Ireland and Nationalism

Abstract

Nationalists claim a history of eight hundred years of Irish national struggle against British/English oppression or imperialism (Howe, 2000, chapter 1), which few modern historians would accept (McGarry, 2011). First, it was Normans who invaded twelfth-century Ireland; second, as Riordan (1990) reminds us, in pre-seventeenth-century Ireland, warfare was endemic and a Gaelic way of life, against each other as much as the Crown (who were accepted as legitimate rulers). Further, nationalism is a recent concept and irrelevant to judging anything in Ireland until the last two hundred years. In addition, the idea of natural borders is new (Heslinga, 1979, chapter 4) and the Irish Sea can as easily imply unity between Ireland and Britain as division.