Publications

Irish governments and the
guardianship of historical records, 1922–72
Gerard O'Brien

Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004
232pp, €55

This book examines one of the means through which successive Irish governments between 1922 and 1972 attempted to control the historical interpretation of the Irish past. This control was affected, though ineptly, by neglecting the care and development of government archives whilst rigidly restricting public and academic access to State-held historical documents. Chapters detail the slow recovery of the Public Record Office and State Paper Office following the catastrophic events of the civil war, and explore the tortuous relationship between civil servants, politicians and historians as a struggle began to secure a more liberal access policy.

Another chapter investigates further the competing priorities of officials and academics as governments first established and then tried to control the operations of bodies such as the Irish Folklore Commission, the Irish Manuscripts Commission, and the Bureau of Military History. The book continues with two detailed case studies of how successive governments tried to manipulate the publication and availability of the Dáil proceedings of 1919–22, and attempted to retrieve from Britain the mortal remains of Roger Casement whilst refusing to engage on the issue of his "embarrassing" diaries.

Handbook & select calendar of sources for medieval Ireland in the National Archives of the United Kingdom
Paul Dryburgh & Brendan Smith, editors

Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004
400pp, €55

The establishment of English rule in Ireland in the late 12th century involved the introduction not only of foreign settlers, but also of administrative practices based on those of England. In the 13th century a chancery, an exchequer, and courts of law centred on Dublin developed which produced written records of their operations. The fact that the lord of Ireland was also the king of England, and that every English subject in Ireland had the right to appeal directly to the king, meant that Irish affairs were also well represented in the records produced by the English government at Westminster.

These two sets of records were created and kept independently by both administrations, but a series of disasters stretching from the 13th century to the 20th means that almost all of the Irish archive has been lost. Fortunately, the National Archives of the United Kingdom, based at Kew in London, continues to hold a wealth of material relating to Ireland in the medieval centuries. This book provides a guide to records which reflect many facets of this period in Irish history, including relations between natives and settlers, the church, life on the manor, trade and commerce, land-holding, Anglo-Irish relations, and the operation of the law. It should serve as the starting-point for future research into many aspects of the medieval Irish past.

Publications List