691154060 cloth, $45.00; ISBN 9781400874064 ebook, contact publisher for price
(cc) 53-4960
DA938
2015-10402 CIP
Though this excellent collection of essays does provide a narrative account of Ireland since the 16th century, it is not a textbook but rather a compilation of the latest scholarship on modern Irish political, social, cultural, religious, and literary history. The editors offer a postrevisionist perspective, gathering an impressive new generation of scholars whose interests and analyses have moved beyond the long-standing focus on Irish nationalism and statehood. The ambitious scope of the collection requires a format--21 short essays cover long chronological periods (e.g., "Ascendancy Ireland 1660-1800") or broad thematic topics (e.g., "The Irish Language," "Feminism," and "Diaspora")--that at times limits contributors to providing quick summaries of the most significant issues. However, some authors, particularly David Dwan ("Cultural Developments; Young Ireland to Yeats") and Jill Bender ("Ireland and Empire") present strikingly original interpretations of their subjects. Regardless, all chapters highlight the best and most innovative scholarship, identify areas needing further research, and include extensive citations and suggestions for further reading. Anyone with an interest in researching, teaching, or simply gaining a fuller understanding of modern Ireland should start by consulting this invaluable resource. Summing Up: **** Essential. All levels/libraries.--P. C. Kennedy, York College of Pennsylvania
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Kennedy, P.C. "The Princeton history of modern Ireland." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, July 2016, p. 1668. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA457393540&it=r&asid=84b08b869e2a897861f261ab23e50d45. Accessed 4 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A457393540
Bourke, Richard. Empire & revolution: the political life of Edmund Burke
M. Blitz
53.10 (June 2016): p1545.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Bourke, Richard. Empire & revolution: the political life of Edmund Burke. Princeton, 2015. 1,001p index afp ISBN 9780691145112 cloth, $45.00; ISBN 9781400873456 ebook, contact publisher for price
53-4589
DA506
2014-31021 CIP
Bourke's 1,000-page, extensively footnoted book seeks to cover every aspect of Edmund Burke's thought and career. It begins with comprehensive discussions of his education and chief philosophical essay, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). Bourke (political thought, Queen Mary Univ. of London) then examines Burke's historical and political works and activities both chronologically and in five areas: the US, Britain, India, France, and Ireland. The author endeavors to connect Burke's political thought as much as possible to the political activities and controversies in which he was involved, thereby also providing a history of the politics of the time. He seeks to separate Burke both from current liberalism and current conservatism while placing him within modern political thought: his overall view is that Burke championed natural rights, property, toleration, responsible government, and the rule of law. Bourke perhaps underestimates the degree to which Burke set the stage for 19th-century historicist thinking and the innovations in his understanding of prudence and political virtue. Overall, this carefully argued book deserves to be read by anyone with a serious interest in Burke. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. General collections; upper-division undergraduates and above.--M. Blitz, Claremont McKenna College
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Blitz, M. "Bourke, Richard. Empire & revolution: the political life of Edmund Burke." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1545. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454943000&it=r&asid=e986f2a7bb15a062a738c927dc44f4e3. Accessed 4 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A454943000
Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas
284.1658 (Mar. 2004): p188.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 Contemporary Review Company Ltd.
Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas. Richard Bourke. Pimlico. [pounds sterling]10.00. xvii + 462 pages. ISBN 1-8441-3316-8. The author, who was born in Dublin but now teaches in London, discusses Northern Ireland's 'troubles' from the late 1960s to the present attempt at a settlement, the period from 'apparently insurmountable civil strife to the achievement of political agreement'. Behind the sectarian killing and intransigent attitudes lies, he argues, 'a collision of ideas'. The dispute was 'a product of modern democracy ... the value of political equality' i.e., Ulster's democratic institutions could not produce equality for those who felt the lack thereof and conflict resulted. What was lacking was a pledge by the entire population to achieve the common good, not the good of the majority or of one particular 'tribe'. Majority rule in Northern Ireland simply did not work for all its people. When this is mixed with a terrorist organisation waiting in the wings, which in turn gives rise to opposing terrorist gangs, one has 'the troubles'. A majority decision to remain British is, therefore, no more 'valid' than, in the years to come, a similar decision to become Irish. Majority rule neither has worked nor will work without an acceptance of the common good. This intriguing analysis could be called a study into the limits of democracy and its devotion to majority rule. (P.P.F.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas." Contemporary Review, vol. 284, no. 1658, 2004, p. 188+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA114594488&it=r&asid=05be61db45ac85c06ed696c3f2945486. Accessed 4 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A114594488
The Princeton History of Modern Ireland
Harrison Wick
112.11 (Feb. 1, 2016): p11.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
The Princeton History of Modern Ireland. Ed. by Richard Bourke and Ian McBride. Jan. 2016. 552p. illus. Princeton, $45 (9780691154060). 941.7.
