The Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland

Joe Lee’s review

Professor Joe Lee recently gave an extraordinary review to the new Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland ( ed. Eugenio Biagini and Mary Daly, CUP, 2017). Glowing isn’t the word: it was positively radioactive.  So of course I jumped straight in.

And he was right, it is a remarkable piece of work. Its thirty-three essays are divided into three sections, ‘Geography, Occupations and Social Classes’, ‘People, Culture and Communities’ and ‘Emigration, Immigration and the Wider Irish World’. Clearly ‘social history’ is a very broad church, ignoring the boundaries of local history, human geography, anthropology, linguistics and many more apparently separate disciplines. That’s all to the good. The more perspectives, methods and opinions are applied to the Ould Sod, the clearer and more wonderfully complicated our ancestors will be.

 

The really novel feature of the work, not remarked on by Professor Lee, is the weight given to what used to be called ‘The Irish Abroad’. A full third of the volume deals with the histories of Irish communities in North America, Australasia and Britain, a remarkable and welcome change of focus, that finally puts emigration at the centre of the Irish experience. The stand-out essay in the book, for me, is part of that section, Kevin Kenny’s magisterial ‘Irish Emigrations in a Comparative Context’, a masterpiece of eagle’s-eye summation and cool authority that I can see myself rereading over and over again.

Another reason I was interested in the book is that one of the people incuded once told me casually that she’d like to wring the neck of every genealogist on the planet. (Her name is available only after a few pints). I don’t think she meant me personally, though I did feel a tad nervous. It was the bluntest example I’ve come across of academic anger at the Laity (that’s us) getting in the way of the Priesthood (that’s them). I just smiled and nodded and backed away.

In one sense, of course, she was right. Genealogy can never be a truly academic discipline – it just doesn’t have the requisite dispassion and disinterest. On the other hand, a Priesthood is pointless without its Laity.

6 thoughts on “The Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland”

  1. Thank you, John. This book looks to be right up my alley, as I find recent, i.e. last 300 years, incredibly interesting. (Just enjoyed two of John Boyne’s novels encompassing recent Irish history and sociology.)

    I’ve just ordered a copy and can’t wait its arrival.

    Moira

  2. Sounds just the ticket for me too, since it appears that some of my ancestors emigrated to Ireland from Scotland during the nefarious Plantation, and that their descendants then returned to Scotland in the 1790s.

  3. Ordered my copy upon reading your column! Expelling the poor by Hidetaka Hirota, CUP, 2017 offers another unique perspective. Thank you.

    1. Looks like a great book. I requested it from my local library and they decided to buy it. Thank you for letting us know about it.

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