An Old Fogey on the Young TurksNatives and Newcomers: Essays on the Making of Irish Colonial Society 1534-1641 by CiaránBrady; Raymond GillespieReview by: Brendan BradshawThe Irish Review (1986-), No. 2 (1987), pp. 140-142Published by: Cork University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29735299 .

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140 Reviews

totalitarian; the other crowd's as tolerantly empirical, committed to liberty and divers?

ity. But most contestants, despite mandatory cap-tipping, fail to consider the relation?

ships between power and identity. Ideologies backed up by force and marching men

(whether state-sponsored or raised by private enterprise) have a head start. The Crane Bag issue on 'Minorities' is a case in point. As Tom Duddy has remarked, there was no space in the logical structure of the issue for the most important minority of all ? the

bourgeoisk. Here was a flower that prevented many another from blooming. Unlike other

minorities it could not be romanticized for being peripheral and powerless. Idealizing the bourgeoisie is a tall order, a problem not unfamiliar to McCormack when he argued that the roots of Protestant Ascendancy were among the 'hard-faced bargainers' rather

than 'hard-riding country gentlemen'. Much of the debate presented by McCormack has taken place in periodicals. The

latest, The Irish Review (the definite article sounds ominous), does not sport a pro?

gramme but begins with a brief polemic from Roy Foster, 'We Are All Revisionists

Now', which looks suspiciously like one. Thanks to these dispassionate, ideologically in? nocent historians the 'story' of Ireland has become, well, science. Transcendental

signifiers have again been reconstructed; there is no revising the revisionists. The rest is silence. Is it not a bit Irish, now that genuine cultural debate has at last ground to a start, that a Section 31 should be slapped on it? But the benighted will keep forging ahead, and not least in The Irish Review.

TADHG FOLEY

An Old Fogey on the Young Turks

Ciar?n Brady and Raymond Gillespie (eds). Natives and Newcomers: Essays on the making of Irish CobnialSockty 1534-1641. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. ISBN 0-7165-2378-7.1R?25; IR?9-95.

In the past twenty-five years or so the study of the history of early modern Ireland has ad? vanced at an unprecedented rate. As never before, the main body of surviving archival

material, the public records, has been subjected to scrutiny in its original unprinted and

uncalendared state. The potential of other surviving records, e.g. contemporary

com?

mentaries, polemics and literature, has been systematically exploited as historical evidence for the first time. The insights and methods of modern historiography have been brought to bear. Old orthodoxies have been challenged. New questions have been

asked. The interpretative frame of reference has been virtually transformed. Now, with

the collection of essays reviewed here and Steve Ellis's Tudor Ireland, 1470-1603

(Longmans 1985), the historiography advances a further stage. The difficulty hitherto was that the major historical revision underway could only be grasped by consulting the

range of learned monographs, specialist articles in academic journals and unpublished theses from which it was emerging piecemeal. These two books, however, make the

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Reviews 141

Contents of the revisionist enterprise more generally accessible by providing a critical review of the outcome so far while at the same time proposing new lines of advance.

Natives and Newcomers holds an additional interest in that the eight essays which it con?

tains represent the work of a new generation of scholars of early modern Ireland; the

writers are almost all Ph.D's of a 1980s vintage ? one is still in the throes of a doctorate.

An erstwhile Young Turk approaches the collection in some trepidation, therefore,

fearing to discover that the revisionism of former years has become the Old Fogeyism of

the new generation. Approached with such concerns, the editorial Introduction pro? vides little comfort. There, despite generous acknowledgements of the achievement so

far, the editors urge the abandonment of the frame of reference in which the discussion is

currendy conducted. It is too highly schematised, it seems, too preoccupied with

ideology, and lacking in rigour because of its utilisation of the categories of Renaissance and Reformation which, apparently, lack sufficient definition to act as useful analytical tools in the Irish context. Instead, the editors urge the development of an analysis based on detailed studies of local communities and of the articulation of the institutions of

government, one, moreover, that will emphasise complexity and the contingency of events. The case is pressed in the opening essay by Ciar?n Brady in which the framework of Tudor government in Ireland is examined. Here the Canny-Bradshaw image of a

'reforming, ideologically motivated, and increasingly effective government' is found to contrast with the more modest claims made for Tudor government in England, to lack the insights of the great modern historian of Tudor institutions, Geoffrey Elton, and, in

any case, to be at variance with the reality in which self-interest, patronage and the in? teraction between local and court politics provided the dynamics by which the crown

fumbled towards constitutional reform. Similarly, Brady's co-editor, Ray Gillespie, in the concluding essay, reexamines the origins of the rebellion of 1641 and, while endors?

ing Aidan Clarke's emphasis on contingent circumstance ? as against explanations in

which the Ulster Plantation is presented as an ideological time-bomb ? he, nevertheless,

places local and material considerations (Ulster, economic crisis, patronage) at the centre of a

densely-worked narrative.

