Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Rich scholars can ignore this...

To all poor scholars...

Our attention has been drawn to the following web site...

http://www.sagepublications.com/freeaccess.htm

FREE Access

Free Access via Ingenta Select to SAGE Publications' Electronic Journals
from 15th January to 31st March 2004

Step 1 - Register
Step 2 - Browse SAGE journals:
Step 3 - Spread the word!

Do bookmark this page and send it onto friends for them to take advantage of
this free access while available! Remember, this free access will cease on
31st March 2004.

For further information please contact Karine Chapuis, Senior Marketing
Manager - Electronic Products, SAGE Publications, electronic[at]sagepub.co.uk.

NOTE from P.O'S.
This Free Access works, though it is a little complicated in action. You
will NOT have Free Access to all the journals collected in the Ingenta
system - only to the journals listed on the Sage Free Access page...
http://www.sagepublications.com/freeaccess.htm
And you will occasdionally have to re-enter your chosen Username and your
newly acquired password.
But it is free.

Email Patrick O'Sullivan

For information...

Ireland Canada University Foundation offers short visit scholarships

The Ireland Canada University Foundation (ICUF) is this year
offering short visit travel scholarships both ways; for Irish
scholars to visit Canada and for Canadian scholars to visit Ireland.
The ICUF scholarship programme has been operating since the
establishment of the Foundation ten years ago, but this is the first
year that scholarships are being offered for Canadian scholars to
visit Ireland. The scholarships, which are sponsored by commercial
partners in both countries, are targeted at supporting emerging
scholars in their research into topics which relate to both Ireland
and Canada. Details of the Foundation and of the scholarships are
available at:
http://www.icuf.ie

Email Patrick O'Sullivan

For information...

Please distribute...

P.O'S.

Lectureship in Nineteenth-Century Irish Literature in English
School of English
Queen's University Belfast

Ref: 04/K343B

Applications are invited a lectureship which is tenable from 1 August, 2004.
The School of English is a large and successful department with a strong
record in research and teaching. The successful applicants will be expected
to contribute fully to the success of the School, by conducting research at
a level in keeping with the School?s objective of maintaining or improving
on its ?5? rating in the last RAE, and by undertaking high quality teaching
at undergraduate and M.A. level both within the area of their specialisms
and more widely in the field of English Literature.

Applicants must have a primary degree or equivalent in English or a cognate
subject and a completed doctorate in a relevant subject area demonstrable
ability to produce suitably excellent research (at RAE Grade 5/5*) in the
specialist area in English of the post they are applying for, with a strong
publications record, appropriate to their stage of career.

Applicants for the Lectureship in Nineteenth?Century Irish Literature in
English must also have experience of teaching nineteenth-century Irish
literature in English at tertiary level and must demonstrate an ability to
teach more generally in the area of English Literature.

Informal enquiries regarding this post may be directed to Dr Michael
McAteer, Tel: 02890975280 or e-mail: m.mcateer[at]qub.ac.uk.

Further criteria will be available in the further particulars for the post.

Salary: £22,191 - £33,681 per annum

Closing date: 5.00 pm Friday 27 February, 2004

The University is committed to equal opportunity and selection on merit.

It therefore welcomes applications from all sections of society.

Applications should be addressed to the Personnel Manager, The Personnel
Department, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT7 1NN. Tel: 028
90273044, Fax. 028 90911040, e-mail personnel[at]qub.ac.uk, www.qub.ac.uk/pers

Job pack at http://www.qub.ac.uk/jobs/?vac_no=K343&function=view_job

From Patrick O'Sullivan

The following item has been brought to our attention...

P.O'S.

"St. Pat's parade set to go"

http://www.canada.com/vancouver/story.html?id=2fb96d5d-0ced-4151-b702-95d61e
8cf18e

St. Pat's parade set to go

Dan Hilborn

February 10, 2004

FILE - Green beer is often served at local bars on St. Paddy's Day, but this
is the first year we'll have a parade.
CREDIT: CP / Colin Corneau

Gosh and begorra, there's been a whole bunch of busy people at the Celtic
Heritage Society over the past few months.

Malachy Mahon, president of the group that aims to build a Celtic Heritage
Centre in the Burnaby Heights neighbourhood, is dancing on shamrocks this
month with news that the city of Vancouver has agreed to host its first
Saint Patrick's Day parade in living memory

(Our contact notes: The city's mayor turned out in Highland evening dress
for Burns Night, Chinese dress for their New Year...)

Email Patrick O'Sullivan

The TOC for the latest issue of the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies has
been forwarded to us by Brad Kent - our thanks to Brad...

This is a substantial double issue volume of the CJIS, with a number of
useful - and indeed important - items of Irish Diaspora Studies interest.

So... Some quick notes...

William Jenkins continues his series of Toronto/Buffalo cross-border
contrasts with a really good one, looking at the police forces in the two
cities, the Irish Protestant constables in Toronto and the Irish Catholic
patrolmen of Buffalo. The article is thus an important contribution to the
discussion - it is not really a debate - within Irish Diaspora Studies about
policing and policemen, within Ireland, within the British Empire and in the
larger world outside.

Brad Kent's own contribution looks at those two naughty playwrights, Martin
McDonagh and Conor McPherson. As I read this I wondered if, echoing a
recent Irish-Diaspora list discussion, the best way to read these writers is
as the Sons of Johnny Rotten?

Intriguing to read the interview with Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, when I have
just been thinking about her work - it will be recalled that I circulated
the CYPHERS literary journal special offer. Eiléan's notion of 'rituals of
neighbourliness' I have not seen expressed quite like that before - is there
some theory behind it? A potentially very useful idea in diaspora studies.

Good to see Donald MacRaild's essay, based on his research on the Orange
Order - and using that research to critique the very notion of 'diaspora'.

G. Bruce Retallack's essay might seem at first sight simply another trip to
the simian stereotype well - but is an intriguing demonstration of the ways
in which new material and new comparisons (this time within Canada) can
re-energise this material.

Ellen L. O?Brien's article on street ballads in England is another one that
I must bring to the attention of Mervyn Busteed and the folklorists here -
further evidence of a specifically Irish market in Manchester and London.

Many good book reviews, including some - this is a compliment - of books
published a little while ago, but which I am glad to see getting further
attention.

P.O'S.



- -----Original Message-----
Canadian Journal of Irish Studies
Revue canadienne d?études irlandaises

Volume 28, Number 2, Fall 2002
Volume 29, Number 1, Spring 2003

Contents


4 Editorial
Michael Kenneally

10 Patrolmen and Peelers: Immigration, urban culture, and
?the Irish police? in Canada and the United States
William Jenkins

30 McDrama: The Sentimental in Martin McDonagh?s
The Beauty Queen of Leenane and Conor McPherson?s The Weir
Brad Kent

46 Decoding Symbolic Spaces of Dublin:
A Photographic Essay
Yvonne Whelan

74 The Weight of Words: An Interview with Eiléan Ní
Chuilleanáin
Irene Gilsenan Nordin

84 Beyond Representation: I Could Read the Sky and Irish Cinema
Des O?Rawe

98 Wherever Orange is Worn:
Orangeism and Irish migration in the 19th and early 20th
centuries
Donald M. MacRaild

118 Poems
Matthew Sweeney

124 Photo Essay: Paddy, the Priest and the Habitant:
Inflecting the Irish Cartoon Stereotype in Canada
G. Bruce Retallack

148 In conversation with Joan and Kate Newmann, Irish Poets and
Publishers
Christine St. Peter

154 Irish Voices in Nineteenth-Century English Street Ballads
Ellen L. O?Brien

168 Archaeology of Reconciliation:
Ciaran Carson?s Belfast Confetti and John Kindness? Belfast
Frescoes
Jonathan Highfield

188 Profiles of Irish-Canadians: Sir William Hales Hingston

Alan Hustak


Book Reviews

195 Review Essay by John Wilson Foster

202 Book Reviews by

Maurice Elliot
Mary Dalton
Bruce Stewart
Christina Hunt Mahony
Claire Connolly
Riana O?Dwyer
Cyril Byrne
Amy Witherbee
Emer Nolan
Elaine Cheasy Paterson
Pádraig Ó Siadhail
Rosemary O?Flaherty
Dana Hearne
Louis de Paor
Claire Delisle
Catherine B. Shannon
Margaret Ward
Robin Whitaker
G.K. Peatling
Yvonne McKenna
D?Arcy Ryan
M. Perceval-Maxwell
Aki Kalliomäki
John Matthew Barlow

Briefly Noted entry by Cindy Durack

238 Contributors

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Some notes on...

