The collapse of the Celtic Tiger four years ago, in a spectacular collision of private and public corruption amid a wildly inflated real estate bubble, was a dreadful blow to the people of Ireland, who with some justification thought that after centuries of poverty and disappointment, their country had at last come into its own. As Neil Hegarty writes in “The Story of Ireland,” however, the implosion was easily explained by Irish history:
“There are specific cultural reasons why such a situation evolved. The history of Ireland had propagated a sense of failure and of inferiority, encapsulated in the forced emigration of generation after generation of young people in search of opportunities that their homeland simply could not provide. The economic boom seemed to put this traumatic history firmly in the past: it belonged in another era — virtually in another country. The ongoing moves towards resolving what had seemed an intractable conflict in Northern Ireland, moreover, served to copper-fasten this sensation that Ireland had indeed left its scarred past behind. The result was exuberance and confidence on a widespread scale.”
Unfortunately, though, “the political and administrative structures of the country remained rooted firmly in this ostensibly banished past.” The “power of patronage and of local connections ruled supreme; and a small political and economic elite, with guaranteed access to bank officials and ministers, ran the country in its own interests.”
Hegarty’s analysis of this calamity, though astute, occupies only a few paragraphs at the end of this book; readers who want a more detailed (and far more pungent) analysis should turn to Fintan O’Toole’s “Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger” (2010). But Hegarty does place the present state of affairs in historical context, which in Ireland’s case is a history of religious hatred and discrimination, endemic violence, suppression and exploitation at the hands of England, all this taking place in a small island nation of incomparable natural beauty and with a cultural heritage far richer than that of almost any larger nation.
“The Story of Ireland” is the companion book to a television series of the same name that was broadcast by the BBC’s Northern Ireland arm a year ago; no plans have been announced for airing in the United States, but let us hope that will change. For all the tragedy and fierce contention with which it is charged, the history of Ireland is dramatic and, as a human story, utterly engaging. The themes that Hegarty detects in it include “persistence and consistency”; the “disenfranchised or otherwise put-upon exile seeking foreign aid — with potentially momentous consequences”; a relationship between Ireland and England that is “close and mutually significant”; a “fusion between religious and civil authorities”; and a “connection between faith and nation indivisible in the minds of its people.”
All of this is familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the Irish past, but Hegarty takes a significant step beyond the conventional wisdom when he argues that Ireland is not a cramped, inward, provincial place isolated from the rest of the world by the sea and by its hermetic character, but rather a place with a powerful “international dimension.” There is, he argues, “a long-established tradition in Irish culture: one of porousness, of openness to overseas influence — a tradition that sprang from long years of inward migration, travel, and human and economic relationships.”
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