This commanding volume offers readers significant research into the development of modern Ireland over the past 500 years. Bourke and McBride have edited a comprehensive resource for academic and general audiences that combines the research of 21 contributors. Each of the chapters offers readers a thorough and well-documented understanding of topics and events, a bibliography for further reading, and considerable notes from other sources. The book utilizes maps and includes an extensive introduction by Bourke and an index. The 21 chapters are divided into 2 parts: "Narrative and Events" and "Topics, Themes, and Developments," which reaches across Ireland from the sixteenth century to modern times. This resource offers readers considerable coverage and analysis of many facets of modern Ireland's history and is recommended for academic and larger public libraries.--Harrison Wick
Wick, Harrison
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Wick, Harrison. "The Princeton History of Modern Ireland." Booklist, 1 Feb. 2016, p. 11. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA443653208&it=r&asid=dac2bb916e5cefb87623be2c3de965d6. Accessed 4 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A443653208
An immodest proposal
Maurice Walsh
132.4669 (Jan. 5, 2004): p41.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 New Statesman, Ltd.
http://www.newstatesman.com/
In Peace in Ireland, his recent book on the Northern Irish Troubles, Richard Bourke tells a revealing story about Richard Crossman, secretary of state for social services during Harold Wilson's government of 1966-70. Referring to riots that had occurred at the Orange parades of 12 July 1969, Crossman wrote in his diary: "There had been commotions on St Patrick's Day, it may have been."
Although Northern Ireland no longer poses quite such a challenge, today's ministers would do well to have a firmer grasp of the local parade calender than Crossman. Keeping The Encyclopaedia of Ireland to hand might help. The general editor, Brian Lalor, acknowledges the difficulty of deciding what to leave in or leave out. Its aim is "to celebrate the gift to the culture of the world of a vibrant and irrepressible people". And in a pre-publication interview he said: "In the past there was an assertion to be made about Irishness: we don't need to make that now."
Certainly, several of the entries here disregard birthplace: Richard Ellmann, from Michigan, is included as the main authority on Irish modernists. Other entries are surprising because they acknowledge the Irishness of figures who could so easily be brushed out of the history, such as General Dyer, the colonial enforcer responsible for the Amritsar massacre in 1919.
Over the past decade, Ireland has become richer than at any previous time in its history. Between 1995 and 2000 its economic output increased by more than 50 per cent and its population increased by almost half a million. In 1968, at a time of less spectacular economic growth, a more modest Encyclopaedia of Ireland was published. I remember the iconic place it had on the shelf in our village primary school. Its black-and-white pictures conveyed an impression of dynamism: new hospitals, new schools, helicopters landing on light houses. The text heralded "a new spirit of tolerance" in religion and politics, "ever-increasing opportunity" in education, "truly remarkable" economic growth and a "fresh awakening" in the arts.
The same tone is partly evident in this vastly more comprehensive new version, although there are striking differences, most notably in the entries on the Catholic Church. The 1968 edition defended the clause in the Irish constitution granting special status to the Catholic faith by declaring that "the church of so great a majority must hold some kind of special position in a democratic state". By 2003 the Church's status is all but demolished: "Though Ireland still has one of the highest rates of religious practice in Europe, the lack of vocations to the priesthood and religious life and the inability of the church to appeal to the mass of younger people, coupled with increasing secularisation, means that Irish Catholicism must respond with greater elan than its contemporary complacency exhibits if it is to have any significant future."
Most of the entries are not as penetrating as this. You wish that some were, or at least that they were longer than some others. Do we need to be told when the waltz was introduced to Ireland or about the poems on the Dart train in Dublin? And there are surprising omissions: the novelist Eoin McNamee; the playwright Vincent Woods; or Douglas Gageby, the man largely responsible for turning the Irish Times, once Ireland's unionist paper, into the bible of the Catholic middle classes.
Overall, however, The Encyclopaedia of Ireland is a delight to consult and a valuable gateway to other reading. As well as distinguishing between 12 July and St Patrick's Day, Crossman's successors in Whitehall will be able to discover that "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" was written b y an Irishman, and to marvel at the practice of ether-drinking that flourished in the late 19th century: "The pulse quickens, the face flushes, and a wave of excitement is followed by visions, perhaps of dancing on clouds to heavenly music ..."