The World of Geoffrey Keating
History, Myth and Religion in Seventeenth-century Ireland
BERNADETTE CUNNINGHAM

Four Courts Press
Published: August 2000
ISBN: 1-85182-533-9
Price: ?45/£40/$55 hbk

This is the book I carried around with me, for months last year, reading it
when I can in planes, trains and waiting rooms...

There used to be a standard piece of text - 'this book fulfills a long-felt
need...' Well, for me this book certainly fulfills a long-felt need. Here
it is not so much a matter of enjoying a book - though I certainly did enjoy
it - but of being grateful to the Bernadette Cunningham and her book, for
giving me what I needed to know about Keating and his book.

There has previously been comment on and study of Keating, but - with due
respect - not in readily available places. And the actual text has always
been difficult to find.

For me the starting point in thinking about Foras Feasa ar Éirinn has to be
Keating's extraordinary image of the dung beetle - previous commentators on
Ireland have been like the dung beatle, searching out the dung to roll in
it...

'...Whereof the testimony given by Cambrensis, Spenser, Stanihurst, Hanmer,
Camden, Barckly, Moryson, Davies, Campion, and every other new foreigner who
has written on Ireland from that time, may bear witness; inasmuch as it is
almost according to the fashion of the beetle they act, when writing
concerning the Irish. For it is the fashion of the beetle, when it lifts its
head in the summertime, to go about fluttering, and not to stoop towards any
delicate flower that may be in the field, or any blossom in the garden,
though they be all roses or lilies, but it keeps bustling about until it
meets with dung of horse or cow, and proceeds to roll itself therein. Thus
it is with the set above-named...'

And I think we are entitled to ask: How much has changed?

The difficulty of finding the text has now been solved by the CELT
project...
http://www.ucc.ie/celt/keat.html

http://www.ucc.ie/celt/keat.html

What is missing from the book? I would have liked more on Keating's
relationship with the Irish language - we have much on his decision to write
in Irish, but I would have liked more specifically on his own use of Irish.
How far was he pushing the language in new directions. (There is mention of
this in Berndaette's E of I entry, but little in the book.)

Related to that, and perhaps to the general failure of the Irish language to
harness the print revolution, I would have liked more on the reception of
Foras Feasa ar Éirinn by Irish intellectuals outside Ireland. But
Bernadette has certainly opened up these debates - see for example Tadhg O
Dushlaine's chapter on Keating in Thomas O'Connor, ed., The Irish in Europe
1580-1815.

Let me stress the positives, a long-felt need satisfied. A vital book for
anyone who wnts to understand the various traditions of Irish
historiography...

P.O'S.


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Personal Fax 0044 (0) 709 236 9050

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Social Sciences and Humanities
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From:
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: The Same Old Story?

Dear All
If I may presume on members' patience I would like to revert to the issue of
questions arising from the recent RTE 'Prime Time' programme on the plight
of marginalised older Irish males in Britain.

Tom Archdeacon's reaction was to wonder 'to what extent their situations are
the product of their emigration'. Playing devil's advocate he speculated as
to whether 'these men would have been dysfunctional even if they had not
emigrated'. Alcohol, emotional disturbance, and 'other problems rooted.in
personal as well as social factors' seemed to him to be the source of the
difficulties experienced by the men interviewed and he wondered would they
have become similarly dysfunctional had they remained in Ireland.

Piaras MacEinri 's response pointed highlighted the salient issues:
He pointed out that the Irish who emigrated to Britain in the 1950s (almost
half a million) had little formal education. In 1960 82% of emigrants had
left school before the age of fifteen.

He also pointed out that they emanated predominantly from rural Ireland. It
isn't difficult then to understand why the British construction industry,
which until the late '60s was very labour-intensive, became the principal
employer of Irish male migrants.

Stating that 'their role was largely pre-defined', Piaras cited anti-Irish
racism of British society. I believe however that the role of the Irish
emigrant in Britain was also pre-determined by conditioning in Ireland.

In the 'impoverished class-ridden society' of 1950s Ireland the poor and
disadvantaged were not only encouraged to accept their lot but incited to
blame Britain for it. In the words of one long-term female emigrant, 'They
taught us to hate England - and then they sent us over here!' 1

Irish emigrants carried this double burden of class and history into a
society which itself was not only class-ridden but also accustomed to
regarding the Irish as innately inferior. For those reasons I think American
scholars shouldn't overlook or underestimate the significance of the
colonial relationship when comparing Irish emigrants' experiences in Britain
with those of emigrants to the USA.

Piaras rightly draws attention to the deleterious effects of the itinerant
lifestyle and exploitative conditions prevalent in British construction and
civil engineering in the past - inability to assimilate, thriftlessness,
alcoholism, ill-health and inability to access statutory social welfare
entitlements. He points out that neither the Irish nor the British systems
have seriously attempted to recognise and address their special needs. 2

To the burden of perceived inferiority was added, for those who fell on hard
times, the burden of guilt for failure to maintain the expected flow of
remittances. 3

Finally Piaras drew attention to the 'culture of silence, shame, lies and
denial' which is the common legacy of the relationship between the Irish in
Ireland and those in Britain who failed to achieve the success which alone
could wipe out the alleged shame of having to emigrate in the first
instance, especially to Britain. 4

I would like to offer some quotations from my book, The Men Who built
Britain: A History of the Irish Navvy which I hope might shed some light on
these issues:

1. 'There was simply no meaningful contact. We stuck to our circuit and
they stuck to theirs. Occasionally, we might meet an Irish architect or
doctor at some Church function, but they always struck me as being
embarrassed when we met.Mind you, we were all very sensitive and unsure
then.from two things: coming from rural Ireland, and the education we had
there.our Christian Brother education was very anti-British.all this
brooding thing of history. And then coming to England with the lads and
sticking together, being afraid to talk to a woman or an English person -
well, it didn't help, you know, in integrating. Now.I'd prefer to do
business with an Englishman any day of the week - they're more honest and
they keep their discretion as well as their delivery dates. And they don't
have the malice the Irish have towards each other, resenting the fellow that
gets on in the world.. Jackson, JA, The Irish in Britain (London, 1983),
pp.71-4

'.we were easier to handle than any other emigrants in England. We're a
very servile type people. Apart from being pleasant, we accept orders.from
the turn of the century right through the 1960s we were servants - and loyal
servants. I could name you a lot of men who worked for Tarmac, who would die
for Tarmac.they were totally dependent on the construction industry because
it was easy to get into - you needed no training. A lot of it was brute
force and ignorance.' Malcolm O'Brien, MBE, Director (retd.), Tarmac
Construction, 1997. The Men Who built Britain, pp.234-5

2. 'The people who did have a sense of self became the millionaires,
while I was standin' down a hole, to get money, to buy drink, so that I
could fit in, belong, be normal, be "one of us". If you didn't drink your
money at night, you were seen as "mean" there was somethin' wrong with you'.
Joe McGarry, op. cit., p.237
'When you went to England first you'd start at seven in the mornin' and work
'til night. Pride kept you goin' - you wouldn't want to be caught dossin'.
Then, as the drink took hold, you couldn't keep up the pace, so the only
answer was - "jack up and move on". So at first you'd be runnin' away from
the situation, and then you'd end up runnin' away from yourself'. Noel
O'Domhnaill, op. cit., p.238
'On every site, Wimpey (an indigenous British company) had a "Sub
Clerk", who went around the site every day, saying: "Do you want a sub?" (an
advance on wages due). The clever ones said, "No", but the firm didn't like
it - if you subbed a man half his day's pay, he couldn't leave the job
because he was broke every pay-day. So he couldn't move away, because he had
no money.' Malcolm O'Brien, op. cit.,p234 'A woman at that time would
inquire (at a dance) who you were, what you'd done, who you knew from her
part of the country, who was in charge of such-and-such a job - if you
couldn't give clear answers to those questions you were totally screwed. I'd
come away totally frustrated; I wasn't socially able to make any of these
moves towards a normal life, which any normal human being should have,
without alcohol.' Joe McGarry, op. cit., p.214

