When Mrs. Green's Irish Nationality was published, a writer in a Dublin paper began his review of it with the words: "By God, this is a book!" That sentence suggests, a little violently, the Irish opinion of Mrs. Green's place as a historian. No lover of the cold (or, if you like the word better, the inanimate) facts of history ever broke out into an exclamation like that in book-review. It was obviously written by one who regarded Mrs. Green, not as a bloodless chronicler of events but as the champion and vindicator of a ...
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When Mrs. Green's Irish Nationality was published, a writer in a Dublin paper began his review of it with the words: "By God, this is a book!" That sentence suggests, a little violently, the Irish opinion of Mrs. Green's place as a historian. No lover of the cold (or, if you like the word better, the inanimate) facts of history ever broke out into an exclamation like that in book-review. It was obviously written by one who regarded Mrs. Green, not as a bloodless chronicler of events but as the champion and vindicator of a nation. If anyone doubts that Ireland needed a champion in the historical even more than in the political sphere, he will do well to read Mrs. Green's own short essay, "The Way of History in Ireland." It is an exposure, at once impassioned and wittily contemptuous, of the way in which the historians, instead of setting themselves to open up new fields of knowledge in Irish history, have successively contented themselves with muddying the pedigree of the Irish people. "History does not repeat itself," said either Wilde or Mr. Max Beerbohm; "historians repeat each other." And the witticism is seriously true of most of the Irish history that has been written. One after another, the historians have leaped through the gap of tradition, like a rout of sheep, and pastured on the old fables that represent the seven-hundred-years duel between England and Ireland as a duel between civilization, on the one hand, and barbarism on the other. This was scarcely questioned in collegiate circles. One accepted it as one accepted the superiority of Abraham Lincoln to Sitting Bull, of Queen Victoria to the Queen of the Baganda. To contend that the quarrel between England and Ireland, so far from being a quarrel between civilization and barbarism, was a quarrel between one civilization and another, would have been regarded as a paradox of which only an irresponsible Irishman would be capable. More than that, it would have been to challenge the whole world of political and social ideas in which the historians of Ireland had hitherto lived and moved and had their being. It would even have been to question the ethics of Imperialism. For Irish history has been written for the most part, not in the service of truth but in the service of Empire. In Ireland, as Mrs. Green says, "history has a peculiar doom. It is enslaved in the chains of the Moral Tale-the good man (English) who prospered, and the bad man (Irish) who came to a shocking end." If an Irishman ventured to cast doubt on the political tract that resulted-whether on its ideas or its instances-he was dismissed in a scholarly and judicial manner as a politician, a biassed and querulous person, and any references to massacres and murders perpetrated by Elizabethan civilizers were discountenanced as peculiarly unpleasant examples of "the Irish whine.'' In this way the Irish people were slowly being drained of that self-respect which comes of being conscious heirs to a fine tradition. More and more of them were coming to say, in tones of self-pity and resignation: "Ah, where would we be without England?" Irish history before the arrival of Strongbow "came to be looked on as merely a murky prelude to the civilizing work of England-a preface, savage, transitory, and of no permanent interest, to be rapidly passed over till we come to the English pages of the book." Clearly a nation which accepted such an account of its ancestry as this without question would be on the road to spiritual slavery.... - Ireland a Nation [1920]
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Add this copy of Irish Nationality to cart. $5.62, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2016 by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.
Add this copy of Irish Nationality to cart. $15.72, fair condition, Sold by Anybook rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Lincoln, UNITED KINGDOM, published by Williams and Norgate.
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Seller's Description:
This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has hardback covers. In fair condition, suitable as a study copy. No dust jacket. No date, early 20th C. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 250grams, ISBN:
Add this copy of Irish Nationality to cart. $19.45, poor condition, Sold by Anybook rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Lincoln, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1911 by Williams and Norgate.
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Seller's Description:
This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has hardback covers. In poor condition, suitable as a reading copy. No dust jacket. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 250grams, ISBN:
Add this copy of Irish Nationality to cart. $19.72, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2022 by Legare Street Press.
Add this copy of Irish Nationality to cart. $19.81, poor condition, Sold by Anybook rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Lincoln, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1919 by Williams and Norgate.
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Seller's Description:
This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has hardback covers. In poor condition, suitable as a reading copy. No dust jacket. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 300grams, ISBN:
Add this copy of Irish Nationality to cart. $21.46, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2009 by Browne Press.
Add this copy of Irish Nationality to cart. $23.01, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2016 by CreateSpace Independent Publis.
Add this copy of Irish Nationality to cart. $24.97, fair condition, Sold by Wonder Book - Member ABAA/ILAB rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Frederick, MD, UNITED STATES.
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Acceptable. Acceptable condition. No Dust Jacket Former Library book. (ireland, history, politics) A readable, intact copy that may have noticeable tears and wear to the spine. All pages of text are present, but they may include extensive notes and highlighting or be heavily stained. Includes reading copy only books.
Add this copy of Irish Nationality to cart. $26.36, good condition, Sold by Anybook rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Lincoln, UNITED KINGDOM, published by Williams and Norgate.
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Seller's Description:
This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has hardback covers. In good all round condition. No dust jacket. Re-bound by library. Undated Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 250grams, ISBN:
Add this copy of Irish Nationality to cart. $29.16, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2022 by Legare Street Press.
