Notes
This article focuses on the first four volumes of Lives Entwined as the fifth was only published in 2020.
In a statement issued on 1 June 1997 Tony Blair indicated: “Those who governed in London at the time [of the Famine] failed their people.”
Lives Entwined is a follow-up to the Through Irish Eyes study, which was conducted in 2003 by the British Council Ireland. The latter had also run an ambitious programme of research to evaluate the perception of Britain in 30 Irish counties, between 1999 and 2000.
Tony Reilly, “Introduction”, in Britain & Ireland: Lives Entwined I, Dublin: British Council Ireland, 2005, 8.
Henry Rousso, La Hantise du passé, Paris : Textuel, 1998, 25.
The dissension as to the validity of the parallels drawn between the situation of Ireland and that of various African and Asian colonies dates back to the time of Daniel O’Connell, who referred to Ireland as ‘provincial’ and made it clear that its status was different from that enjoyed by colonies. See Sean Ryder, “Defining Colony and Empire in Early Nineteenth-Century Irish Nationalism,” in Terence McDonough (ed.), Was Ireland a Colony? Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2005, 165.
According to Joe Clearly, the staging of Brian Friel’s Translations by the Field Day Theatre Company in 1980 heralded the dawn of colonial and postcolonial studies in Ireland. See Joe Clearly, “Misplaced ideas? Locating and dislocating Ireland in colonial and postcolonial studies,” in Crystal Bartolovich & Neil Lazarus (eds.), Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies, Cambridge University Press, 2002, 101-102.
Joe Clearly, Outrageous Fortune: Capital and Culture in Modern Ireland, Dublin: Field Day Publications, 2007, 19.
Indeed, the line of division is not always that dichotomous. Among historians, many have adopted the language pertaining to the issue of colonialism (intrusion, conquest, displacement, control), if not the colonial paradigm itself, when analysing the situation of Ireland during the late medieval period, the 16th and 17th centuries, but only a few of them have construed the period from the 19th century onwards as colonial. See Joseph Ruane, “Colonialism and the Interpretation of Irish Historical Development,” in Marilyn Silverman & PH. Gulliver (eds.), Approaching the Past, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992, 296.
Stephen Howe, Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture, Oxford University Press, 2000, 54.
INA, Butte Independent, 4 May 1918, 1.
INA, “A. E’s Confidence in the Future”, Irish Independent, 22 February 1922, 5.
As a case in point, Frederick Boland, Irish foreign secretary in the 1950s, and other Irish diplomatic officials backed, at times, the cause of some anti-colonial movements, notably the Algerian F.L.N., at the United Nations by drawing analogies with the Irish war of independence. See Christophe Gillissen, “Ireland, France and the question of Algeria at the United Nations, 1955-62,” Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 19, 2008, 151-167.
Stephen Howe, Ireland and Empire, op. cit., 170.
Alvin Jackson, “Ireland, the Union and the Empire 1800-1960,” in Kevin Kenny (ed.), Ireland and the British Empire, Oxford University Press, 2004, 142.
Ibid., 150.
Ibid.
Peter Gray, “Ireland’s Last Fetter Struck off: The Lord-Lieutenancy Debate 1800-67,” in Terence McDonough (ed.), Was Ireland a Colony?, op. cit., 87-101.
Virginia Crossman, “Local Government in Nineteenth-Century Ireland,” in ibidem, 102-16.
Tony Ballantyne, “The Sinews of Empire: Ireland, India and the Construction of British Colonial Knowledge,” in ibidem, 146-7.
Declan Kiberd, The Irish Writer and the World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 133.
The claim voiced by a number of scholars and politicians that Ireland was a postcolonial state was also rejected by Liam Kennedy, who compared its privileged economic, educational and social state with that of several African and Asian colonies hard on the heels of their independence. See Liam Kennedy, “Modern Ireland: Post-Colonial Society or Post-Colonial Pretensions?” The Irish Review (Cork), No. 13, Winter 1992/1993, 107-121.
Mary Hickman, “I am but I am not? A view of/from Britain,” in Lives Entwined I, op. cit., 91.