3. 'I was always savin' so much a week at that time. Every decent
Irishman sent so
much home.whether you wanted to or not, it was expected of you. You
didn't e
even think what they were doin' with it at home - you felt good about
it - it was a
sort of a religion sort of thing'. Joe Gallagher, op.cit.,p.164 'We can
tell you about people where the man scraped and scrounged and worked all the
hours God made, and sent the money home, and then, at the end of his working
life, or maybe before that, when he went home, there was nothin' - it was
all gone!' Ronne & Frieda Plant, op. cit.,p.182

4. 'How could I go home in my condition - pride is a heavy burden' (after
being away from Ireland for forty years)Anonymous old navvy, Arlington House
Hostel, London. Op. cit.,p.182
'The men won't face reality; if they can't get the material things, have
them there on show, they live in dreams - all in the mind.They just don't
know how to face anything, because they were never told about anything, and
they were never allowed to ask for anything; because if you asked, you were
a failure - you should have been able to do it yourself. You were letting
the neighbours know you couldn't do it yourself. And while they were told
that England was a place where you could be yourself, they found out that,
if you're Irish and need the support of your own kind to survive, as the
"Westies" in construction always did, then you couldn't be yourself - they
wouldn't let you. You want to make a stand, and speak out against it, and
they won't let you speak out; so you become an outsider. I realised the harm
was done before they ever left; England added to it, but it wasn't the cause
of it. Whatever way they were brought up, there's a lot of bitterness, and
spite, and jealousy in them. So much so that it can eat away at them, and it
can destroy them, and whatever relationships they might have. They've worked
so hard for something better, but they never get that thing that's better,
because of their own selves. They end up old, and bitter, and alone.its sad,
and stupid, and pathetic.'
Irish nurse, community care worker, and wife of an Irish navvy, op. cit.,
pp.238-9

This is merely anecdotal evidence but the sentiments were replicated
throughout many interviews, conducted over a period of years, and informed
readers of the book frequently comment on the accuracy of these
observations. Perhaps they may help to explain in part why The Irish in
Britain differ from the Irish in the United States and why so many still
live marginalised lives.

Ultan Cowley.

From: bradkent[at]alcor.concordia.ca
Subject: Summer Symposium: Ireland on the St. Lawrence

SUMMER SYMPOSIUM 2004

Ireland on the St. Lawrence: Grosse Île and Irish Settlement in Quebec


The Centre for Canadian Irish Studies
Concordia University
Montreal

is pleased to announce that it is organising a series of courses and
cultural events this summer under the collective title Ireland on the St.
Lawrence: Grosse Île and Irish Settlement in Quebec. A total of four
academic courses will be offered at Concordia University. Professor Kevin
Whelan, Cultural Historian, has been invited to speak as a Guest Lecturer.


The courses to be offered are:

- - Exile, Emigration and Irish Writing (taught by Michael Kenneally)

- - The Long-Term Impact of the Irish Famine

- - Irish and Quebecois Music, Influences and Developments (guest lecturer
Desi Wilkinson, musician)

- - The Irish in Nineteenth Century Montreal


The first three courses will be offered from May 3 to June 16, 2004.

The fourth course will be offered from June 28 to August 12, 2004.


Public Lectures (Free):

Various specialists will lecture on Grosse Île, the Irish in Quebec and the
Irish in Montreal.


Films (Free):

A series of films dealing with Irish emigration, the Irish experience at
Grosse

Île and the Irish in Montreal and North America will be screened.


Musical Events (Free):

There will be several musical events highlighting the influence of Irish
musical traditions on Quebecois music.


Guided Tour to Grosse Île:

On Friday, June 4, 2004, a tour bus will leave Montreal in the morning for
Berthier-sur-Mer outside of Quebec City. Passengers will board a ferry for
Grosse Île at 11:00 am for a four-hour tour of the island. The bus will
return
to Montreal on the same evening.


For more information or to make reservations for the Grosse Île trip, please

contact the Centre at (514) 848-8711.

People interested in attending the symposium can also contact the centre at
cdnirish[at]alcor.concordia.ca.

http://artsandscience.concordia.ca/irish/index.html

From: "Bruce Stewart"
To:
Subject: Re: Ir-D Notes, Cunningham, World of Keating

There is fairly extensive information, bibl., and quotations (incl. the full
text of Dionbrollach) in the EIRData website under Authors Index
http://www.pgil-eirdata.org. Incidentally, EIRData is listed above CELT in
Google's search page.

Bruce.


- ----- Original Message -----
>
> From Patrick O'Sullivan
>
> Some notes on...
>
> The World of Geoffrey Keating
> History, Myth and Religion in Seventeenth-century Ireland BERNADETTE
> CUNNINGHAM
>
> Four Courts Press
> Published: August 2000
> ISBN: 1-85182-533-9
> Price: ?45/£40/$55 hbk

From: "MacEinri, Piaras"
To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
Subject: Debate in Dail on economic plight of emigrants

Dear All

I have posted the file below, courtesy of the Labour Party, of the 'blacks'
(first transcripts of the Dail debates) of a Dail debate that took place in
the Dail on Tuesday and Wednesday, 27 and 28 of January 2004 in the wake of
the transmission by RTE of a Prime Time documentary programme on the plight
of the ex-building workers in Britain.

It seems that little has changed back here...

http://migration.ucc.ie/emigrationdebate.htm

Piaras

From Patrick O'Sullivan

For information...

P.O'S.


- -----Original Message-----

Subject: REV: Howe on Carroll and King, _Ireland and Postcolonial Theory_

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Albion[at]h-net.msu.edu (December 2003)

Clare Carroll and Patricia King, eds. _Ireland and Postcolonial Theory_.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. 280 pp. Index. $47.50
(cloth), ISBN 0-268-02286-0; $25.00 (paper), ISBN 0-268-02287-9.

Reviewed for H-Albion by Stephen Howe Ruskin College, Oxford

Applications of postcolonial theory--or, perhaps more accurately, of various
literary and cultural studies conceptions of colonialism--to Ireland have
become the fastest-growing, probably most internationally influential of all
currents in Irish Studies. They have also been among the most contentious;
for while many practitioners have asserted or even assumed the
appropriateness of such conceptual frameworks to analysis of Ireland's past
and present, others (including, to "declare an interest," the present
reviewer) have been highly sceptical about their applicability or
explanatory power in relation to Ireland.

The controversies have intertwined with others, including the long dispute
between so-called "revisionists" in Irish history and their opponents, the
sometimes sharp divisions between disciplines--for literary scholars and
cultural historians have tended to be far more receptive to colonial
frameworks for understanding Ireland than have political, social or economic
analysts--and indeed directly political disputes. Irish Republicans and
cultural nationalists have been inclined to welcome the use of colonial
models, Ulster Unionists to reject them. At worst, a complex, multifaceted
and dynamic Irish historiography has been oversimplified and dichotomised
into a picture of stark oppositions, with "revisionists" (stereotyped as
anti-theoretical, anti-nationalist, indeed pro-Unionist and inclined to make
excuses for Britain's historical record in Ireland) on one side,
"postcolonialists" (depicted as cultural determinists, as jargon-obsessed,
and as unreconstructed romantic nationalists if not apologists for
Republican violence) on the other.
Echoes of that simplification may be heard in this book's afterword, by the
effective founder of postcolonial studies, the late, much-lamented Edward
Said--whose scattered, mostly brief writings on Ireland often lacked the
subtlety of perception so evident in much of his other work.

Yet the more sophisticated analysts from all sides of these disputes have
shared important common ground. Writers from a wide variety of intellectual
and political positions have largely concurred that concepts like tradition,
modernity and modernisation, or for that matter postmodernity and
globalisation, have taken on unique, complicated, perhaps especially
problematic inflections under Irish circumstances. Simple, linear models of
change from tradition to modernity or postmodernity, or from colonial to
postcolonial--though still to be encountered in the literatures of Irish
sociology, history and political economy, and even more in journalistic
comment--have come under ever more vigorous scrutiny and questioning. So
too have many older or simplistic conceptions of national identity, as it
has developed and mutated across Irish history. There is sometimes a
tendency, evident for instance in Clare Carroll's introduction here, to
write as if postcolonial theory, in Irish and other contexts, has been the
foundation for critique of modernisation theories, and of homogenising or
naturalising conceptions of nationality and identity. This is to claim far
too much: such theoretical approaches, and notions like Bhabha's conception
of hybridity, have been only one among many routes to such critique--far
from the first, and by no means in all eyes the most productive.

