Madam, - As someone who has written extensively on the 18th century, I was of course interested in Prof Kevin Whelan's review of Tom Dunne's book on the 1798 rising (Book Reviews, March 6th), but I was rather bewildered by some of the views expressed by Whelan. He writes: "The 1980s, the high-water mark of revisionism, were a desperate, almost despairing decade, economically, culturally, politically". If the 1980s were that bad, where does that leave the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s?
The truth is that the 1980s were not a bad ould decade at all - indeed in many ways superior to the 1990s, when, Whelan tells us, "there was a palpable sense of the burden of our history and of our economics lifting and shifting". I wonder how many people, besides the professor, noticed this seismic shift in conditions between the 1980s and 1990s.
When Whelan speaks of the "high-water mark of revisionism" he seems to imply that revisionism is something to be condemned and avoided. Surely every serious historian must be by definition a revisionist, although I would prefer reassessment to revision. And, of course, revision or reassessment cuts both ways. While, for example, the "dark penal night" of the 18th century has been found to have been not that dark after all, on the other hand, the extent of Catholic involvement in trade in the 18th century has been found to have been exaggerated by past historians.
When Whelan refers to "the new thinking on 1798 which emerged from within a scholarly community", surely this amounts to revision or reassessment, and, as he acknowledges himself, it cuts both ways. - Yours, etc.,
PATRICK FAGAN, Ballytore Road, Dublin 14.