History: In 1920, Punch published a cartoon depicting the British prime minister, David Lloyd George, as a magician about to perform a new trick. In it, the "Welsh Wizard" cut a map of Ireland into two parts and placed them in a hat.
"After a suitable interval," he proclaimed, "they will be found to come together of their own accord - at least let's hope so. I've never done this trick before."
The effects of this ill-judged "trick" have been reflected not least amongst historians who have tended towards "mental partitionism" in their treatment of the two states in isolation. In 1998, David Fitzpatrick shattered this mould with the publication of a brilliant, yet surprisingly ignored, study of The Two Irelands, 1912-39 by Oxford University Press. As a successor, Oxford published an earlier version of Henry Patterson's Ireland Since 1939 (2002), but was forced to pulp the run following litigation by Gerry Fitt, who claimed to have been libelled in the assertion that he had travelled south in 1969 seeking arms from the Irish government.
Patterson's revised study is an engaging political history which has the implications of partition at its heart. It charts the fortunes of both states, offering original insight and a comprehensive synthesis of historical research; for more recent events, it relies on the print media. It is not, and does not claim to be a cultural and social history, but its analysis of the power of television, particularly the early footage of the Civil Rights marches displaying RUC violence, is striking. Nationalist MPs had been batoned in the 1950s, but as Michael Farrell observed, "there had been no TV then".
Patterson's assessment of the demise of the "feudal" influence of the Catholic Church is less convincing, while his comments on the failure of ecumenism ignore the concerted efforts of the main churches to further the cause of reconciliation.
The volume begins with an ambitious introduction setting out an overarching analysis. This executive summary establishes what Patterson describes as his "low-key unionist", labour origins. This interest in class politics is reflected in an engaging treatment of the second World War, often celebrated as the finest hour of both Unionist Ulster and de Valera's Ireland. Patterson shatters such clichés, pointing to the fact that 10 per cent of the strike days in war-time Britain were accounted for by Northern workers, who made up just 2 per cent of the workforce. He argues that in the Free State, neutrality encouraged the "most self-satisfied elements" within Irish society. On the vexed question of Irish entry to war in return for reunification, he contrasts the apparent willingness of Brookeborough to support such an offer to the intransigence of de Valera (who he earlier describes as "Machiavellian") and the "partitionist dynamics of Fianna Fáil".
The emergence of a "26-county state patriotism" is a constant theme in the study. If the Republic was once too poor to contemplate unity, now the prospect could be seen as a threat the "consumerist celebration of the Celtic Tiger".
Brookeborough will ever be associated with the sectarianism of the northern state, but Patterson offers a nuanced evaluation of a prime minister who in the post-war period attempted to "educate [ his] often recalcitrant party". Whatever about his advice to Fermanagh Orangemen in 1933 to employ "Protestant lads and lassies", his post-war diaries indicate a distaste for discrimination. Many readers will reject this analysis, and the suggestion that discrimination was more conspicuous than general under the Stormont regime.
Patterson's argument is that the critical issue was the failure of the state to allow Catholics feel a "respected and valued" part of the community, combined with their own refusal to engage with its institutions.
Not surprisingly, given his earlier publications, the O'Neill/Lemass years form the axis of the volume. Patterson avoids the stereotypical appraisal of both leaders, challenging O'Neill's "liberal" reputation and the extent of the Taoiseach's economic "miracle". He offers fascinating insight into the "ambivalent and tension filled relationship" between Lemass and Whitaker and rejects notions of a Manichean break with his predecessor on the national question, pointing to Dev's 1957 Árd Fheis address which anticipated the central themes of Lemass's discourse.
The final chapters of the book make for depressing reading, not simply on account of the horrific casualties of "the Troubles", but due to the failure and frustration of political leadership in the crisis.
Patterson's detailed analysis of the process is impressive. Readers may become lost in the narrative, the alphabet soup of political acronyms and repetition resulting from his two states approach, but they will not fail to be engaged by his stark conclusions. His reflections on the buyer's remorse which followed "the Agreement" are sharp and discuss the sense in which it could be represented as a "partitionist pact", a step towards the "pit of perdition" or an instrument in the "institutionalisation of sectarianism".
In the last analysis, Patterson sees the triumph of the Agreement in its determination that the future of Northern Ireland will not be set by extremists of either side.
Daire Keogh lectures in history at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra. He is currently writing a history of the Christian Brothers, 1802-1972
Ireland Since 1939: The Persistence of Conflict By Henry Patterson Penguin Ireland, 432pp. €32