The collection _Ireland and Postcolonial Theory_ thus intervenes in and
contributes to an important, vigorous and rapidly developing field of
debate. Unfortunately, and a little puzzlingly, its timing and format make
it a less important or innovative intervention than it might have been. The
publisher's blurb calls it "the first book of its kind." If it had appeared
a little sooner, the claim might have had more truth. But clearly there
were considerable delays in the editorial and/or production processes.
Said's afterword is dated August 2001, and it is apparent from internal
evidence that the preceding essays were all completed substantially earlier
than that. Their endnotes contain almost no references to works published
later than 1999. In the meantime another, equally important collection of
essays covering much of the same ground has appeared: Glenn Hooper and
Colin Graham eds., _Irish and Postcolonial
Writing: History, Theory, Practice_ (2002). So have several other works
making major contributions to, or sharply challenging, the field of
discussion in which _Ireland and Postcolonial Theory_ situates itself, such
as Nicholas Canny, _Making Ireland British_ (2001); Colin Graham and Richard
Kirkland, eds., _Ireland and Cultural Theory_ (1999); Colin Graham,
_Deconstructing Ireland_ (2001); Stephen Howe, _Ireland and Empire_ (2000);
and Geraldine Moane, _Gender and Colonialism_ (1999). Appearing so
belatedly (even by the usual, frustratingly slow standards of academic
publishing) as it has, _Ireland and Postcolonial Theory_'s potential impact
is much diminished.

More seriously, in the past three to four years many of this volume's own
contributors have already published the same material as appears here, or
closely related texts, elsewhere. Two of the longest, most challenging and
sharply argued chapters have previously appeared in print: Joe Cleary's as
"Misplaced Ideas? Locating and Dislocating Ireland in Colonial and
Postcolonial Studies" in Crystal Bartolovich and Neil Lazarus, eds.,
_Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies_ (2002), and David Lloyd's as
the first chapter in his own collection _Ireland after History_ (1999).
And whereas Cleary's contribution to _Ireland and Postcolonial Theory_ is
slightly different from and a little longer than the version which appears
in Bartolovich and Lazarus, Lloyd's appears to be identical. Indeed it
includes references to "the essays collected here" and "further in this
book," where the "here" and "this book" clearly refer not to _Ireland and
Postcolonial Theory_, but to _Ireland after History_. Luke Gibbons's
contribution to the present volume, too, substantially reproduces arguments
which have appeared in at least three other places, while Clare Carroll's
chapter relates very closely to her 2001 book, _Circe's Cup: Cultural
Transformations in Early Modern Ireland_. Seamus Deane's "Dumbness and
Eloquence" is a characteristically vivid, forceful and, well, eloquent
meditation on Irish writers's linguistic dilemmas, especially in relation to
the legacies of the Famine; but is essentially a variation on themes long
familiar from Deane's previous writings.

Of the remaining, previously unpublished chapters the longest, most
substantially researched and in many ways most important is Joseph Lennon's
on "Irish Orientalism." Although Joep Leerssen and others had, more
briefly, discussed images of "the East" in Irish literary and political
cultures, and their relationship to evolving ideas about Irishness itself,
Lennnon's article--and even more the Ph.D. thesis and forthcoming book on
which it draws--is undoubtedly the fullest, most detailed and perceptive
analysis of these themes yet to have been attempted.

Gauri Viswanathan's study of James Cousins starts badly, giving the perhaps
inadvertent impression that she thinks "the time" of Irish Home Rule
agitation was after the First World War. Thereafter things improve, with a
fascinating, multifaceted exploration of Cousins's relationships with
theosophy, with both Irish and Indian nationalisms, and with figures such as
Tagore. Amitav Ghosh, on "Mutinies: India, Ireland and Imperialism"--a
brief, seemingly preliminary sketch rather than a substantial essay--says
almost nothing about Ireland at all. Kevin Whelan's evocative and allusive
exploration of "the politics of postcolonial memory" has many of the
strengths one has come to expect from his work, not least in its sheer
breadth and boldness of argument. But it also--like Lloyd's essay--engages
in some very stark, unargued-for and contentious political claims about
Northern Ireland as England's (sic) "last colony" and northern Unionists as
an "intractable 'settler' problem," and some incautiously sweeping ones
about history as merely a form of myth.

Edward Said's afterword only engages fairly briefly with Irish affairs as
such, seeking to relate these to a wide range of international parallels, in
both political and intellectual registers: most especially, as one might
expect, the similarities he discerns between Ireland's history and the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although his remarks here are expressed with
Said's familiar mixture of elegance and pugnacity, they add little that is
new to his numerous previous works on the same themes. Thus this essay, one
of the last to appear during Said's lifetime, is unfortunately not a
particularly significant addition to his enormous and distinguished oeuvre.
The particular way in which Said draws connections between Irish and
Palestinian "anticolonial" nationalisms is, naturally, open to contention,
involving him perhaps in a less probingly critical attitude towards Irish
nationalist traditions than might have been expected in light of his general
theoretical commitments. Thus, for instance, Said clearly views Israeli
historical "revisionism" as a welcome and progressive development, but Irish
"revisionism" (a term he, and others in this collection, use too
unproblematically and homogenisingly) as essentially a reactionary one.
Others, including the present reviewer, have been struck more by the
structural similarities and numerous parallels between these two movements,
as critiques of previously dominant nationalist narratives.

Copyright (c) 2003 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks[at]mail.h-net.msu.edu.

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded on behalf of Pluto Press...

This book looks interesting, and timely. Steve Garner is based at
University College Cork and is attached to Piaras Mac Éinrí's Irish Centre
for Migration Studies
http://migration.ucc.ie/

P.O'S.


RACISM IN THE IRISH EXPERIENCE

Steve Garner

£ 16.99 / US$ 29.95 PAPER

2003/12 / 320pp / DEMY (215x135mm)
ISBN: 0745319963
Pluto Press
Publisher Web site
http://www.plutobooks.com/


Ireland's unique position as the only state in the European Union to have
been colonized, coupled with the ambivalent experiences of Irish people
within the British Empire, means that issues of 'race' in Ireland are
overlaid by complex social and historical forces. / This book is a unique
analysis of the racialisation of Irish identities. The author examines key
phases in the historical development of an Irish 'racial' consciousness,
including 16th century colonisation and 19th century immigration to America
and Great Britain. He then examines the legacy of this relationship, both in
terms of the new migration into Ireland and relations with indigenous
minorities -- Travellers and Irish Jews. / Garner explores the problematic
links between nationalist ideologies and racism. He assesses the economic,
social and political factors framing the experience of minorities in
contemporary Ireland, and places these in a broader European context.

Acknowledgements / Introduction / 1 Sociological Frameworks For
Understanding Racism / 2 Money, Migrations And Attitudes / 3 Racing The
Irish In The 16th And 17th Centuries / 4 The 'Filthy Aristocracy Of Skin':
Becoming White In The USA / 5 In The Belly Of The Beast: 19th Century
Britain, Empire And The Role Of 'Race' In Home Rule / 6 Other People's
Diasporas: The Racialisation Of The Refugee Issue / 7 New Racism, Old
Racisms And The Role Of Migratory Experience / 8 'Remember Blanqui?':
Nation-State, Community And Some Paradoxes Of Anti-Racism / 9 Beyond The New
Socio-Economic 'Pale': Racialisation And Belonging In Contemporary Ireland /
10 Conclusion / Appendix 1 Definitions Of GDP, Etc. / Appendix 2 Definitions
Of Poverty / Appendix 3 Surveys On Attitudes Towards Minorities And
Minorities Experiences Of Racism-Discrimination In The Republic Of Ireland,
1972-2001 / Appendix 4 Address From The People Of Ireland To Their
Countrymen And Countrywomen In America, 1842 / Appendix 5 Tables On
Italians' Attitudes Toward Migrants / Bibliography / Index

Format notification: This title is simultaneously available in paperback and
hardback
Not yet published

RACISM IN THE IRISH EXPERIENCE
Publisher Web site
http://www.plutobooks.com/

From Patrick O'Sullivan

I have drawn attention to Steve Garner?s RACISM IN THE IRISH EXPERIENCE,
published by Pluto Press...

Pluto Press have also asked me to mention other books of interest...

Publisher's web site at
http://www.plutobooks.com/about.shtml

Note the Irish Studies section, listed and clickable, on the left hand side.

P.O'S.


