This article offers some reflections on the processes of nation-making and state formation as they affected the oldest ethnic and cultural grouping in the British Isles, that of the Gaedhil, roughly in the period 1450–1650, and examines the ways in which these processes have been portrayed by historians. At the present day the Gaelic language remains the normal medium of communication in small areas of western Ireland and western Scotland; and in respect of political developments in both Scotland and Ireland, Gaelic customs and culture have exercised a much more substantial influence. Despite these similarities, there remain significant differences between British and Irish historians in the ways in which the Gaelic contribution to nation-making and state formation have been presented.

A basic distinction advanced by historians both of Ireland and Scotland has been one between the Gaelic peoples inhabiting Ireland and those resident in Scotland. It can be argued that this may reflect the relative importance of the Gaelic contribution to the making of two separate kingdoms, and ultimately two separate states; but it also means that the wider process of interaction and assimilation between Gaedhil and Gaill is split into separate Irish and Scottish experiences. In theory, these two Gaelic experiences should provide material for a comparative study of a particularly illuminating kind, but in practice other historiographical influences have generally militated against this kind of comparative history. One such is the more marginal position of Gaelic studies within Scottish historiography than is the case in Ireland. Considering that half of Scotland was still Gaelic-speaking in 1700, for instance, it is remarkable how few Scottish historians seem able to make use of Gaelic sources. Another is the practice of establishing separate departments of history in the universities for the teaching of national history. This has meant, for instance, that students are usually taught that portion of the Gaedhil/Gaill interaction process which relates to the ‘nation’ by specialist teachers of national history. Yet, since these national surveys reflect modern nations and modern national boundaries, students are trained to study Irishmen and Scots in the making rather than to consider how the inhabitants of late medieval Gaeldom might have viewed developments in the wider Gaelic world. Arguably, behind these approaches lies the influence of the modern nation-state. Scotland and Northern Ireland remain part of a multi-national British state which is dominated by England.

Of all the crown courts in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ireland, the chancery court has received the most favourable judgement from historians. Through its exercise of equity, the chancery court has been perceived as a mediator between English common law and Gaelic customary law. Equity provided the chancellor with the possibility of considering a judgement from the point of view of ‘reason and conscience’, to ensure what W. J. Jones has called the ‘protection of the innocent from the ruthless specifications’ of common law courts. In Irish terms this meant that the chancellor was prepared to consider Gaelic forms of partible inheritance from the standpoint of equity. In Gaelic society land descended according to a variety of customs which, it was argued in chancery, had been observed ‘time out of mind’ in a particular family or region and therefore in fairness or equity might be upheld even if they were contrary to common law practice.

This benign view of the Irish chancery court’s attitude to Gaelic customary law has much in common with the attitude of the English chancery court towards women. Historians of early modern England have portrayed chancery as a judicial forum which provided women with legal redress which would have been denied them at common law. Female litigants in the sixteenth-century English chancery court included single, widowed and married women. Under common law, only single women and widows were entitled to legal representation in their own right. Married women, as femmes couvertes, were legally merged with their husbands on marriage, and so could not bring cases in their own name at common law. In the English chancery court, however, a small number of married women were permitted at the discretion of the chancellor to sue on their own without their husbands. In the course of the sixteenth century the English chancery also contributed to the extension of the legal franchise of women.

In July 1903 Maud Gonne hung a black petticoat from the window of her Dublin home, insulting her unionist neighbours and provoking what became known as ‘the battle of Coulson Avenue’. Aided by nationalist friends, athletes from Cumann na nGaedheal and her sturdy housekeeper, she defended her ‘flag’ against police and irate neighbours. Gonne’s lingerie — allegedly a mark of respect for the recently deceased pope — flew in stark and defiant contrast to the numerous Union Jacks which lined her street in honour of King Edward VII’s visit to Ireland. This episode heralded a month of spectacular protest which polarised nationalist opinion. Like the visit to Dublin of Queen Victoria in 1900, King Edward’s tour provoked both enormous public interest and rivalry between various Irish institutions which vied to express their loyalty to the crown. But the royal tours also instigated fierce debate within the nationalist community and highlighted the ever deepening rifts between constitutional nationalism and ‘advanced’ nationalism.

Few commentators would dispute that, as regards historical records, 1922 was a year of destruction and displacement. Months before the conflagration in the Four Courts annihilated a broad cross-section of official records the departing representatives of the crown régime had turned their attention to those most recently in use. Nobody really knows how much of this material was deliberately burnt in Dublin Castle in the days preceding the takeover by Free State troops on 16 January 1922. It is all but certain that at least some intelligence files were destroyed: these would no doubt have identified informants, double agents, serving intelligence officers (whether English or Irish), and the more discreet crown servants. Certainly the new custodians were greeted by empty cupboards and bare shelves. Legends, which may or may not have been founded in reality, grew of the extent of the destruction and, by implication, of the scale of the guilty secrets thus concealed forever.

