Historians warned to be careful about anniversaries

Historians should be uneasy when faced with “State-sponsored jamborees” marking historical anniversaries, according to the director of the Parnell Summer School, Felix Larkin.

The theme of this year's annual summer school devoted to history, which concluded on Thursday, was The French Connection: Ireland and France.

Mr Larkin said the focus of the annual gathering was mainly on history, but history not just for its own sake but as a source of wisdom for dealing with the present and planning for the future.

“Historians study the past: we ask what actually happened, how it happened, why it happened and why it had the effect that it had,” he said.

“We don’t celebrate past events – shamelessly or otherwise. We are neutral observers and we are uneasy, or at least we should be uneasy, when faced with State-sponsored jamborees relating to historical anniversaries.”

Mr Larkin said the approach that should characterise their work was one of interrogating the past, questioning received orthodoxies, and restoring to national heroes their frail and imperfect humanity.

Love of country

Trinity College history lecturer Sylvie Kleinman told the last day of the gathering that love of country was important in the teaching of history and geography in traditional French education, in which the emphasis was placed on heroes.

In a talk about the role of centenaries in republican culture in France and America, she said much had been written on the inspiration Padraig Pearse drew from Theobald Wolfe Tone’s so-called “teachings” on Irish nationalism, and how inspirational his sacrifice had been. Yet none had looked to the source itself.

She said that on June 18th, 1798, Wolfe Tone wrote movingly the following in his diary about the death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald: “His career is finished gloriously . . . and his memory will live for ever in the heart of every Irishman . . . The only way to lament his death is to endeavour to revenge it . . . From the blood of every one of the martyrs of liberty of Ireland will spring, I hope, thousands to revenge their fall.”

She said the last phrase and image, which Pearse borrowed from, was a stark reminder that the cult of the martyrs of liberty goes way back to the American and French revolutions.