Maurice Walsh is a BBC journalist. He is completing a study of foreign correspondents who reported on the Irish revolution
Walsh, Maurice
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Walsh, Maurice. "An immodest proposal." New Statesman, 5 Jan. 2004, p. 41. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA112448322&it=r&asid=3bd5f6680a87ce2d3b5d14e0b7262131. Accessed 4 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A112448322
‘Empire and Revolution’, by Richard Bourke
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September 25, 2015
by: Review by Gavin Jacobson
Edmund Burke counts as one of the superior witnesses to the 18th century’s revolutionary decades. Born in Dublin in 1730, he rose to prominence during the Enlightenment, an era of accelerated ideological change nurtured by scientific discovery and a burgeoning republic of letters. He observed the triumph of commercial society; lived through the Seven Years’ War that drew in most of Europe’s great powers between 1754 and 1763; saw the extension of the British empire into India; and became a central participant in the debates that followed the American and French Revolutions. All the while, he endured the circadian rhythms of parliamentary politics, serving between 1766 and 1794 as MP for Wendover, then Bristol and finally Malton.
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Burke’s moral complexities also typified the philosopher-statesman of his times. He supported the right of resistance to tyranny but upheld the authority of empire. He was committed to the rights of conquest but deplored the “spirit of conquest”. He defended the rights of imperial sovereignty but condemned the standing policies of British colonialism and the East India Company. Most controversially, he championed the American Revolution of 1776 but scolded its French equivalent in 1789.
Such ambiguities have given him a contested place in the public imagination. For the political right, he stands as the architect of modern conservatism. Champions of this view highlight his sober pragmatism, commitment to parliamentary sovereignty, belief in the supremacy of private property, disregard for the collective wisdom of the people and mindfulness of the debt owed to past generations. For the left, he is the arch-antagonist whose apologia for empire and broadsides against the French Revolution betray a reactionary mind. Thomas Paine described Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) as “an outrageous abuse”. Marx branded him a “sycophant”, a “laudator temporis acti” (one who praised past times) and a “vulgar bourgeois”.
If what remains are caricatures rendered by the fattest of brushes, Richard Bourke’s Empire and Revolution is the finest of intellectual portraits. Bourke, a professor in the history of political thought at Queen Mary University of London, has marshalled innumerable sources across 1,000 pages to provide the definitive account of a life in ideas and politics.
In 1750 Burke entered Middle Temple to study law, but soon dropped out to pursue his literary and philosophical ambitions. Not a systematic thinker like David Hume or Immanuel Kant, he was rather an engaged polemicist who would exult in public debate. Nevertheless, early writings such as A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, first published in 1757, were pitched in a distinctly theoretical key. As Bourke notes of the Philosophical Enquiry, although it “is not a comprehensive treatise in moral philosophy, it does provide us with access to Burke’s theory of human nature as it sets about accounting for uniform features of the mind”.
Burke accepted the limitations of human knowledge and the volatility of individual judgment. Yet he was never hostile towards the bards of Enlightenment reason. Instead, as Bourke writes, he “saw himself as promoting enlightened ideals from within a sceptical Anglican tradition”. Rather than pure reason, Burke looked to artificial reason: arguments should proceed not from abstract norms, but “artificially” on the basis of experience and empirical fine-tuning.
Burke saw the limitations of human knowledge but he was never hostile towards Enlightenment reason
In 1759, Burke accepted a position as secretary to the English politician William Gerard Hamilton and, from 1766, he served as an MP. While he remained fluent in the argot of Enlightenment philosophy, the exigencies of public life meant that his intellectual pursuits would now be determined by events. Bourke identifies five main issues that commanded Burke’s attention in the House of Commons: the nature of the British constitution; the crisis in the American colonies; the British empire, especially the actions of the East India Company; Irish trade and the fate of Irish Catholicism; and the impact of the French Revolution on European politics. With absolute precision, Bourke recasts Burke’s thought throughout this tumultuous period in history, emphasising his commitment to political stability at home (based on a mixed system of government and the right to private property), religious toleration in Ireland, and justice for colonial subjects abroad.
Bourke’s superb book, then, has a double relevance. It brings the intricacies of Burke’s mind into sharper relief than previous accounts, demonstrating that he cannot be situated within comfortingly simple categories of left and right, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary, liberal or conservative. And at a time of soaring disenchantment with politicians, it is a reminder of why we value intellectual independence. As Burke’s friend, Oliver Goldsmith, described him: “for a patriot, too cool; for a drudge, disobedient;/ And too fond of the right, to pursue the expedient”.
Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke, by Richard Bourke, Princeton University Press, RRP£30.95/$45 1,032 pages
Photograph: Bridgeman
Murray-Miller on Bourke, 'Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke'
Author:
Richard Bourke
Reviewer:
Gavin Murray-Miller
Richard Bourke. Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. 1,032 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-691-14511-2.
Reviewed by Gavin Murray-Miller (Cardiff University)
Published on H-Empire (November, 2016)
Commissioned by Stephen Jackson
Edmund Burke has often appeared an enigma to many historians. His lengthy political career and prolific body of work spanned three decades in which he supported the rights of British colonists, spoke out against Anglican bigotry in Ireland, and vehemently denounced the French Revolution. His writings have been interpreted through both a liberal and conservative tradition, at once making him a principled defender of constitutionalism and a reactionary traditionalist and forefather of modern conservativism. In Empire and Revolution, Richard Bourke attempts to make sense of these contradictory legacies. In this extensive study of Burke’s political thought, Bourke sets out to examine the statesman within two contexts: the “microscopic” context of daily politics and the “intellectual” context of eighteenth-century political philosophy. Over the course of some one thousand pages, Bourke provides a highly detailed analysis of Burke’s life and intellectual development, chronicling his engagement with the American Revolution, Britain’s growing presence on the Asian subcontinent, Irish religious conflict, and republican revolution in France. It is not simply these large events and subjects that Bourke is concerned with in his book. His study focuses on the dynamics of political debate and rationality that came to guide Burke’s stances on these various issues. As Bourke observantly notes, for most of his political career, Burke was in opposition. His political thinking needs to be seen in relation to the policies he rejected just as much as what he supported. As he puts it, Burke was an “engaged polemicist,” and it is chiefly by understanding him as such that we might begin to reconsider his place in modern political history (p. 18).
One of the primary issues that Empire and Revolution seeks to address is Burke’s problematic relationship to the Enlightenment and his supposed turn to conservatism in the late eighteenth century. Burke did not owe allegiance to any one particular school of thought over his career and drew on a variety of intellectual traditions. Bourke does a good job of pinning down the specific roots of Burke’s thinking and the varied influences that wove their way into his arguments. Montesquieu, George Berkeley, and John Locke were all references for Burke, just as were theologians like John Tillotson and Edward Stillingfleet. This mix of natural law theory, empiricism, skepticism, and Anglicanism gave Burke’s perspectives a distinct character, but it was nonetheless an outlook in line with enlightened liberal thinking in Bourke’s estimation. Burke himself insisted that he lived in “enlightened times,” a claim embodied in his respect for rational debate and desire to combat “prejudice,” a theme he closely associated with diminishing the religious divides that pitted Catholics against Anglicans in his native Ireland. He deplored the Protestant Ascendancy and incessantly called for religious tolerance when it came to Irish Catholics, seeing Anglican discrimination as a threat to British society. Bourke depicts these enlightened attitudes from a formative age, citing Burke’s time at Trinity College, his participation with young Irish literary circles, and his tenure as editor of The Reformer, as an important period of cultivation and reflection in the future statesman’s life.
Yet Burke’s Enlightenment—if we may be permitted to use such a phrase—possessed a unique quality. Burke’s admiration for natural law encouraged doubts about the effectiveness of natural reason. He favored reason accrued through empirical refinement and accumulated practical intelligence, what he deemed “artificial” or “refined” reason. It was only through refined reason that wisdom matured and became more perfect through its consistent application and amendment. Burke extended this assessment to his views concerned with English law and the role of custom in modern society. English law had developed through experience and proven convenience, in his opinion. “Universal custom” arose through a process of experimental adaptation brought to bear on particular circumstances. By its very nature, English law was reasonable and not given to abstract or theoretical speculation. It was in this respect that Burke understood British constitutional liberty and the Anglican religion, seeing them as products of custom and adaptation over time. He rejected the idea of static and traditional Saxon constitutionalism popular among many contemporaries and insisted that religion constituted “the first opening of civility” in any society (p. 181). These broad positions would inform Burke’s thinking over his lifetime, and throughout his career lead him to shield both constitutionalism and Anglicanism from the attacks of inveterate rationalists.
