by Mindy Clegg
I recently visited Dublin Ireland with my family. As you might imagine, it was a great vacation. We stayed near the river Liffy which divides the city center. We mostly walked around town (Dublin is compact compared the sprawling ATL) but we took public transit a couple of times—the DART out to Howth and the street car to the national museum housed at Collins Barracks. We visited the Kildare street National museum (archaeology), the Chester Beatty library / museum including a meal at the Silk Road cafe, and the fun Little Museum of Dublin (a true home for Dublin theater kids). We shopped for souvenirs on the Grafton street, including the crowded Aran Sweater Market, one touristy knick-knack shop, and a second hand book and record shop squirreled away down a hallway.
We also took part in one organized tour up to the Hill of Tara and the UNESCO protected site Newgrange. That trip and the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence has put me in mind of the importance of history in creating and reifying our modern political structures and national identities. Nation-states employ history to naturalize itself for its citizens and the world. As such, what is and isn’t preserved for the public is a highly political act, not a neutral one. Ireland provides one such case and an interesting one, as unlike much of Western Europe, it is a post-colonial state.
Ireland’s tourist industry excels at teaching Ireland’s troubled history to citizens and visitors alike. It is the modern national project found in most nation-states these days. That being said, the contested nature of historical understanding is rarely on display in locations dedicated to the national project. Around Dublin historical markers can be found everywhere many supported by the state. One can find where the vikings first landed just outside the Trinity college campus when the river liffy was much wider. Down off Grafton street, near a pub, is a statue of Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy. Constance Markievicz is memorialized with her dog Poppet on Townsend street. Oscar Wilde is a popular figure for statuary, found both outside a pub behind Trinity and reclining on a massive rock in the corner of Merrion square park. Daniel O’Connell presides from his magnificent plinth over the upper side of the Liffy on the street which bears his name. There are also reminders of the destruction of British imperialism, such as the famine memorial, a site which also marks the end of the National Famine way trail that starts in Strokestown, county Roscommon. In addition to the EPIC which is dedicated to the Irish diaspora, the Jeanie Johnston ship delves into the specific history of one ship that brought Irish people fleeing imperial violence to other shores (successfully, compared to the “coffin ships” of the era). The Customs House and the GPO cover the rebellion against British rule in 1916. Irish tourism leans heavily into all these histories, and has largely been successful in attracting the dollars of American, Canadian, and Australian tourists many of whom are descendants of Irish migrants and refugees. Of course, plenty of Irish tourists and many EU citizens enjoy visiting these locations and learning about this history as well. The focus on many of these sites tend to be the late colonial period, in order to illustrate how Irish national identity triumphed over foreign, colonial oppression.
Tourist attractions outside of Dublin are similarly historically grounded, especially with regards to the distant past. Nearby is one of the most interesting archaeological sites in Western Europe, Newgrange. We booked a tour with a long-time tour guide Mary Gibbons who got her start in this sort of heritage and history tourism in Italy in the 1970s. She meets people at the tour bus, but these days hands you over to a younger tour guide, Mia, for the duration of the trip. This includes a visit to the Hill of Tara. Our pick up was at 9:30am by St. Stephen’s Green park. At 10:30 or so when we arrived at Tara. Mia described the known origins of the passage tomb also known as the “hill of hostages” and some more recent political events on the hill such as Daniel O’connell’s rally in defense of Catholic rights in the 1840s. After the short and informative history lesson, we spend the rest of the hour clambering about the dips and valleys, reading the markers that commemorated various Irish historical events, gawking at the Lia Fáil, and dodging joggers and dog walkers. In addition to an important historical and archaeological site, the Hill of Tara is also a local dog park these days. Newgrange sharply contrasted with that experience. After arriving at the visitors center and museum, we boarded a shuttle run by Irish tourism board, first to Knowth and then to Newgrange. In each location, we were much more carefully directed about what we could or could not do. At Knowth, there was no climbing on all but the largest passage tomb. At Newgrange, no pictures were allowed inside the passage tomb. Inside the tomb, after a tight squeeze, one ends up in the main chamber, with only about 15 allowed inside at one time. One could also see centuries of etchings on the stone, from the ancient neolithic carvings to the more modern declarations of love by young people. Each site had fencing around it to block people not part of the authorized tour. All involved in this UNESCO heritage site took great pride in being stewards of these locations and understood them as an important part of shaping Irish heritage, even if the original builders of these sites might not share a genetic connection to the modern Irish population. The people who came after the neolithic population continued to use these sites. The main passage tomb at Knowth were surrounded by other archaeological sites, including the footprint of a cottage had been lived in during the early 20th century.
