Redefining southern nationalism : an academic perspective

Revised text of two lectures presented as part of the seminar se-ries “Redefining the union and the nation: new perspectives on political progress in Ireland”, organised jointly by the Conference of University Rectors in Ireland and the Institute for British-Irish Studies. The lectures were presented in UCD on 3 April 2000.A political perspective: Southern Irish nationalism was traditionally aggressive and negative, and tended to view Northern Ireland as a colonial remnant; but economic protectionism and isolationism did little to stem the flow of emigrants out of the country. Evolution under the leadership of Sean Lemass from 1959 onwards led to a more outward-looking Ireland, but the more negative aspects of Irish nationalism began to appear again in the 1970s. The tension between two forms of republicanism should be resolved, the author argues, by an effort by liberal democrats to reclaim the term for them-selves, redefining it as a belief in the primacy of the people through an exclusively democratic process.An academic perspective: The phenomenon of nationalism, the leading political ideology of the late twentieth century, is intellectually opportunist and intrinsically revisionist. In Ireland, political cultural change and the break-up of the alliance between nationalism and Catholic triumphalism was delayed by a number of factors, including British-Irish tensions, the great depression of 1929, isolationism during the second world war and misguided economic and educational policies after 1945. Ireland missed out on the economic boom of the post-war period, much of its energy diverted into the pursuit of linguistic revival. Only in the last quarter of the twentieth century has rapid cultural change been associated with a new, more pluralist, form of nationalism.Not applicabl