These considerations provide a framework for the two main themes addressed in the book, namely, empire and revolution. As Bourke argues, Burke was never the archetypical conservative that many would later make him out to be. His ideas on politics remained firmly rooted in liberal notions of constitutionalism and governance. He maintained a distinction between society and government and did not believe that popular sovereignty posed a threat to either in theory. Burke even acknowledged the “right to revolution” under the proper circumstances, exhibiting his appreciation for Locke. He also upheld a firm belief that government was to advance the public good while protecting private rights. Britain’s mixed government was the best suited to manage these relations, as it protected the rights of each constituent part of society. For Burke, the “spirit of liberty” was a world historical phenomenon guiding modern society. It signified the progressive move toward impartial justice, the equitable application of law, and constitutional rule over the despotism and tyranny of the past. This “spirit of liberty” was contrasted with what Burke labeled the “spirit of conquest,” a term closely associated with the formal practice of empire. The so-called Spanish model of imperialism relied on force, coercion, and domination and was incompatible with modern society as Burke understood it. Burke began his political career as Britain’s empire was expanding, and it was, therefore, inevitable that it would come to play an important role in his polemics. According to Burke, imperialism posed a threat to the “spirit of liberty” in general and had the potential to alter established constitutional elements within Britain if left unchecked. In this respect, Burke intended to frame a brand of empire that was consistent with liberty, believing it could exercise a civilizing force through good administration and an appreciation for customary arrangements. Indeed, it was on these grounds alone that empire could be justified, a claim that would shape his positions on the American colonies, India, and Ireland over his career.
Burke took his seat in the Commons just as the American crisis broke and would side with the Rockingham party committed to reform and parliamentary prerogative. Evident is the fact that Burke saw the complaints of American colonists as part of a larger threat posed to British constitutionalism by the power of the Crown tout court. In attempting to adumbrate a new constitution for the empire, Burke endeavored to limit royal prerogative and support the supreme authority of Parliament. Yet Burke was willing to recognize that this supreme authority was, in fact, theoretical, making a distinction between sovereignty in the abstract and in practice. Empire was not a unitary state structure in Burke’s estimation, but rather a diversified collection of jurisdictions. His “conciliation” with the American colonists held out the prospect of allowing for sovereign colonial assemblies in order to effectively realize a constitutional empire. Burke argued that the punitive measures taken against the colonists during the early 1770s violated the rights of Atlantic British subjects and destroyed the principle of equality within the British community. Following the Prohibitory Act, Burke admitted that the colonists had a right to revolution, although he upheld his support for a mixed government compatible with empire. Burke’s vision was for a composite parliamentary system that would allow colonists to exercise their sovereignty, and according to Bourke this position was aimed at restoring the proper functions of the British constitution and saving the imperial government from the “spirit of conquest.”
These same concerns were evident in Burke’s treatment of the East Indian Company between the 1770s and 1790s. The company’s ability to engage in wars and influence local Indian politics were evidence of the spirit of conquest that Burke believed detrimental to the British polity. Remedying this malfeasance required greater parliamentary oversight of the company in order to prevent British commercial imperialism from degenerating into despotism. Sitting on the parliamentary select committee, Burke resisted efforts to impose English law on natives and protected native property rights against the commercial greed of the company, insisting that these measures were essential to preserving the “ancient Establishments” of the Indian people (p. 552). Good administration would eventually lead to native consent, fostering the style of constitutional and enlightened imperialism that Burke favored. Charles James Fox’s India Bill, in line with Burke’s vision of empire, aimed to restore accountability and law to imperial governance. This view did not profess that the government should be accountable to the Indian “people” (which Burke believed ill-prepared for self-government) but to a sovereign parliament that would check the despotic influences of company men and, by proxy, the Crown. The later impeachment proceedings against Warren Hastings would mark an effort to secure parliamentary power over Indian affairs and rally the Whigs to a platform of liberal constitutional government against despotism. It was not inconsequential that Hastings’s trial occurred in the midst of the French Revolution, as Burke began to draw broad parallels between the depraved “Indianism” infecting British liberty on the subcontinent and the tyrannical “Jacobinism” emanating from across the channel. As Bourke sees it, the two became synonymous, providing Burke with a platform that championed civic freedom and the rule of law over tyranny.
