Flamboyant, yeah. Also we get better press than the Balkans, for some reason. Probably because, y'know, we (and I'm using a we that doesn't include me, personally) only want the Unionists to go away and stop cluttering up our Romantic (in the Keatsian sense) dream of a pure, strong, vibrant Éire.
Eamón de Valera's vision of Ireland was 'Catholic, rural and Gaelic'. He was a very intelligent, strong-willed man, but impossibly narrow-minded and stubborn. That is, of course, my reading of the history. I'm a Michael Collins apologist, but then, he died during our brief, nasty, stupid civil war.
The whole problem of the North stems from the fact that during 1919-1921 (war of independence, or in Irish the self-righteous cogadh na saoirse [freedom war]) no one in the rebels' leadership paid any attention to the fact that there was a large segment of the population that was perfectly happy being British. This is particularly notable during the Treaty Debates in the first Dáil. Pages and pages of the records are devoted to the question of swearing an oath of allegiance to the British crown and accepting becoming a free state under the Commonwealth. Six (if I recollect correctly) pages concern the issue of Partition.
Everyone thought the problem would just go away, if they wished hard enough. For intelligent men and women, they were pretty goddamn blind. /rant
And I hope you'll excuse me. The stupidity inherent in ignoring the unionist point of view is one of the (many) subjects in Irish history that really gets my back up, and -
-ah, I should just give up, shouldn't I? It's history, after all, and hopefully we can finally close the book on that particular oversight.
no subject
Flamboyant, yeah. Also we get better press than the Balkans, for some reason. Probably because, y'know, we (and I'm using a we that doesn't include me, personally) only want the Unionists to go away and stop cluttering up our Romantic (in the Keatsian sense) dream of a pure, strong, vibrant Éire.
Eamón de Valera's vision of Ireland was 'Catholic, rural and Gaelic'. He was a very intelligent, strong-willed man, but impossibly narrow-minded and stubborn. That is, of course, my reading of the history. I'm a Michael Collins apologist, but then, he died during our brief, nasty, stupid civil war.
The whole problem of the North stems from the fact that during 1919-1921 (war of independence, or in Irish the self-righteous cogadh na saoirse [freedom war]) no one in the rebels' leadership paid any attention to the fact that there was a large segment of the population that was perfectly happy being British. This is particularly notable during the Treaty Debates in the first Dáil. Pages and pages of the records are devoted to the question of swearing an oath of allegiance to the British crown and accepting becoming a free state under the Commonwealth. Six (if I recollect correctly) pages concern the issue of Partition.
Everyone thought the problem would just go away, if they wished hard enough. For intelligent men and women, they were pretty goddamn blind.
/rant
And I hope you'll excuse me. The stupidity inherent in ignoring the unionist point of view is one of the (many) subjects in Irish history that really gets my back up, and -
-ah, I should just give up, shouldn't I? It's history, after all, and hopefully we can finally close the book on that particular oversight.