But the incoming officials were in no doubt, either, that much had been simply removed, whether to the Irish Office in London or to some other safe place. Assurances were offered to the Free State government by the departing Castle official A. W. Cope ‘that the only papers we are removing from the Castle to London are confidential papers relating to the political movement in this country. The removal of the papers will not hamper the future administration.’ Should any person apply for the return of papers seized in police raids during the conflict, their requests would be considered. Cope was being less than candid. During March an Irish Office official noted in an unmistakably complaining tone that the office was having to accommodate ‘a number of files belonging to the Crimes Special Department of the R.I.C. and an Irish Secret Service organisation. Some of the matter in these files is highly secret.’ The material occupied one hundred deed-boxes, half-a-dozen large packing cases, a couple of six-foot-high cupboards, along with thirty-eight card-index trays (‘twelve of them in cabinets’).

In the 1940s and 1950s, irrespective of the government in power, Irish foreign policy faced strong domestic pressure to remain within parameters defined by religious sentiment, anti-communism and anti-colonialism. Yet two contrasting attitudes, corresponding to party allegiances, were nonetheless discernible: that of Fine Gael, which held constantly to a pro-Western line, and that of Fianna Fáil, which was capable of occasionally departing from it. By the 1960s the two approaches had converged, as Fianna Fáil under Seán Lemass repositioned itself more clearly in the American-led camp, a change most strikingly exemplified by Ireland’s response to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Yet before the end of the decade an issue was to arise in which Dublin’s Department of External Affairs was to find itself steering a course independent of forces both within the country and outside it.

The war which erupted in Nigeria in the summer of 1967, when its Eastern Region seceded, was to reverberate across the world, causing a response in Ireland unequalled by the reaction to any foreign civil conflict between that of Spain in the 1930s and that of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. It was to bring about the greatest emotional involvement with an African problem since Ireland’s participation in the Congo conflict, leading directly to the foundation of the Africa Concern and Gorta organisations and marking a turning-point in the nature of Irish overseas aid.

These verses were written by the Irish poet to express his grief at the impact of the Williamite victory at the battle of the Boyne and all that followed for Ireland. They were chosen two hundred years later by the historian Edmund Curtis to make clear his attitude towards Ireland’s past. In 1923, just after home rule was secured for what was officially known as Saorstát Éireann (Irish Free State), he published his history of medieval Ireland, and where a dedication would normally be printed he inserted ‘The Absentee Lordship’ and followed it with these verses. In doing this, Curtis left no doubt that in his view medieval Ireland was a lordship wrongfully attached to the English crown and that it should rightfully have been a kingdom under its own native dynastic ruler. For this he was subsequently denounced as unhistorical, and to this day, especially in the view of the so-called revisionists, he is commonly regarded as not only out of date, but dangerous as well. It was argued that Curtis used the medieval past to justify the emergence of a self-governing state in Ireland. To quote just one example, Steven Ellis, the best of the medieval revisionists, wrote in 1987 that ‘historians like Edmund Curtis concentrated on such topics as friction between the Westminster and Dublin governments, the Gaelic revival, the Great Earl uncrowned king of Ireland, the blended race and the fifteenth-century home rule movement’.

Recent years have witnessed a very welcome flourishing of historical and political research on the questions of gender and sexuality in Irish history and Irish society. In particular, the shameful lack (until the publication in 1978 of MacCurtain and Ó Corráin’s pioneering collection of essays) of historical studies of women’s changing roles within, and contributions to, Irish society is now being remedied. No longer can it be said that Irish women are entirely ‘hidden from history’ (to borrow the title of Sheila Rowbotham’s famous 1973 book), although some lacunae in the literature are still noticeable — for example, the problem of lesbian invisibility remains. That said, the present selection of works is impressive in the range of issues, themes and theoretical perspectives it covers. Given that gender and sexuality have featured prominently on the political agenda of the Republic of Ireland since at least the early 1980s, these publications are both timely and much needed.

The first title reviewed here, Mary O’Dowd and Sabine Wichert’s Chattel, servant or citizen, is not specifically concerned with Ireland but has a much broader scope. Based on the proceedings of the twenty-first Irish Conference of Historians, it includes essays examining women’s status in Italy, Britain, France, Canada, Poland and the U.S.A., as well as several comparative essays. Among the essays with a specifically Irish theme are three in particular which deserve to be singled out.

Donnchadh Ó Corráin’s essay on ‘Women and the law in early Ireland’ makes use of Latin and vernacular legal tracts, contemporary genealogies and (to a lesser extent) vernacular literature to explore themes which include marriage, rights and responsibilities in relation to children, rights of inheritance, and sexual violence against women. Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha singles out the Law of Adomnán of A.D. 697 as a landmark in the written history of women in Ireland. Named after the abbot of Iona and scholar, it is ‘the earliest surviving law concerned primarily with [women’s] welfare, and very probably the first law with this focus to have been enacted in the country’.