That Burke’s principled defense of morality and constitutional government vis-à-vis India occurred in tandem with the writing of Reflections on the French Revolution (1790) demonstrates that Burke was hardly an opponent of Enlightenment sensibilities and even willing to speak out against their shortcomings in Asia. According to Bourke, Reflections—the work that would peg Burke as the mouthpiece of European conservatism—needs to be reconsidered in relation to the other polemical positions that engaged Burke at this time. Indeed, Bourke’s panoramic view of Burke’s career during this period sees the statesman embattled in the fight for religious tolerance in Ireland and protesting against injustice in India, offering a convincing context for such a reappraisal. Reflections constituted a strong defense of British constitutionalism and existing relations between church and state. On the one hand, it attacked the oppressive principles of the Rights of Man and on the other took aim at Richard Price and vocal nonconformists. Its polemical power sought to discourage fellow Whigs from embracing populism, contrasting enlightened British values with the chaos and despotism of the French Revolution. Contrary to prevailing beliefs, Reflections did not simply command reverence for “tradition.” It dwelled on themes of obedience and government protection that Burke believed central to what he called the “great primeval contract” outlining the moral relations between ruler and ruled. Bourke adeptly notes the continuity linking Burke’s various arguments. Burke’s conception of natural law had always rested on the belief in promoting progress through restrained manners, religious morality, and reasonable adaptation. The French Revolution rejected all of these. It engendered a brand of radical egalitarianism that usurped the constitution of the state and abolished any concept of social pluralism or mixed government. It was, therefore, contrary to civic freedom, amounting to a form of tyranny that subjected all aspects of society to the rule of “the people” or “the commons.” The National Assembly’s attacks on property and social status negated any sense of civic society. For Burke, the French Revolution characterized the spirit of conquest incarnate.
While Bourke’s contention that Burke was not reverting to conservatism is justified by his extensive and detailed analysis of Reflections, his argument that Burke’s imputed conservatism has come through a “simplified picture of the past” with regard to the French Revolution tends to overlook a great deal of recent scholarship on the French Revolution (p. 741). The predominant view of the Revolution no longer sees it as the “liberal-democratic” movement Bourke claims to be challenging. A long tradition of historians from J. L. Talmon to François Furet have accented the illiberal and “pathological” nature of France’s revolutionary democracy, often repeating many of the arguments elaborated by Burke. Given this fact, it is difficult to see how Bourke’s insistence that reconstructing Burke’s thought in such a manner adds anything especially new to this debate. More to the point, it is questionable whether this “simplified” view has been implicit in sustaining allegations of Burke’s conservatism over the years.
This limited engagement with historiography is evident in other aspects of Empire and Revolution as well. In recent years, Burke has been the subject of a variety of studies linked with empire, some of which have rehabilitated the statesman in certain respects. Uday Mehta, for example, has depicted Burke as a supporter of pluralism against an imperious Enlightenment universalism.[1] Jennifer Pitts has equally noted Burke’s conflicted relationship with empire, although she draws quite different conclusions than those of Bourke.[2] In a more general sense, postcolonial studies have remarked on the tensions between Enlightenment principles and imperialism in the late eighteenth century, insisting that Burke was hardly alone in attempting to square enlightened values with the realities of conquest and oppression that empire invited.[3] The recent “imperial turn” seems to be underrepresented in Bourke’s study despite the fact that both empire and revolution have been consistent themes within a growing body of literature concerned with questions relevant to Enlightenment thought, modern democracy, and the relationship between nation and empire.
Also worthy of note is the way Bourke organizes his study. His book sets out to examine Burke’s vision of history and politics as they were worked out in response to prevailing issues of the day. It presents a panoramic view of Burke’s career that often captures the frenzied political debates and shifting positions with which Burke grappled, moving from London to Ireland, the American colonies, India, and France. The events unfold in “real-time,” reconstructing how Burke addressed major events that often occurred simultaneously. This approach is laudable, although it can at times make it difficult to place the particularities of each situation in their proper context. This organization is, of course, the preference of the author and does offer a very compelling image of a statesman engaged in the leading controversies of his day. Ultimately, Bourke has produced a meticulous study that blends biography with intellectual and political history. It illuminates a consistency at the heart of Burke’s thinking. Ascendancy, Indianism, and Jacobinism all symbolized modes of misgovernment rooted in the spirt of conquest. They were destructive forces that threatened the survival of the spirit of liberty Burke believed essential to modern society. This argument, which is effectively sustained across the lengthy tome, offers scholars an interesting reappraisal of one of modern history’s most ambiguous political thinkers.
Notes
[1]. Uday Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 12, 41-42.
[2]. Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Liberal Imperialism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 59-100.
[3]. Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); and Anthony Pagden, “The Effacement of Difference: Colonialism and the Origins of Nationalism in Diderot and Herder,” in After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements, ed. Gyan Prakash (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 129-152.