NO GLOBAL: The People of Ireland Versus the Multinationals
By Robert Allen

April 2004 / Pb £14.99 / 0745322107 / Hb £45.00 / 0745322115

Ireland's economy has seen phenomenal growth since the 1990s, as a result of
an earlier decision by the state to chase foreign investment, largely from
US corporates. As a result, manufacturers of raw chemicals, pharmaceuticals
and highly dangerous substances came to Ireland, where they could make toxic
products free from the strict controls imposed by other nations. Robert
Allen's book reveals the consequences to human health and the environment of
the Irish state's love affair with the multinational chemical industry.



SOCIAL ATTITUDES IN NORTHERN IRELAND - THE 9TH REPORT
Edited by Katrina Lloyd, Paula Devine, Ann Marie Gray and Deirdre Heenan

Jan 2004 / Hb £24.99 / 0745321569

This book is an essential resource on attitudes to social and political
issues in contemporary Northern Ireland. An authoritative group of academics
and those involved in informing policy-making within the community summarise
and interpret data from the annual Northern Ireland Life and Times survey.
Topics explored include the extent of change in attitudes centred on
religion, politics and community relations.



INSIDE THE UDA: Volunteers and Violence
By Colin Crawford with an introduction by Marie Smyth

October 2003 / 224pp / Pb £14.99 / 0745321062 / Hb £45.00 / 0745321070

The book makes disturbing and often heartbreaking reading, and it marks an
important step forward in understanding the Loyalist position -- for it is
only through improving our understanding of the experience of all citizens
in Northern Ireland that lasting peace can be achieved.

From: Sara Ellen Brady
seb213[at]nyu.edu
Subject: 6th Annual GRIAN Conference on Irish Studies, NYU

********************************************
GRIAN hopes those in the New York area can join us for our 6th Annual GRIAN
Conference on Irish Studies:

Anthologizing Ireland

Collection, Curation, Dissemination

February 27-29, 2004

Glucksman Ireland House
1 Washington Mews
New York, New York


*All events are held at Glucksman Ireland House unless otherwise indicated*

FRIDAY February 27

5:00-7:00p.m. Pre-registration

7:00-9:00p.m. Lavender & Green: A Decade of Being Irish and Gay in America,
a screening selection from the Silence To Speech Video Project Introduction
by Brendan Fay

9:00p.m. Reception


SATURDAY February 28

10:00-10:30a.m. Breakfast

10:30-10:45a.m. Welcome/Opening Talk, Elizabeth Gilmartin (Monmouth
University) and Will Hatheway (CUNY Graduate Center)

10:45-12:15p.m. PANEL: Irish Studies in the Field: Teaching, Technology, and
Travel.
Moderator: Sara Brady (New York University)

Nainsi J. Houston (Creighton University), ?From Glorvina to Buffy: Using
Technology in the Irish Studies Classroom?

Kathryn A. Conrad (University of Kansas), ?Flying Solo: Doing Irish Studies
without Irish Studies?

David Gardiner, Director of the Summer School in Ireland (Creighton
University), ??What Do You Mean We?re Not Kissing the Blarney Stone?? Or,
?What?s With All the Cell Phones?? The Evolution of Study Abroad Programs in
Ireland?

12:15-2:15p.m. Lunch

2:15-3:15p.m. PANEL: Genres in/of Anthologies.
Moderator: Elizabeth Gilmartin

Lachlan Whalen (Marshall University), ??The National Library Archives Would
Never Accept It:? The Irish Canon and the Counter-Aesthetics of Republican
Prison Writing?

Roslyn Blyn-LaDrew (University of Pennsylvania), ?The 'Sean-Chló' and
?Nua-Aoiseachas? in Two Mid-Twentieth Century Irish Gaelic Anthologies:
Nuabhéarsaíocht and Nuascéalaíocht?

3:15-3:30p.m. Coffee Break

3:30-4:30p.m. TALK: Stephen Enniss (Director of Special Collections at Emory
University) Collecting Ireland in America

4:30-4:45p.m. Coffee Break

4:45-5:45p.m. TALK: Nicholas Allen (UNC Chapel Hill) The Cities of Belfast

5:45-6:30p.m. Pre-Screening Pizza Break

6:30-9:00p.m. Screening of Nora with an introduction by Jessica Scarlata
(Cinema Studies, NYU), Anthologizing the Reader: Pat Murphy and Female
Spectatorship (Cantor Film Center)

9:00p.m. Post-film Gathering [at] The Four-Faced Liar


SUNDAY February 29

10:00-10:30a.m. Breakfast

10:30-12:30p.m. PANEL: Categorizing and [Mis]Labeling
Moderator: Joseph Lennon (Manhattan College)

Claire Norris (Indiana University of Pennsylvania), ??Dear, dirty Dublin:?
What Makes Irish Literature Irish?

John Redmond (University of Liverpool), ?Defining Irishness and Britishness
in Anthologies of 20th Century Poetry?

Erica Secchini (Boston College), ?George Moore: A Part of the Irish Catholic
Upper-Middle-Class Project?

Phil Walsh (University of Sheffield) ??disenfranchised / In the
constituencies of quartz and bog-oak:? Louis MacNeice, Ireland and the
Canon?

12:30-2:00p.m. Lunch

2:00-3:30p.m. PANEL: Anthologizing Beyond the Book
Moderator: Abby Bender (Princeton University)

Elizabeth Crooke (Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at the University of
Ulster, Magee Campus), ?The Contested Museum: Collection and Display of
Ireland?

Kathleen O?Brien (Concordia), ?Landscapes of Death in Image and Text: More
Than a Family Story?

Sara Brady (NYU), ?Irish Sport and Culture at New York?s Gaelic Park?

3:30-3:45p.m. Coffee Break

3:45-5:45p.m. PANEL: The Curriculum, the Classroom, and the Syllabus as
Anthology
Moderator: Maria McGarrity (Long Island University)

Mary Burke (Keogh Institute of Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame),
?Introducing the Traveler Voice into the Irish Literature Curriculum? Jim
Vincent (Robert Morris University), ?Black and Green: An African-American
and Irish-American Literature Course Online?

Karen Hill McNamara (Drew University) ?Historical Fiction for Children and
Young Adults: Incorporating Literature of the Great Irish Famine and the
Holocaust in a Graduate Course?

Maureen Fadem (CUNY Graduate Center), ?Recognizing Difference: On Irish
Postcoloniality?

5:45-6:00p.m. Coffee Break

6:00-7:30p.m. TALK and PERFORMANCE: Scott Spencer (NYU), Eamon O?Leary
(Guitar and Banjo), and Patrick Ourceau (Fiddle), Live at Mona?s:
Anthologizing New York?s Traditional Irish Music Scene

7:30p.m. Closing Comments by Joe Lee (NYU) and Sara Brady (NYU) Reception to
follow

From Patrick O'Sullivan

For information...

P.O'S.


- -----Original Message-----

On the 19/3/04 at the Irish Centre in Camden there will be a meeting of the
Traveller Law Reform Coalition for its friends and supporters to discuss the
TLRC's progress and future plans.

There will also be poetry, music and free food and drink.
The event will start at 6 pm and finish at 8.30 pm.

The address is the Irish Centre, 50-52 Camden Square
NW1 9XB

Nearest underground is Camden Town

More details to follow

Don't forget the TLRC Conference on the 7th May in Birmingham, order your
tickets now (free to Travellers), see:

http://www.travellerslaw.org.uk/press.htm#conference090204

Regards,

Andrew Ryder,
Policy Development Worker,
The Traveller Law Reform Coalition,
The Old Library Building,
Willesden Green Library Centre,
95 High Road,
Willsden,
London
NW10 2ST
Tel 07 985 684 921
email: romanistan[at]yahoo.com

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded on behalf of
Gisela Holfter
Gisela.Holfter[at]ul.ie

Subject: German-Speaking exiles in Ireland, Limerick 10-12 June 2004

Centre for Irish-German Studies
University of Limerick

International Colloquium
German-speaking Exiles in Ireland 1933-1945 10-12. June 2004

Who came to Ireland, how did these refugees manage to overcome the
restrictive policy and how did their lives turn out in Ireland? The results
will be placed in the context of research on exiles coming to Great Britain
and other countries, therefore adding a hitherto unknown Irish perspective
to international exile studies.