John A. Murphy, “Colonial chains, domestic links,” in Britain & Ireland: Lives Entwined II, Dublin: British Council Ireland, 2006, 109.
Ibid.
Olivia O’Leary, “Separate but Equal,” in Britain & Ireland: Lives Entwined III, Dublin: British Council Ireland, 2008, 77.
Edna Longley, “No Passports,” in Lives Entwined I, op. cit., 127.
John A. Murphy, “Colonial chains, domestic links,” op. cit., 112.
Bernadette McAliskey, “Lives Entangled,” in Lives Entwined II, op. cit., 130.
Ibid., 131.
David McWilliams, “Hi Brits – Irish Blood, English Heart,” in Lives Entwined III, op. cit., 118.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Rachel Hooper and Joseph O’Connor, “Irish Blood English Heart,” in Britain & Ireland: Lives Entwined IV, Belfast: British Council Northern Ireland, 2012, 25.
Piaras Mac Éinrí, “Britain and Ireland,” in Lives Entwined I, op. cit., 36-37.
In Catherine Dunne’s An Unconsidered People, two interviewees, namely Kathleen Morrissey and Sheila Dillon, reported having seen the ‘No Irish, no blacks, no dogs’ signs in London. But the lack of concrete evidence (only the Archive of the Irish in Britain holds a photograph of a shop window bearing such a sign) and the reliance on the witness accounts by a number of post-war Irish immigrants have given rise to controversies as to their very existence. See Catherine Dunne, An Unconsidered People: The Irish in London, New Island Books, 2003, 83 & 195.
Rachel Hooper and Joseph O’Connor, “Irish Blood English Heart,” op. cit., 25.
Ivana Bacik, “The Hybrid Generation,” in Lives Entwined II, op. cit., 86.
Mary Fitzgerald, “Drawing on a larger canvas”, in Lives Entwined III, op. cit., 40.
John A. Murphy, “Colonial chains, domestic links,” op. cit., 111.
Olivia O’Leary, “Separate but Equal,” op. cit., 67-8.
Liz O’Donnell, “Not for the faint-hearted: reflections on the Good Friday Agreement, 8 years on,” Lives Entwined II, op. cit., 147. In her contribution, O’Donnell does not paint a rosy picture of British-Irish relations and remains realistic about what can be achieved in the near future and what cannot. She writes: “(…) We may never have a shared view of history. Certainly, it is far too early for the clear attribution of truth and justice.” Ibid.
Maurice Hayes, “The Crazy Knot,” in Lives Entwined I, op. cit., 143.
Richard Kearney, Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture and Philosophy, London & New York: Routledge, 2002.
Richard Kearney, “British-Irish Relations in a Postcolonialist Context,” Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, No. 94, December 1999, 88.
Mac Éinrí, “Britain and Ireland,” op. cit., 44.
Ibid.
Ibid., 40.
Ibid.
CAIN Online Archives, “Prime Minister Tony Blair's address to the Joint Houses of the Oireachtas”, 26 November 1998.
Fintan O’Toole, “Chums?” in Lives Entwined IV, op. cit., 38.
Fitzgerald, “Drawing on a larger canvas,” op. cit., 32-33.
Eoghan Harris, “My Secret Life,” in Lives Entwined I, op. cit., 79.
It was Liam Kennedy who first coined this acronym, which would be reused as the title of one of his books. Liam Kennedy, Unhappy the Land: The Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish? Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2016.
Harris, “My Secret Life,” op. cit., 65.
Ibid., 77.
Marianne Elliott, “Hyphenated hybrids: Irishness, Englishness and religious identities in Britain and Ireland,” in Lives Entwined II, op. cit., 55.
Ibid., 54-5.
Ibid., 55.
To render the comparison fairer, it is worth pointing out that even if Lives Entwined received the support of Tony Blair, who, alongside Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, prefaced the first volume in 2005, it was not launched on the initiative of the British government. Unlike the Institut français, which works under the tutelage of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the British Council, though a public body receiving grants from the Foreign Office, is operationally independent. It was thus Tony Reilly who spearheaded the project.
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