History is central to Irish culture and society. “Ireland without its history is nothing,” wrote the historian Liam de Paor, yet few subjects have generated such intense controversy and debate as the writing and teaching of Irish history.
We Irish, North and South, are bound and often divided by a past long shared. The historian, before he or she begins to write history is a product of that history. The work of a historian mirrors the society in which he or she works.
The facts of history never come to us pure and verified. When we read a history book our first concern should be with the historian who wrote it.
Making History explores the writing and presentation of Irish with a distinguished cast – Roy Foster, John A. Murphy, Ronan Fanning, Mary Daly, Paul Bew, Cormac O Grada, Margaret O’Callaghan, Ciaran Brady, Brendan Bradshaw, Catriona Crowe and Gerard Lyne.
In 1969 Ireland painfully and destructively revisited its fractured past with the outbreak of violence in Northern Ireland. History was challenged to explain. A new wave of Irish historical writing was underway. History was deemed “too important” to be left with historians. Journalists, broadcasters, poets and playwrights entered the history arena. The decades of the troubles forced a rigorous examination of the political use of history.
History, politics and broadcasting all converged in the career of Dr. Conor Cruise O’Brien. Author of a history classic “States of Ireland” he was a government minister responsible for broadcasting, an unapologetic controversialist in history writing and famously the creator of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act. The term “revisionist” was applied to anyone who attempted a new interpretation of the age-old conflict between England and Ireland.
The revisionist debate raged in political and academic life. Books were written and published in vicious argument. History and current affairs collided in the battlefield of propaganda. This film examines the debate and the fallout in the context of the Northern Ireland Peace Process.
In a country that reads and talks about itself obsessively, there are indications that Ireland’s new generation; the great grandchildren of the revolutionary era find the old disputes, the old loyalties, irrelevant to their lives. History, like the past, is another country. The challenge for the historian of our century is to write the story of the transformation of Ireland.
Contributors:
Paul Bew Professor of Politics, Queens, Belfast
Mary E. Daly Professor of History, UCD
Ronan Fanning Professor of History, UCD
Roy Foster Carroll Professor of History, Oxford
Brendan Bradshaw Professor of History, Cambridge
Ciaran Brady Professor of History, TCD
John A. Murphy Professor of History, UCC
Margaret O’Callaghan Professor of History, Queens Belfast
Cormac O Grada Professor of Economics, UCD
Catriona Crowe Senior Archivist, National Archives
Gerard Lyne Surveyor of Manuscripts, National Library
Producer and Director Sean O Mordha