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Citation: Gavin Murray-Miller. Review of Bourke, Richard, Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke. H-Empire, H-Net Reviews. November, 2016.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=46705
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Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas by Richard Bourke
Complex thoughts in troubled times
By Stephen Howe
Thursday 11 September 2003 23:00 BST
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This subtitle might strike some readers as odd. Northern Ireland's conflicts have of course involved war of the bloodily physical kind, accompanied by clashes of symbols and slogans, loyalties and identities. Observers have often seen a war of religions, nationalities, or even tribes. But a "war of ideas" - what ideas?
Some retired gunmen have emerged as subtle political tacticians: most obviously Gerry Adams, but also figures like the Progressive Unionist Party's David Ervine. Many Irish republicans have placed great stress on a "correct" political analysis, especially when prison has given them enforced leisure for thinking. But no major works of political philosophy have emerged, even from the cell-blocks of the Maze.
The region's mainstream politicians have always included more clever lawyers - from Edward Carson to David Trimble - than subtle political theorists. Partly as a consequence, debate over Ulster's future, when not merely belligerent, has often been legalistic rather than principled. The conflict's literary legacy is strong on poetry and song, not on grand theoretical treatises.
Richard Bourke aims to show that, despite being such seemingly unpromising territory, Northern Ireland has indeed been the arena for a major conflict of political ideologies. This has, he argues, resonances that go far beyond the "narrow ground" of Ulster to pose important questions about our understanding of democracy and sovereignty.
Peace in Ireland falls, rather unevenly, into three parts. Its overt organisation is around two of these: "Republicanism and Imperialism", and "Unionism and Democracy". The third strand, intertwined throughout, is a detailed historical narrative of the "Troubles" and the search for a settlement. This story is vividly and even-handedly told, based on impressive research; but it is a familiar tale, and much seems only distantly relevant to Bourke's theoretical concerns.
With the latter, Peace in Ireland becomes challenging and original. Bourke's analysis of how republicans came to see their main enemy as British imperialism, and the consequences of that belief, is the weaker of his two motifs. The genealogies he constructs for the idea of imperialism are narrow, and he's too inclined to write as if republicans' view of it was simply a huge blunder, "imperialism" being a meaningless abstraction. Even if we agree that republican assumptions were mistaken, theirs was a more complex and interesting mistake than Bourke allows.
The arguments about unionism and democracy are stronger. The idea that Northern Ireland's history exposes the limitations of a conception of democracy which associates it simply with the will of the majority is hardly novel. The Stormont regime has often been viewed as a prime example of that point. Still, Bourke explores the implications with greater sophistication than almost anyone else.
Perhaps he's too impatient with some associated ideas: arguments over the making of political identities, group rights, and shared sovereignties. He's no doubt right that "joint sovereigty" is, strictly speaking, a logical impossibility. But that is a formalistic objection. It may be impossible in theory, but in practice something very like it now exists in the European Union, and may still prove to be Northern Ireland's best long-term hope.
The reviewer is author of 'Ireland and Empire' (Oxford University Press)
The Princeton History of Modern Ireland edited by Richard Bourke & Ian McBride
Sparkling essays from its contributors add up to an insightful narrative of a nation
Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh
Sat, Feb 6, 2016, 00:26
First published:
Sat, Feb 6, 2016, 00:26
Book Title:
The Princeton History of Modern Ireland
ISBN-13:
978-0691154060
Author:
Edited by Richard Bourke & Ian McBride
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Guideline Price:
£30.95
Multiauthored volumes covering broad chronological spans – almost five centuries in this instance – pose major challenges to editors and readers. Among these are issues of scholarship, structure and style. The new Princeton History of Modern Ireland rises impressively to these challenges. The scholarship is formidable: all the chapters are grounded in the most up-to-date research, all are substantial, the best sparkle with original insights. This is no more than one might have expected from the list of contributors. The essays may well represent, as the publisher claims, “cutting-edge scholarship by a new generation of historians of Ireland”, but the contributors are all well-published scholars, their contributions fall securely within their fields of expertise, and they have been allowed generous scope for extensive citation of sources and references.
The structure of the volume is not exceptional, but it merits close attention. As Richard Bourke explains in his introduction, the “approach is both thematic and chronological”. Six “overarching narrative chapters dealing with the main developments in society and politics throughout the period covered by the book” are followed by 15 chapters that focus “on topics and themes that played a peculiarly important role in the shaping of the trajectory” of modern Irish history.
These distinctions, however, do not quite accord with what is actually written. The six “narrative” chapters do indeed proceed chronologically from Jane Ohlmeyer’s judicious chapter on early modern Ireland (1540-1660) to Diarmaid Ferriter’s vigorous interim commentary on the 21st century so far. But they are all more richly textured than is generally understood by the description “narrative” history. Each is strongly interpretative, and each engages explicitly with historiographical issues.
