"If you're going to wear the historian's hat, you have to be careful about putting the material in context: You are not out to justify, or empathize, or to settle arguments, but to provide critical analysis such that people can see the shades and contours." -- Diarmaid Ferriter, the Burns Library Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies
Finding the 'Other Voices' in Irish History
Burns Scholar Ferriter seeks to put a human face on history
By
To Diarmaid Ferriter, the Burns Library Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies for 2008-09, history is not a keepsake left in a drawer, or a perfectly preserved heirloom in an unbreakable case.A professor of modern Irish history at University College Dublin, Ferriter believes history always deserves a second glance — and a third, and a fourth, if not more.
That's why Ferriter served as host from 2003 to 2008 for the weekly RTE radio series "What If," in which he invited scholars, politicians, journalists, novelists and others to muse on "alternate endings" in Irish history. Ferriter and his guests speculated on how Irish society might have been changed based on historical events both large and small: if there had been no 1916 Easter uprising; if Samuel Beckett and James Joyce had stayed in Ireland; if the members of U2 had gone to different schools; if free secondary education had not been introduced in 1967; or how literature might be like if, as one program title stated, "there had been no miserable Irish childhoods."
"I saw 'What If' as a way to humanize history, to talk about the failures and successes of Irish independence, where progress had been made and opportunities lost, and how people related history to their own lives and experiences," says Ferriter.
"Not all historians are comfortable doing such things: After all, there's enough to be done trying to find out what did happen, and to uncover the sources and information which lay out the facts. But I think the role of an historian is to keep asking questions as well as to try and answer them, and to continue to questioning his or her own assumptions."
As Burns Scholar, Ferriter is teaching an undergraduate course this spring — Revolution and Reaction: Ireland 1918-23 — after having led a graduate seminar last fall, De Valera's Ireland: 1920-70.
He also is using the Burns Library to conduct research, particularly the correspondence between controversial Irish writers Brian McMahon and Frank O'Connor. McMahon was a contributor to the 1950s book The Vanishing Irish, which was published at a time when Ireland was at a nadir, afflicted — as Ferriter and most historians agree — by a poor economy and the lack of progressive social thought, resulting in major emigration.
"There is a lot of focus on immigration and the diaspora of that era, where Irish people ended up and how they lived," says Ferriter, "but not a lot of attention as to how it was dealt with at home."
Ferriter also is researching the papers of writer Flann O'Brien, as well as materials relating to the Irish War of Independence, including the papers of Irish republicans Tom and Kathleen Clarke.
"It's wonderful to have the opportunity to work at Burns and at BC. I love the atmosphere of community, the sense of collegiality here."
The McMahon-O'Connor project reflects Ferriter's constant effort to find "other voices" in Irish history, to elaborate on — and sometimes to reshape — the narratives already in existence. An example of his approach is his bestselling book Judging Dev: A Reassessment of the Life and Legacy of Eamon de Valera, which examined one of Ireland's most polarizing figures, first lauded as a hero in the Irish struggle for independence and later criticized as a poor statesman who impeded Ireland's path to modernity.
Ferriter sought to go beyond those caricatures, using many previously unavailable, or overlooked, archival materials that helped to belie some of the assumptions and beliefs about de Valera's personal and professional life.
"De Valera was in public life for 60 years, an immense person in Irish history," says Ferriter, whose works also include The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 and — with Colm Toibin — The Irish Famine. "My grandfather, and many in his generation, revered him. My father couldn't stand him. My feeling was, 'Let's let people see for themselves what he was like.'"
Similarly, in The Irish Famine, Ferriter presented an array of official letters, reports and other documents from Irish and British archives that offer what he calls an "alternative to the administrative history" of the tragedy. These missives span the spectrum of compassion, detachment, dark humor, adherence to rules and regulations, and other conflicting reactions to events great and small during the famine.
"The sources have been there pretty much all along — the Irish state has a very liberal stance on court records — so it's a matter of knowing what to look for and where, and then taking time to look through them," says Ferriter. "But if you're going to wear the historian's hat, you have to be careful about putting the material in context: You are not out to justify, or empathize, or to settle arguments, but to provide critical analysis such that people can see the shades and contours.
"When it comes to history, I think, for my generation, the slate is clean. We're at a certain distance from the events — whether it's the Great Famine, or 1916, or the Civil War in the 1920s — and new resources are available, so we're not caught up in defending the original view, or in the revisionism. We can find another lens to look through."
Sean Smith can be reached at sean.smith.1@bc.edu.