The Great War and Memory in Irish Culture, 1918 -2010 (Irish Research) - Softcover

Myers, Jason

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1680530143 ISBN 13: 9781680530148

Publisher: Academica Press, 2016

Synopsis

This book adds a major culture-based study to the field of Irish history. It addresses a topic and touches on themes that continue to be relevant and debated in contemporary Ireland. It makes a major contribution to the New Military History of Ireland and adds the memory of the First World War of one of the small nations that emerged in the wake of that conflict to the numerous memory studies that exist for the primary combatant nations (Britain, France, and Germany). This revised paperback version of the original monograph also includes illustrations of memorial sites in some detail.

One of the most useful aspects of book is that it gives life to the culture of a minority sub-community in Ireland and addresses the challenges this community faced in order to remain active, and the way that community interacted with the majority of Irish people throughout the twentieth, and into the twenty-first century. Therefore, this project is not simply a snapshot of a specific event in Irish history, but examines the way that the memory of the war and those who retained that memory changed and evolved over the course of a century.

About this title

About the Author:

Jason Myers received his Ph.D in History from Loyola University, Chicago. He teaching and research interests are in modern Irish history.

Review:

Ireland has entered into a decade of centenary commemoration for individuals, organisations and events that contributed to its independence and which have helped to articulate modern Irish nationalism. Jason Myers highlights how these contributions, and the social, cultural and political foundations they established, represented contested arenas of memory in twentieth-century Ireland. Despite the fact that Irish enlistment in the British Army during the Great War exceeded even nominal membership figures of the Irish Volunteers during the revolutionary period, the transformation of nationalist sentiment in the wake of the 1916 Easter Rising meant that the latter were upheld as selfless heroes, while Irish veterans were marginalised as British lackeys. Since the Armistice of November 1918 the campaign to establish an official memory of the Great War in Ireland has been fought on fronts both public and personal, and has involved charitable groups, commemoration societies and the efforts of individual citizens. By examining the variety and controversy of Great War remembrance and commemoration in Ireland, Myers traces the pathological changes in the nation's approach to collective memory and observance, ultimately confronting what he identifies as a national amnesia surrounding the Great War.

The strengths of this study lay in the comparative nature of the research and its sensible methodological structure. Myers pursues two distinct lines of enquiry in exploration of historical memory. Each guides our understanding of how, where and to what extent the Great War was commemorated in Ireland, and the ways in which Irish veterans were recognised and remembered in the post-war decades. The category of 'official memory' includes government sponsored commemoration events, that is, campaigns structured from the top-down as a way to orchestrate uniformity in public observance. Myers' use of government records, and papers of the British Legion and the Irish Soldiers' and Sailors' Land Trust help to inform this method. 'Vernacular memory' traces independent, decentralised approaches to commemoration. These included cultural outlets such as folk songs and films and allowed, Myers explains, for customisable commemoration that adhered to regional tastes and allowed for individual expression throughout Ireland (p. 170).

Within this vein, Myers outlines the ways in which geography and political jurisdiction dictated the size, duration and programme of commemoration, and how these factors aided in diversifying Ireland's memory of the Great War. Remembrance ceremonies in Dublin, Cork, Derry and Belfast are examined in order to demonstrate the broad range of official and vernacular observances and how this created regional memories of the conflict. In Northern Ireland, for example, commemoration events at times served as inter-religious cultural foundations upon which both Catholic and Protestant ex-servicemen recalled the war as a shared communal experience. The Troubles greatly complicated this cohesive atmosphere, and memory of the war as a collective sacrifice became diffused along denominational lines as animosity surrounding the political situation in the North escalated. Division over the memory of the Great War in southern Ireland occurred along the lines of nationalist tradition. Appeals for Irish veterans of the British Army and ceremonies recognising their contribution to the war effort were often interpreted as challenges to republican orthodoxy. Myers highlights how events scheduled on or near Remembrance Day at times incurred backlash from dissident groups... ---Justin Dolan Stover Idaho State University, Irish Economic and Social History, Volume XL 2013, p. 183

About this edition

• Publisher: Academica Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1680530143
• ISBN 13: 9781680530148
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312