In the intervening six essays, however, it seems to the undoubtedly biased mind of this reviewer that the editors' methodological manifesto receives less than unequivocal sup? port. True, Bernadette Cunningham's wide-ranging analysis of bardic poetry as a

register of the response to political change staunchly adheres to the editorial line: the

poets in her analysis are much exercised by considerations of personal patronage and

social status, not at dti,pace Bradshaw, by an ideology of nationality. On the other hand,

Mary O'Dowd's meticulous review of Gaelic economy and society suggests a higher level of intellectual awareness among the Gaelic ?lite, a degree of cultural interchange facilitated by overseas trade, and even an Old Fogey responsiveness to the values of the Renaissance. Then, again, Colm Lennon's informative study of the triumph of the Counter Reformation in Ireland gives full weight to intellectual forces in accounting for the emergence of a recusant tradition among the Old English in terms of the com?

munity's growing commitment to its cultural heritage. And Alan Ford's main concern

in a masterful analysis of the failure of the Protestant Reformation is to show the way in

which the religion 'by law established' was transformed, in the course of the early seven?

teenth century, into an ideology of colonial sectarianism. The two remaining

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142 Reviews

contributions stand rather apart as pioneering explorations of aspects of the history of

early modern Ireland which have suffered general neglect hitherto. Anthony Sheahan undertakes an elegantly executed survey of urban history and points up its relevance to

the political history of the time. Michael McCarthy-Morrogh provides a fascinating ex?

ploration of the impact of plantation on the material culture of Munster in which he

concludes that the impact was one of degree rather than of kind, thereby offering a plank for the coffin of the thesis which attempts to slot Munster into an all-encompassing

English colonial system, from Bantry Bay to Chesapeake. While a close critical assessment of Natives and Newcomers would be out of place here

some few comments on the editors' methodological manifesto may be ventured before

concluding. One concerns the claims made on its behalf as representing historiographical modernity. It is hardly the case that the kind of narrowly-focussed studies of a political and administrative kind which the editors advocate represent 'the path along which

historical writing in most European countries has progressed in the post-war world'

(p. 13). For one thing such an assertion leaves out of account the spectacular advances in

the study of collective mentalities pioneered by the school ofAnnales; and in the light of

these a preoccupation with the intellectual history of early modem Ireland may not seem

so Old Fogeyish after all. On quite a different historiographical tack, it may be observed

that the supposed absence of an Eltonian dimension in the earlier approach does not

seem to have been noticed by the great man himself, who availed extensively of the pres? ent reviewer's doctoral dissertation in his most recent survey of early Tudor politics and

government (Reform and Reformation, 1977). All in all, it would seem that the key to fur?

ther progress in knowledge and understanding lies not in absolute commitment either to the new local and administrative history or to the history of collective mentalities but

in a capacity to deploy them both as the context and the evidence dictate. Be that as it

may, the final word must be one of commendation and gratitude to the editors for mak?

ing possible this impressive contribution to the historiography of early modern Ireland.

Whatever the differences in method and in intellectual predisposition tht may be

discerned among the eight contributions they share a common level of professional ex?

cellence. From that point of view this book provides a propitious augury for the future of

early modern historical studies in Ireland, though one notes more ominously that only three of the eight contributors have so far found employment in the profession for which

they here show themselves to be so eminently qualified. BRENDAN BRADSHAW

Solo Performers

Bob Geldof. Is That It? London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-009363-X. Stg?3-95. NoclBrowne. Against the Tide. Dublin: Gill&Macmillan. ISBN 0-7171-1458-9. IR?9-95.

Noel Browne's book sold fifty thousand copies in just a couple of months before Christmas 1986 and continues in the best-seller lists. It is an Irish publishing

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