Keynote Speakers:
Professor Wolfgang Benz
President of the German Society for Exile Research and Director of the
Centre for Anti-Semitism Research, FU Berlin Professor Dermot Keogh Head of
the History Department, University College Cork

For further information and booking form (please return by 15.5.2004 at the
latest) contact:
Siobhan O'Connor, Conference Secretary:
siobhan.oconnor[at]ul.ie;
fax: 061/202556

Conference organisation:
Dr Gisela Holfter, Senior Lecturer in German, Co-Director of the Centre for
Irish-German Studies, University of Limerick, gisela.holfter[at]ul.ie, phone:
061/202395

The Centre for Irish-German Studies gratefully acknowledges the support of
the Austrian Embassy, German Embassy, Goethe-Institut, College of
Humanities, Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences,
University of Limerick Research Funding

http://www.ul.ie/~lcs/irish-german.html

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded on behalf of

James Murphy

To:
Subject: DEADLINES FOR APRIL CONFERENCE

Dear Friends,
Just to remind you that some of the registration deadlines for the SSNCI
conference at DePaul University, Chicago, 16-18 April 2004 on "Structures of
Belief in 19th Century Ireland" are imminent. You can register for the
conference until early April but if you would like to book accommodation at
the Belden-Stratford Hotel you must do so by MARCH 26, or if you would like
to stay at the Cenacle Retreat and Conference Center you must book by MARCH
10.

See the SSNCI website - http://www.qub.ac.uk/en/socs/ssnci.html - for
details of registration and accommodation (and a list of papers).

Two further features of the conference will be, firstly, an exhibition of
Irish material in DePaul's Richardson library (first editions from Sir John
Davies [A Discoverie of the True Causes (1612)], through Edgeworth and
Lever, to Yeats, Gregory and Synge) and, secondly, a musical recital and
lecture on nineteenth-century Irish opera, featuring the work of Benedict
and Stanford, by Professor Nicholas Temperley of the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign.

James H Murphy

From Patrick O'Sullivan

For information...

P.O'S.



Title: Beyond Space: Border Making in European Integration, The Case of
Ireland
Author(s): Anders Hellström
Source: Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography Volume: 85
Number: 3 Page: 123 -- 135
DOI: 10.1111/j.0435-3684.2003.00136.x
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing

Abstract: ABSTRACT
The current ambition to enlarge the European Union (EU) from fifteen to
twenty-seven member states has brought to the fore questions about European
integration and its overarching aim. On 7 June, 2001, the Irish people
decided not to ratify the Nice Treaty. However, the Irish 'no' was not
considered to be an expression of political resentment that could impinge on
further development of European integration, but rather a sign of an
information deficit. According to the EU top down rhetoric, the Irish people
had not yet realised what it means to be, act and think as Europeans in
Europe. The Irish referendum serves in this respect as a crucial juncture
which brings to the surface otherwise veiled discursive power mechanisms
that frame sociopolitical action within the EU discourse. This article
analyses EU transcripts and speeches, as well as Irish newspaper articles
prior to and after the referendum in order to depict these many-faceted
mechanisms surrounding the border-making processes in European integration.
It is argued that the Irish referendum, rather than altering the process of
European integration in any significant way, has served the endeavours to
fix a consolidated European Space. In other words, the European space that
we live in is conceived of as if it could be presupposed beyond space.

© 2004 Blackwell Publishers
Keywords: space; identity; European integration; Ireland

From Patrick O'Sullivan

For information...

P.O'S.


Title: Irish Euroscepticism
Author(s): Karin Gilland
Source: European Studies: A Journal of European Culture, History and
Politics Volume: 20 Page: 171 -- 191
Publisher: Rodopi

Abstract: EU membership brought Ireland considerable economic gain, but also
benefits of another kind. A radical view is that until 1973 Ireland's
independence was vacuous due to the continued economic dependence on
Britain. The year 2000 saw the start of a new relationship between Ireland
and the EU: this was the year of the 'Boston-Berlin' debate, followed by the
detrimental 'budget row' and Nice referendum in 2001. These events added
nuance to the debate on Ireland's membership. However, opinion polls
continued to show very high levels of public support for the EU throughout
this time, and upon examination, the referendum results do not support the
view that Euroscepticism has spread like wildfire, or even at all, among the
Irish public. When confronted with decisive choices, political parties such
as Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, whose prominent members had
been making statements and taking positions that could be perceived as
Eurosceptic, reassumed their conventional pro-European stance.

© Editions Rodopi B. V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2004

From Patrick O'Sullivan

I thought that this review of...

Dickinson, Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain

...might be of interest.

Since the reviewer has much to say on the place of Ireland in this
collection.

The specifically Irish chapters are...

21. Religion in Ireland
Sean J. Connolly

31. Ireland: The Making of the 'Protestant Ascendancy', 1690-1760
Paddy McNally

32. Ireland: Radicalism, Rebellion and the Union
Martyn J. Powell

There is some material from the book on the History Compass web site
http://www.history-compass.com/Pilot/ukire/UkIre_dickinsonbk.htm

There is a further review, more brief and unforgiving, at
LookSmart/FindArticles - from English Historical Review
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0293/477_118/104728665/p1/article.jhtml

P.O'S.


- -----Original Message-----
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Albion[at]h-net.msu.edu (February 2004)

H. T. Dickinson, ed. _A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain_.
Blackwell Companions to British History Series. Oxford and Malden: 2002.
xviii + 550 pp. Maps, bibliographies, index. $124.95 (cloth), ISBN
0-631-21837-8.

Reviewed for H-Albion by James Caudle , Yale Editions
of the Private Papers of James Boswell, Yale University

This _Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain_ is one in a series devoted to
providing "sophisticated and authoritative overviews of the scholarship that
has shaped our current understanding of British History..., to synthesize
the current state of scholarship from a variety of historical perspectives
and to provide a statement on where the field is heading"
(dust-jacket). [See, for example, the H-Albion review of Barry Coward, ed.
_A Companion to Stuart Britain_. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003.
: Editor.]

The high cost of this book will likely discourage many people who should buy
this excellent compilation for their own personal collections. Until the
arrival of what one hopes will be an affordable paperback, I suggest you
badger your institutional librarian into purchasing the book, and then
convince him/her to place at least one copy on borrowable status rather than
only on a restricted reference shelf. This _Companion to Eighteenth-Century
Britain_ (hereafter _Companion_) is a book which deserves to be read for its
essays, and which deserves a slow and contemplative reading rather than a
quick flip-through for a fact-checking expedition in the research shelves.

All of the thirty-eight essays in _Companion_ were especially commissioned
for the volume.[1] Essayists were asked to provide a narrative or structural
analysis of the _wie es eigentlich gewesen_, the events and
personalities--or trends and phenomena--of the era. At the same time they
were also responsible for summarizing and explaining the state of
scholarship within the specialist subject both through authorial comments,
as well as providing a list of fifteen to twenty-five essential books on the
subject.

The scope and ambition of _Companion_ is daunting: the idea of summing up
eighteenth-century Britain and its global context in five hundred pages is
in itself daring enough. Perhaps an orthodox Baconian or Comtean might have
imagined in 1952 that the increasing exactitude, accuracy, and
hyper-specialization of eighteenth-century British Studies over the past
half-century would have led to increasing clarity and ease in creating
overarching general theories of the way Georgian Britain worked. As
Dickinson points out in his brief introduction, however, the exponential
increase in specialist scholarship between 1952 and 2002--the flood of
factual information, archival findings, and much elegant theory as
well--poses as many problems as it solves, making the work of summary and
generalization more difficult, rather than easier.

Dickinson begins the volume by claiming that "[f]ifty years ago historians
studying eighteenth-century Britain would probably have agreed on what were
its most important features." One might dispute such a claim: the actual
consensus of historians in 1952 was not entirely in favor (as is implied) of
a placid landscape view of Britain as a world of "aristocratic nature,"
"landed elite," a non-interfering "limited monarchy," a modernizing and
secularizing and tolerant materialist emerging power characterized by
"aristocracy, stability, improvement and growing prosperity" (p. xv).
Granted, a tradition reaching from Macaulay, Trevelayan, Lecky and Stephen,
and continued by Plumb (though not entirely by Namier) did argue skillfully
and often hegemonically that eighteenth-century Britain was _really_ about a
secular and oligarchic world of enlightened wealth, power, comfort, and
progress, and the defenders of this viewpoint at times thuggishly beat down
anyone who dared to argue otherwise. But already in 1952 the cracks in the
edifice had been revealed by Sykes, Laski, Petrie, Broxap, the early
historical materialists, and many others. The period from 1952 to 2002
merely saw the cracks in what came to be called "Plumb's century" grow until
the solid belief in an age of stabilitarian elegance collapsed into shards.

