winterbadger | Entries tagged with ireland

Ireland: A Concise History from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day by Paul Johnson (9/50): This wasn't as bad as I first feared (though now I want to read a few more histories of Ireland to compare), but I continued to be bothered by the way that the author continued to implicitly accept the British narrative that Ireland always has and always will be a wild and uncivilised place that has to be "tamed" into acceptability by more civilised nations. I suppose given Johnson's personality, it shouldn't surprise me.

I was bummed by the fact that the third disc in the seven-disc package played a few sections and then quit, refusing to be coaxed back into listenability.

Like the Ahmed Rashid book on the Taliban written before 9/11, this was interesting in that it was completed in 1981, before the hunger strikes, the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, or the "Good Friday" Accords of 1998. The author made some vague postlude comment anticipating that at some point the violence would die down, suggesting that it would eventually end not because considerable efforts were made to reach a compromise (as happened) but because that's just the ebb and flow of things.

Also, somewhat annoying was the inability of the reader (who, according to the box cover is the grande dame of audiobook recording) to properly pronounce important Irish terms. The Dáil (the parliament of the Republic of Ireland) is pronounced "dial" instead of (roughly) "doil"; Fianna Fáil (one of the leading political partiesof the Republic of Ireland) is pronounced "fee-ah-nah fail" instead of "finnah foil"; and Éire (the Irish name for the republic) is pronounced something like "eerie" instead of "air".

Current Mood: chipper

So, I took my last couple of recorded books back to the library (I need to do a write up on each of them, and at least a mention of the other rubbish I've been reading :-) I wasn't sure what to take out next, so I got one book that recapitulates an NPR series about traveling across modern China and another that's a history of Ireland from the 12th century on. I had misgivings about the latter, as it's by Paul Johnson, a historian who, while eminent, I dislike. I can't put my finger on exactly what it is (though now having read his bio on Wikipedia I can see the fingerprints of many things that would cause me to dislike him), but I recall that I have tried several times to read his History of the Jews and foudn it so repellent that I couldn't get through it.

Well, I started his book on Ireland this morning on the way to work, and it's already getting under my skin. I think what stands out right away is that in discussing the Papal bull Laudabiliter (which authorised Henry II of England to invade and conquer Ireland and subjugate the Irish Church to Rome), he doesn't just describe the Papal assertions that the failure of the Irish Church to accept the authority of the Vatican was a source of moral corruption and degeneracy in Ireland, he agrees with it. He doesn't just report the English cliam that the Irish would be better off under English common law instead of under their own (advanced and in many ways more modern) legal system, he endorses it. He states that the Irish were to blame for the invasion and occupation by the English, because they did not develop a strong enough central government. He repeats the Annals of Ulster's condemnation of Edward de Brus as if it were fact without pointing out that the Earl of Ulster was one of the Anglo-Irish lords who fought against de Brus's alliance of Scots and Gaelic Irish lords that almost unseated the English dominion over Ireland.

I'd expect this sort of naked bias from a Victorian amateur historian. I find it distasteful in a modern professional one who has been so highly acclaimed.

Current Mood: uncomfortable

Completely different, this one, about the financial disaster in Ireland.

But it has this wonderful simile (my emphasis):

Ireland’s financial disaster shared some things with Iceland’s. It was created by the sort of men who ignore their wives’ suggestions that maybe they should stop and ask for directions, for instance. But while Icelandic males used foreign money to conquer foreign places—trophy companies in Britain, chunks of Scandinavia—the Irish male used foreign money to conquer Ireland. Left alone in a dark room with a pile of money, the Irish decided what they really wanted to do with it was to buy Ireland. From one another.

I'm still not much further ahead with economics than I was after Professor Srinavashnan's Intro course in senior year, but I have a glimmering that this article goes some way to confirm what I'e always suspected: that if you can "create" wealth from nothing (which has always seemed dubious to my 17th century mind) that the reverse is also possible, and vast amounts of wealth can actually be consumed by the mysterious engines of commerce and leave nothing behind. Nothing, of course, but debt and misery.

This passage

In October, Ireland’s Department of the Environment published its first audit of the country’s new housing stock after inspecting 2,846 housing developments, many of them called “ghost estates” because they’re empty. Of the nearly 180,000 units that had been granted planning permission, the audit found that only 78,195 were completed and occupied. Others are occupied but remain unfinished. Virtually all construction has now ceased. There aren’t enough people in Ireland to fill the new houses; there were never enough people in Ireland to fill the new houses.

Reminded me of the section in Charles Palliser's The Quincunx where the protagonist finds himself in a neighborhood of 19th century London filled with half-built houses, constructed, he discovers, as part of a huge confidence scheme. Just enough work was done to show investors in a development scheme, but once the capital for the whole project was accumulated, the projectors left with most of the dosh unspent. It seems as if the Irish housing boom was almost the same idea, just on a larger scale.

Current Mood: awake

aitkendrum, this one's for you...

Re-Route, The Marching Season Game

Current Mood: amused

Why can't you buy scented dried flowers in Northern Ireland?

( Read more... )

Current Mood: cheerful

At midnight local time, the British Army ceased Operation Banner, the support to the civil power in Northern Ireland.

Since 1969, when they were first deployed, the Army has sent 300,000 troops through rotation in Northern Ireland, with the total force deployed there sometimes reaching 30,000. In that time, they killed 301 people and suffered 763 fatalities.

The Army came into Northern Ireland with a very colonial mindset; many might well say they always remained a colonial force, but their tactics and systems advanced and changed to reflect the fact that they were assisting to police what the British government viewed as part of their own nation. I am sure many will be glad to see an end to Operation Banner, both in the population of Northern Ireland and in the ranks of the British Army. I am certainly glad that it will be an end to a struggle pitting soldiers against civilians.

I would, however, wish that I thought that the lessons learned in Northern Ireland have been studied by the US Army and are being applied in Iraq. I think that they may be, but I fear it is too little too late. Only time will tell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Banner
http://www.operationbanner.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/6923421.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,,2138447,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2007/jul/31/northernireland?picture=330305298
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/ulster/article2819591.ece
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/article2773945.ece

Current Mood: hopeful

"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

..."and you [sleeping] there like a winter badger."

Entries tagged with ireland

50books2011: Ireland by Johnson

I have a bad feeling about this...

another good piece

oh, my...

groan of the day!

a welcome end of an era

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