Despite the very different approaches to public engagement at Newgrange and Tara by the state, it is clear both help define the modern Irish identity. One (Tara) is in daily use as something more than a site of historical conservation and tourism. Preservation and education matter, but so does having space for people to experience these sites as part of a larger historical continuity. National identity as a social construct often includes real and imagined connections to a piece of land. For some, this has a stronger pull than a shared language, set of religious or cultural practices, or shared history. This is especially true of nationalism that developed under colonialism since the core is a struggle over land and who controls it. The nationalist connection to land helps to explain the strong support in Ireland for Palestine, where who “belongs” on the land rests at the core of the conflict. In Ireland’s colonial history, the best land was occupied by British or Anglo-Irish landlord. While prior to the English reformation, many of these landlords were largely Gaelicized (the Anglo-norman wave), post-Tudor relations between the Irish and their English overlords became far more contested, bloody, and violent. The Tudor invasion paled in comparison to the violence of the Cromwellian invasion, where the population was effectively halved. By the time of the Great Famine, the majority of the arable land had been turned to the mass production of agricultural goods. This calls into question that little bit of “common wisdom” that Ireland went from a pre-to-postmodern economy. Few Irish Catholics, especially among the peasantry, owned land themselves and those that did held that land dear. As more people fled death, disease, starvation, and political repression in the 19th century, nationalists began to connect the land of Ireland to an immutable Irish identity. The diaspora likely played a role in building this sense of national Irish identity as connected to occupied land. It also contributes to the tensions sometimes seen between people who claim Irish ancestry abroad and those still living in Ireland. We can see this in the depictions of Ireland in many Hollywood films that play on Irish stereotypes. Land provides a major marker in these films for helping the viewer to understand Irish identity. Irish people are intimately connected to the land, these films instruct. You have, in other words, both nationalist narratives to foreground the importance of the people-land connection and stereotyped plastic paddy narratives about an almost mystical connection between people and the land. There is a danger inherent in that framing. Such connections provide a wedge for fascists who deploy a “blood and soil” argument against immigration. We have seen this in the recent pogroms aimed at immigrants in both the Republic and the North of Ireland. Some probably used these ideas to dismiss concerns over the murder of Yves Sakila at the hands of gardai this past May in Dublin. Racists seeking to “keep Ireland Irish” do well to remember that Irish people weren’t always considered white especially by their colonizers, the British. The exact same language these racists are using to push a right wing, anti-immigrant agenda was once used to justify letting Irish children die of starvation. As an Irish American tourist, I appreciated the embrace of history in Ireland’s tourism industry. But as a historian, I would love to see even more counter-histories put on display (and I suspect that they are to be found in less touristy museums that we did not have time to visit). What does a Black history of Ireland look like, an Islamic one, or one that centers the Irish Traveller community? What does a history of immigration into Ireland tell us about belonging or a queer history of Ireland? Certainly there can be room for that in today’s Ireland, as the Leftist Cooks recently argued in their video essay about Irish identity, immigration, and forms of otherness.
And the Leftist Cooks also recently discussed migration and argued for abolishing borders – well worth the time to watch:
In a few days, the US will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a historically remarkable document. What can we learn from our friends in Ireland regarding national identity and how that shapes the memorialization of the past? For one, a nationalist (sometimes ultra-nationalist, blood and soil) historical narrative will leave out experiences from the margins in service of a narrative that focuses only on the “great men” of the nation. But a modern nation emerges out of competing narratives and on the backs of people suffering from forms of oppression demanding a greater say in governance. De-centering great men and looking at the margins of society and the demands made by the marginalized gives us a far more accurate picture of the past, much like understanding European history via the margins (such as countries like Ireland or the Balkans). This conflict is playing out this week in our nation’s capitol. Here’s to hoping that a more inclusive historical narrative, one that is more based in facts and truth, comes to win out in our public imagination.
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