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They are substantial and challenging readings of successive phases of Irish history since the 16th century. Thus, for example, John Bew’s elegant commentary on Ireland under the Union (with its suggestive title A Failure of Consummation, Conciliation, and Consent) pivots on the proposition that “ultimately . . . the Union was born and died in the minds of the British political elite” and concludes that “although Irish nationalist mobilisation was more formidable than ever before under Charles Stewart Parnell, the real game-changer was the fraying of the pro-Union consensus in the British governing classes.”
Such forthright conclusions enliven the best of the chapters in this book; clear interpretative directions are discernible in all.
Economic context
The logic of the editorial decisions on structure carries some risks. With the exception of Andy Bielenberg’s lucid chapter on the economy of independent Ireland, there is no chapter dedicated to outlining or explaining the development of the Irish economy from the 16th to the 20th century. It is true that each of the six core “narrative” chapters takes note of the economic context of political change (Ferriter more thoroughly, discussing recent woes). But more extensive consideration of key economic factors falls to several of the contributors to the thematic chapters. Such is the case, for example, with Ciara Boylan’s assured chapter on the Famine, and also in a succession of perceptive observations by Catríona Kennedy in her chapter, Women and Gender, or, again, in Enda Delaney’s concise chapter on migration and diaspora.
There is no question of a volume with such a cast of individualist scholars adhering to or advancing any particular orthodoxy or any single overarching framework for understanding the Irish historical experience. Take the case of colonialist readings of modern Irish history. Jane Ohlmeyer opens her chapter with the firm statement that “over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries Ireland was conquered and colonised”. But neither she nor later contributors adopt a schematic colonialist framework in interpreting modern Irish history.
Indeed, several contributors explicitly disavow the appropriateness of such an approach: Bew is adamant that, although “the Union may have been a failure when it came to amalgamation and conciliation . . . it is more fruitful to evaluate it on those terms than through the prism of 20th-century constructs of imperialism and colonialism”.
Yet several contributions (including Jill C Bender’s balanced treatment of Ireland and empire) acknowledge marked and enduring colonialist features of the Irish experience in the centuries after the conquest; deployed critically, the colonialist framework clearly has enabling value in making sense of British-Irish relations or the interplay of class, ethnicity or cultural identity in modern Irish history.
A teleological version of the “Irish story” – unbroken Irish resistance to incomplete conquest and sustained British oppression over many centuries, culminating in the independence struggle of 1916-1922 – has long been superceded by an evidence-based history of complexity and contingency, not only among “revisionist” historians but also, increasingly, among the wider public.
But there is a danger that, in the rush to emphasise contingency and disjunction in the Irish historical experience, stubborn continuities of attitude and mentalité may be ignored or underestimated. In this volume Vincent Morley provides a heroically concise survey of the Irish language in Irish society from its origins to the present day. It is regrettable that the political ideas and historical consciousness encoded and articulated in Irish – as explored by Morley himself in a number of recent studies – register so infrequently in other contributions to this book.
Ideas and ideology – and their embodiment in political movements and power structures – are the dominant focus of the volume as a whole. This is the case not only with the core narrative chapters but also with most of the thematic chapters. Essays on the principal thinkers of 18th-century Ireland, on nationalism, intellectual links between Young Ireland and Yeats, Irish modernism and its legacies, the history of Irish feminism, political violence in Ireland, religion, Ireland and empire, historiography: the emphasis throughout is on political ideas, sentiment and structures.
Work and leisure
The primacy of ideology and ideas comes at a price: the virtual eclipse of popular culture and cultural practice (although Maurice Walsh’s essay on media and culture since the 1960s is suggestive of cultural forces meriting further exploration). Several recent growth areas in Irish social history are little in evidence here. For example, the social history of work and leisure (including sport and other areas of associational culture) has flourished in recent decades, but it scarcely features here. An exception to this general verdict is Ian McBride’s discursive chapter on religion, which, in addition to addressing complex issues of historical consciousness and cultural practice rooted in religious identity, provides a welcome comparative dimension in its commentary on the Irish experience.
This is not a book for the neophyte, the reader seeking an introduction to the history of modern Ireland. It addresses the informed, preferably disputatious, adult. Such a reader will find a great deal to savour in this fine collection.
Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh is emeritus professor of history at NUI Galway. He recently edited The GAA and Revolution in Ireland 1913-1923 (Collins Press)