The postmodern attempts by Simon Schama and Annabel Patterson to restore a
broad-brush Whig Interpretation to the period have largely fallen on
unsympathetic ears among eighteenth-century specialists, and attempts to
bring in poor old Habermas (thirty years after the fact) to put the old
paradigm back in its place under a new name ("bourgeois public sphere") have
generally been greeted with a well-deserved scorn. In retrospect, standing
amidst the ruins, it seems that self-consciously revisionist writers of the
1980s and 90s such as J. C. D. Clark, Linda Colley, and Jonathan Scott did
not so much break through the old orthodoxy as to exploit the already
obvious gaps in its defenses. If there ever was a "Grand Narrative" of the
Long Eighteenth Century, such a Grand Narrative is now dead. Hence the
problem of trying to present a volume explaining it all to the seeker of a
fairly quick explanation. Does a volume of carefully researched and
thought-out, well-informed, justifiably tentative, and pragmatically trimmed
essays all headed in different and often mutually exclusive directions add
up to a unified vision of the period? And ought we to care if it does not?

Dickinson is on far more solid ground in his claim that "today, historians
of eighteenth-century Britain are much more sharply divided over what they
regard as its central features." Which is to say the least. As Dickinson
points out, "Ancien Régime" theorists arguing for Church and King and
Nobility as dominant forces now co-exist alongside theorists advocating
eighteenth-century Britain as "the most dynamic and modern society ... in
the world" (p. xvi). Believers in "stability and cohesion" face competition
from those who vaunt "almost constant instability and the continual tension
between the traditional forces of order and the abiding threat" (p. xvi).
Those who stress "major political and economic developments" among the more
traditional fields from 1903 to 1953, face rivalry from those who argue that
the "most interesting features" are "intellectual, social, and cultural."
Religion is "restored to a central position" (after Sykes), and
"intellectual discourse" (among the post-Skinnerians), the "role of gender
and women" (in the wake of the rise of history of women as a
departmentalized field as well as a special subject), and "crime and
disorder" (especially after the jocularly-called "crime wave" of new
works). According to Dickinson, the only thing to be sure of is that all is
in flux. Expanding the predicament of Johnson's _Rasselas_, we _begin_ from
the problematic of "A Conclusion in Which Nothing is Concluded." Readers of
this volume are not even allowed an initial illusion of a century of
stability, equipoise and taste before we are exiled from it. From the
editor's introduction onwards, throughout the book, we are confronted by the
prospect of a set of workable (albeit professedly provisional) specific
theories on aspects or areas of eighteenth-century societies, yet without
the possibility for a convincing macro or general grand theory of everything
in the era. Even within the specialist sub-fields of each article, the
authors are (correctly) tentative about making generalizations about the
totality of the era, and most acknowledge or even celebrate the divergence
of opinion on the subject-matter. I am confident of the excellence of the
individual components of this volume, but remain unclear as to whether they
were meant to present a coherent picture of the long eighteenth century.
Dickinson seems to think they should not all gibe and, although I agree,
this aspect may vex some few readers who may take the unlikely approach of
reading through a book obviously designed to be consulted hodge-podge as the
need arises.

The task of compressing all of the above-mentioned ferment in recent
scholarship and dividing it neatly into no more than forty topics is even
worse when compared to the more specialized and (at least superficially)
more compact and feasible agendas of certain other Blackwell "Companions" on
somewhat narrower subjects such as early-twentieth-century Britain,
contemporary Britain, American Foreign Relations, the American Revolution,
or the Vietnam War.

The first effort to bring order to the chaos is through a division of the
book into six major segments. Part 1, which is allotted nine essays, is on
politics and the constitution. High politics is "privileged," or at least
is offered precedence in the procession, in the _Companion_. Part 2, which
is given seven essays, surveys the economy and society, a segment which in a
_marxisant_ account would have been the structure on which the rest of the
book was built. Part 3, granted five essays, examines religion. Part 4,
another six essays, offers aspects of culture. Part 5, "Union and Disunion
in the British Isles," brings in five essays on Wales, Scotland, and
Ireland. The logical final part, "Britain and the Wider World," contains
six essays.

One might quibble over the allocation of many of the essays to certain
"parts" of the _Companion_. Presumably in order to avoid imbalancing the
volume towards the already top-heavy (albeit excellent) section on politics
and constitution, several essays which seemed to have a natural home therein
were moved strategically into less populated parts of the book. High
"Political Ideas," while as much a part of "Politics and the Constitution"
as any topic in that section, are placed in "Culture" rather than adjacent
to their cousin "Popular Politics and Radical Ideas." The national Church
of England is not treated in the same section as its conjoined twin, "The
British State," but shunted to a general discussion of religion of dissent
and establishment reserved into its own little segment; this likely
unintentional ghettoization of the subject matter seems to exacerbate the
general failure of scholarship on this century (as opposed to that on the
seventeenth) to understand the integral nature of the church-state nexus.
The essays on Army and Navy seem somewhat forlorn and bereft in the "Britain
and the Wider World" segment, and again seem to have as much reason to be in
part 1 on foundational institutions. This problem is not exclusive to
displaced residents of part 1. The role of religion in Scottish and Irish
nationalism is eroded by sticking Scottish and Irish religion in the
"Religion" section rather than under "Union and Disunion in the British
Isles," a trend in which religion was such a motive force. Does the "Slave
Trade," here found in "Britain and the Wider World," not have as much cause
to be read by students of part 2, "The Economy and Society"? And why is
"Crime and Punishment" not part of the general "Economy and Society," or in
the overloaded "Politics and the Constitution" segment, rather than being
construed as a form of "Culture" akin to Morris-Dancing or Rhymed Couplets?

Admittedly, taxonomical cavils are not at all severe criticisms of the
book's quality and integrity, nor are they intended to be. The question of
categories does, however, suggest the ever-increasing difficulty in the
twenty-first century of pigeonholing sub-fields into "proper" places and
apportioning pieces of the pie to the increasing number of specialist seats
at the table; and leads to questions of allocation of space. Given that all
of these topics are worthy and are invariably given less space than their
writers deserved, why, for instance, did the politics of England and Ireland
each require two chapters (both dividing the halves at 1760), but the
politics of Wales and Scotland can be bunged into one chapter each?

There are also questions of topical overreach. The rationale for including
part 4, "Britain and the Wider World," is pedagogically, politically, and
(on grounds of relevance to Blair's postmodern Britain) unimpeachable. At
least in the next quarter-century, issues of Britain's role in the EU and
within the Atlantic community of Atlantic Oceania, dominated by the United
States as hegemon, demands historical examination of the roots thereof. The
strongly vital influence of history of the empire, Atlantic history, African
diaspora studies and history of enslavement in current historical studies is
unquestionable. However, in the already overloaded agenda of a _Companion_
which begins by admitting the increasing difficulty of being
all-encompassing, one wonders if part 4, however daring, laudable, and
sociopolitically necessary, is not a bridge too far. Without being accused
of "Little Englandism" (or in this case, "Little Britainism"), it could be
argued that the _Companion_ might have benefitted from a tighter focus on
understanding the "B" in _Eighteenth-Century Britain_. The book might have
maintained a tighter focus by adhering fairly closely to the impossible
agenda of describing Britain 1700-1800 rather than appending other
impossible agendas such as synthesizing Ireland, the thirteen colonies,
India, and continental Europe. Especially with an entire _Companion_ on
"Colonial America" in the works, Speck's interesting essay on "Britain and
the Atlantic World," though it suggests, in tandem with most new
Atlanticism, that we must transcend the narrowness of focus on thirteen
colonies which would form the future United States, seems less central. It
is not simply pedantry or eirocentrism to suggest that a companion to
eighteenth-century _Britain_ which includes three important essays on
Ireland before the Union (nearly 8 percent of the total essays) is actually
properly a _A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland_, and
ought to signal to Blackwell the need for a _Companion to Irish History_ if
one has not already been commissioned. Nor is it too much to suggest that
Blackwell ought to consider competing against Oxford's immense _History of
the British Empire_ by creating a _Companion to the British Empire_ which
could include essays such as Bruce Lenman's on "Britain and India" to as
great or greater effect than they have in this compilation.

