Letters from Ireland
Stephen J. Scanlan, Fulbright Scholar
National University of Ireland Galway
Ireland: History and Complexities
History 374: Ireland & America.
I really wish I would have taken this class when I was an undergraduate at the University of Dayton. I minored in history and had plenty of great courses with wonderful professors, just nothing on Ireland specifically.
Ireland did make an appearance in both my American History and Western Civilization courses, though a very limited one pertaining to the Great Famine, European migration, or the immigrant experience in the United States. I suspect this is the case for most taking similar courses, for in the history books these seem to be the defining moments with regard to Ireland’s relationship to the rest of the world.
The Proleek Domen near Ballymascanlan
For most Americans I am guessing that our understanding of Irish history boils down to just these things: ancestry, the famine, and immigration. Maybe a mention of the Lusitania sinking off the Irish coast as a prelude to World War I. Important though these are, as is the case with much of the way we approach or understand the rest of the world, we typically are given only the highlights, what fits into the bigger picture, or is important to the United States.
However, this provides us only with a limited window, a narrow perspective on a vast world full of interesting and telling insights and stories. In the case of Ireland, this might mean that we view it as a country that “has mattered” only since 1845 or thereabouts and with declining significance after the start of the 20th century.
How unfortunate. And not just in the case of Ireland but cultures and countries everywhere.
Bedford Tower of Dublin Castle
One of the most meaningful experiences of my time as a Fulbright Scholar has been the crash course in Irish history, culture, and politics that has been a part of it. This has come with a bit of reading but also the enjoyment of many a documentary on TG4, Ireland’s Irish language television channel. Mostly, however, it has come from conversations with colleagues and others whom we have met, and in travels about the country taking in many of its museums and cultural and historical sites.
And of course from the orientation provided by the Fulbright Commission of Ireland.
A cherished element of that orientation is a copy of Fintan O’Toole’s A History of Ireland in 100 Objects. The book interprets the history of Ireland from the Mesolithic Era (8000-4500 B.C.E.) to the present through objects housed at museums and other sites throughout the country (and in a couple of cases beyond Ireland’s borders). In collaboration with curators and experts at the National Museum of Ireland, O’Toole tells the story of each object, cleverly contextualized in time and space and speaking to the significance of key actors, moments, and places shaping Irish History. Hard-core historians may scoff at what is also “only the highlights” and thus without depth, but for the novice it is the perfect introduction, leaving one to want to know and explore more. It serves that function well.
Clonmacnoise monastic settlement
My time here has allowed me to examine not only most of the items in person at their respective locations (a great many are contained in the National Museum of Ireland’s Museum of Archeology and also its Decorative Arts and History Museum, both in Dublin) but also numerous other historical sites that speak to the rich history and culture of Ireland.
Adventures have included among others: commemoration and memorial sites and statues honoring Ireland’s history and its actors; domen and carved standing stones; high crosses and early monastic settlements such as Clonmacnoise and Glendalough; passage tombs and prehistoric sites such as New Grange, Knowth and Douth as well as graves from more modern times (a famine cemetery on a foggy morning in Donegal Town being among the more haunting); and the ruins of many a castle and countless ring forts (my favorite being Dun Aengus).
Entry and stone carving at New Grange Passage Tomb
And if they could talk the buildings, pathways, rivers, and roads we traveled would tell many a story: the Bloody Sunday murders in Derry; famine villages and routes traveled by would-be emigrants; Kilmainham Jail and the “crime” of poverty and revolution; massacres wrought by Oliver Cromwell’s brutality; rebellion in Cork City; the evacuation of the Blasket Islands; trade routes and customs houses demarcating Irish commerce; Viking incursions up the River Shannon; and the streets of Dublin that played host to Ireland’s tumultuous labor and revolutionary history that—among other events—includes the 1913 lockout, the 1916 Easter Rebellion, and the 1919 Declaration of the Irish Republic and uprising that led to independence and the ensuing Irish Civil War.
I could go on and on.
And of course in Ireland you cannot separate history from politics. Or culture, religion, and any number of other areas of inquiry, all of which makes for a fascinating place in which to immerse oneself.
My past and present research and courses that I have taught have gotten me acquainted with the forces of social change in Ireland in many ways, but only in what now seems to have been at a cursory level. I now understand the hunger strikes I have studied more clearly. The riots associated with the Battle of the Bogside characterizing “the Troubles” make a lot more sense. Gendered politics and protest take on new light. Hunger and the Great Famine are even more meaningful and moving. Social movement mobilization and the roots of revolution have been brought to life.
I have barely scratched the surface, however, and it has been many a time that I have found myself at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop staring at the shelves and wondering just where to turn.
It can be all so overwhelming. And this is especially the case when all too often history and its intersections with politics, religion, and culture have been tales of conflict and struggle.
My travels to Derry in particular were quite sobering. I found the Bogside murals of “Free Derry” and memorials to those killed on Bloody Sunday or dying on Hunger Strikes to be particularly powerful and invoking of great emotion. The city has come a long way but remains divided in many aspects, despite a newly constructed Peace Bridge intending to overcome past differences and look to the future. Renewed marches of late and headlines in the Derry Journal the day after I arrived telling of a hijacked bus and pipebomb might say otherwise.
Ireland, like most places around the world, has had its share tragedy. Yet hope has always seemed to spring forth from that. Take object 100 from O’Toole’s book: a decommissioned AK-47. With allusions to the 1998 Good Friday Accords denoting the ceasefire and seemingly ending the Troubles in addition to connecting with Ireland’s recovery from its economic collapse and struggles with austerity, the idea is to move ahead, cherishing its past but learning from it to make better of the future. After all, that is what history teaches us no matter what country we wish to explore.
So much more to see and discuss, so little time.
And I haven’t even hinted at the country’s literary and artistic significance or geological and other natural wonders.
Dr. Stephen J. Scanlan is Associate Professor of Sociology at Ohio University’s College of Arts & Sciences.
This column is not an official Fulbright Program communication. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author, Stephen J. Scanlan, and do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.
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