As for the balance of "trad" to "rad" topics, the book is based on a fairly
conventional and familiar set of categories, and since the book is designed
as a reliable companion for a broad audience which includes novices and
experts, this fairly unadventuresome approach to taxonomy is to be expected,
if not lauded. The most trendy segments are those on the radicals, women
and the family, and popular culture as well as the pieces on
class-consciousness, class conflict, and national and ethnic identity.

However, the traditionalism of the approach is evident even in these
combinations. Women and children are inexplicably dumped together rather
than having separate segments on women and another on children. The
dichotomy between "Elite Culture" and "Popular Culture" presented seems
somewhat of a relic of the false dichotomies of politically activist writing
in the 1970s. And why divide elite culture from literature and drama?
Another false dichotomy is that between "Radical Ideas" and "Political Ideas
from Locke to Paine;" why should Paine "double-dip," being both a "real"
political thinker and a radical partisan ideologist? (The treatments of
these topics by the essayists are themselves able to transcend the limits of
the taxonomies in many cases.)

As there are thirty-eight essays in the collection, it is impossible to
offer, even in the generous expanse of an H-Net review, a complete
examination of each of the essays. The self-discipline exercised by the
authors as a group was laudable. The page-length allotted to each essay was
fairly strictly regulated; the average page length granted to each essay is
just over twelve pages. The shortest twelve of the essays run a brisk seven
to ten pages; the most expansive of the essays are only fourteen to
seventeen pages. The essays are generous in length, especially when
compared to the Jeremy Black and Roy Porter's _Dictionary of
Eighteenth-Century World History_ (1994) whose very brief entries suffered
from being too bitty and too succinct to provide much but the bare bones.
They are long enough to manage a fairly comprehensive view of the subject
matter. However, they are brief enough to be assigned to undergraduates for
a quick introduction, which is an excellent rationale for Blackwell to
promptly find a paperback publisher for the volume (just as Penguin issued
the paperback of the _Dictionary of World History_) to make it assignable
for classes. These essays will no doubt be made very good use of by
candidates preparing for graduate oral and written exams, or by those
reviewing for undergraduate comprehensive exams in need of a rapid and
reliable boost. They may even get guilty shufflings-through by specialists
caught off topic in preparing lectures.

The essays are also generally notable for being actual _essays_, complete
with distinctive and controversial theses and points of view, not simply
compendia of undisputed facts nor a trudge through some dry-as-dust
narrative. They are always informative, but more surprisingly quite often a
pleasure to read. The authors were not required to feign a disinterested or
perspectiveless objectivity in the manner that so many encyclopedias,
guides, and companions demand of contributors. Furthermore, the styles were
not rendered down by Dickinson into some imagined plain style, an authorial
vanilla, as so often happens in large-scale institutional works. Those
readers familiar with the other works of the more-published authors, or even
of the eccentricities of the conversational styles of the various
contributors, will recognize their various distinctive turns of phrase and
habits of argumentation. In some cases, although it will not have been
intended for reading in leisure (fireside, night-table, or beach) several
chapters could satisfactorily be read in those settings.

Dickinson's self-control as editor is considerable. It might be thought a
venial sin that he alone contributes two essays to the book, and a slightly
worse one that his own interests in high politics exert a strong
gravitational force on the book's contents, but overall the authors are
allowed to go their separate ways. The selection of contributors is not
simply confined to an Oxbridge cabal, but, as promised, includes authors
from the United Kingdom, continental Europe, the United States, and Canada.
Based on current location of employment rather than nativity or surname
origin, there are twenty-nine U.K. authors (sixteen from England, eight from
Scotland, four from Wales), five from the United States, and one each from
Canada, Ireland, and Germany. The volume also contains a mix of well-known
and authoritative names within eighteenth-century studies, juxtaposed
alongside new voices in the profession whose contributions here will be
important entries in their emerging specialist publication. The vast
majority of the commissions were given to veteran scholars whose names are
by now almost instinctually associated with their subfields. If one were to
ask a period specialist as a trivia quiz which of the chapters Dickinson,
Hellmuth, Hill, Szechi, Bushaway, Mingay, Rogers, Borsay, Brown, Harris, and
Downie (to choose a random sample) had written, the guesser would have a
high likelihood of matching acknowledged expert to subject matter.

One does occasionally wish that there had been a more consistent editorial
policy on whether the essays were honor-bound to address historiography of
the topic, and if so, how much of the article to devote to it. After all,
as Robin Winks's volume on the historiography of the British Empire and
other such auxiliary books demonstrate, it is possible to occupy the
entirety of a guide simply with field surveys. The articles on crime and
the Church of England, for example, frame their topics in terms of the
changes in historiography and prevailing models, whereas other articles
conceal their knowledge of the changes in secondary scholarship within the
narrative and are more Rankean or Baedekerian in their view of the job at
hand in offering a brief overview of what happened. Given the
"twenty-five-year" rule on scholarly fashions, one is not certain that the
field survey is the approach most likely to yield an article that will last
for the long haul.

Nor was it clear whether the authors were encouraged to go at their topics
gloves off. The genre demands that the essays be correct and modest in
their claims, not overwhelmingly or daringly revisionist. That is as must
be, but knowing some of the authors's other bolder works, one wishes to have
seen them cut loose a bit more in their contributions here, and take some
more risks in redefining their specialist subjects and even the long
eighteenth century as a whole. Nonetheless, the volume is likely more
lasting and reliable due to this spirit of caution.

The question of how many companions and handy-books any field actually
_needs_ or wants is a final consideration as Blackwell charges into the
field full-tilt. The _Companion_, as I have argued above, is an exemplary
instance of the genre; and given that this sort of book must be produced,
and must be done well if done at all, this is a fine example of the type,
with good editorial guidance, with extremely high and consistent overall
quality, authoritative and often adventuresome essays, and in the final
estimate not only enjoyable to consult but to keep on the nightstand as
well. However, the economics of publishing in the current reality mean that
publishers are likely to assume that such companion and guide books, rather
than specialist works by single authors, are the future of the presses. The
bottom-line consultants ought to consider whether the world is not already
overloaded (or at best about to be overloaded) with these sorts of rough
guides to the subfields. Fortunately, the _Companion_ manages to
distinguish itself so as to seem likely to survive the impending glut.

Note

[1]. The chapters are: H. T. Dickinson, "The British Constitution";
Eckhart Hellmuth, "The British State"; Patrick Karl O'Brien, "Finance and
Taxation"; David Eastwood, "Local Government and Local Society"; Brian Hill,
"Parliament, Parties and Elections (1688-1760)"; Stephen M. Lee,
"Parliament, Parties and Elections (1760-1815)"; Daniel Szechi, "The
Jacobite Movement"; H. T. Dickinson, "Popular Politics and Radical Ideas";
Emma Vincent Macleod, "The Crisis of the French Revolution"; John Rule,
"Industry and Commerce"; Gordon Mingay, "Agriculture and Rural Life";
Richard G. Wilson, "The Landed Elite"; Nicholas Rogers, "The Middling
Orders"; John Rule, "The Labouring Poor"; Peter Borsay, "Urban Life and
Culture"; John D. Ramsbottom, "Women and the Family"; Jeremy Gregory, "The
Church of England"; Colin Haydon, "Religious Minorities in England"; G. M.
Ditchfield, "Methodism and the Evangelical Revival"; Stewart J. Brown,
"Religion in Scotland"; Sean J. Connolly, "Religion in Ireland"; Bob Harris,
"Print Culture"; Pamela Edwards, "Political Ideas from Locke to Paine";
Maura A. Henry, "The Making of Elite Culture"; J. A. Downie, "Literature and
Drama"; Bob Bushaway, "Popular Culture"; J. A. Sharpe, "Crime and
Punishment"; Colin Kidd, "Integration: Patriotism and Nationalism";
Alexander Murdoch, "Scotland and the Union"; Geraint H. Jenkins, "Wales in
the Eighteenth Century"; Paddy McNally, "Ireland: The Making of the
'Protestant Ascendancy,' 1690-1760"; Martyn J. Powell, "Ireland: Radicalism,
Rebellion and Union"; H. M. Scott, "Britain's Emergence as a European Power,
1688-1815"; W. A. Speck, "Britain and the Atlantic World"; Bruce P. Lenman,
"Britain and India"; Stanley D. M.
Carpenter, "The British Army"; Richard Harding, "The Royal Navy"; and John
Oldfield, "Britain and the Slave Trade".


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