In
the last issue of The Blanket, I
reviewed the first volume, that is "books
1 and 2" of this ambitious, offbeat, downright
inexpensive, handsomely bound, and truly eclectic
compendium of anecdotes and vignettes dramatising
the Irish and whoever they encountered, all over
the world from the time of Paul/Saul up to the eve
of the 1845 Famine. (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's
UP/London: Granta Books, 2005) I refer you to the
earlier article for an explanation of Akenson's
approach and his wry tone. This report will be briefer;
"books 3 and 4" are about 150 pp. less
in the body text, but the total weighs in at just
under 700 pages nonetheless. You would need to read
the first volume first; some characters, such as
the perplexing John Nicholson turned Sikh deity,
cross from that earlier tome into this one. Towards
the end of this second volume, I began to weary,
as I had after 700-plus pages of the first. Margaret
Mead oddly comes in for no less of an vicious attack
than, say, Father Coughlin! By the end, in two strange
postludes, he seems to lose the scent of whatever
long trail he's tracked over the Diaspora's two
thousand years for good. His scholar's range plays
off of a pundit's animus, to bracing if disorienting
effect. Akenson's two books are best picked up and
perused a chapter or so at a time. He breaks up
the global Irish experience into roughly Asian,
African, Protestant Irish and Catholic Irish (but
more about the subversion of sectarianism in a moment),
United States, a bit of Caribbean (but not nearly
enough Latin American) and Canadian sections, dealing
with these regions in book 3 as in the 19th century
and book 4 in the 20th, more or less--stopping,
however, at 1969.
His major thesis is that the Irish, despite An
Gorta Mór, should not be complaining
too much or trumpeting their supposed underdog,
beaten cur, and/or kicked pup predicament. He reminds
us that by mid-20th century the Catholic Irish were
second in American ethnic groups ranked by success
in education and income and social status only to
the Jews. He also notes that the lowest group according
to these same indicators in the U.S. were the "Ulster-Irish"
Protestant descendents. He links the perigrinations
of the latter tribes to an immensely influential
strain of millenarianism rooted in, of all places,
Lady Powerscourt's estate in Wicklow around the
1830s. Here, John Nelson Darby, itinerant preacher,
managed to sway the Lady and enough others from
the C of I into the folds of a determinedly "Dispensationalist"
movement that wound up changing the way nearly every
American Protestant in the next centuries would
read the Bible. In and out of the White House. This
may seem arcane. But Akenson painstakingly traces
this crucial tendency to and manipulate the Bible
so as to interpret future events. The success of
the "Left Behind" books, although this
is out of the scope of this book's era, the expectation
of the Rapture, the glee in separating Bible verses
by cross-referencing them via the "Scofield"
Bible's verse correlations: these enabled millions
to cut-and-paste the Bible out of context in, perhaps,
millions of ways. This led, as the author reminds
us, to the likes of Ronald Reagan and Billy Graham
and, although the latter's too caricatured for me
to recognize within this parade, Richard Nixon.
In fact, Reagan's parentage, in the wake of the
Ne Temere decree of 1908 which put a papal
end to the widespread practice in mixed marriages
that saw the father's faith taken by the sons and
that of the mother by the daughters, shows the effect
of this judgment on millions of partially- or wholly
Irish or Irish-descended families. Reagan took up,
as a young man, with the Disciples of Christ, and
was led away from the path of his older brother
(born before the decree) that was parallel with
Rome. Akenson may try one's patience by linking
so many seemingly disparate events ultimately back
to Ireland, but he has done his homework and makes
such lessons dramatic and convincing, for the most
part and considering the stamina that both author
and reader must possess to master this bibliographical
pursuit.
He is especially cogent in showing other such effects
of families, or the lack of such cohesive parenting,
upon children. How cruel was a Republic that went
beyond the pope's strictures--no marriage once deemed
legal anywhere could be otherwise in the 26 counties;
church annulments and unions hitched by a justice
of the peace were no less binding than those joined
at the Catholic altar. The architect of such a prison
himself had a chequered paternity, and here Akenson
deftly plays his cards to stunning effect. Eamon
DeValera's famously enigmatic birth records are
shown not only in the aftermath of 1916 but much
earlier in Bruree and much later when the 1937 Constitution
was formulated with the ghostwriting of John Charles
McQuaid towards the sanctity of the home presided
over by a mother able to care for her weans. I leave
it to the adventurous reader of this review to connect
the dots in this fascinating puzzle that makes up
the Long Fellow's profile. Likewise, on such as
James Connolly (an observant bit of advice he conveys
to striking 1913 female textile workers), Seán
MacBride (whose half-African, quarter-Malay, quarter-Irish
grandson James joined a South African guerrilla
force), and even the Kennedys, Akenson manages to
uncover the telling obscure detail to silence the
tired barstool truism about such men.
The Nationalist cause, as in the first book, comes
under harsh attack as much as that of the Union.
Why? It's so difficult to pin loyalties down for
long when tracing any family's lineage very far
back to Ireland. Few heroes stand proud under so
much scrutiny. Few if any Irish can boast truly
of unbroken vows. Take this trade union activist:
"Proud. Stiff-necked. English. Irish. Protestant.
Catholic. Atheist. There are no sociologists' boxes
tight enough to confine the identity of Margaret
McCarthy, nor those of equally complex mid-twentieth
century women and men of Irish background and English
nationality." (546) England even in or because
of its post-WWII penury grants Irish immigrants
full benefits even as Ireland shrinks from the "Mother
and Child" campaign of Noel Browne. Ulsterisation
as applied to gerrymandering and Catholic ghettoisation
under the Housing Act builds the neighborhoods where
paramilitaries will decades later concentrate their
own ranks and repel the other side's fire--since
the Catholics are crammed so close amidst the comparatively
wider room given their Protestant neighbours. Ballymurphy
exemplifies Akenson's chain of causation.
The mystery of why the Irish Republic was declared
in of all places Ottawa in 1949 is explained as
a reaction to the Governor General's claim: "Surely
the Royal Toast covers Eire." (593) And, finally,
the reasons are shown why Britain so much more than
America attracted so many of Ireland's immigrants
last century--rather than America. For all of the
Crown's cruelty within Ireland, plenty of luxuries
and more freedom across the Irish Sea paradoxically
awaited the younger sons and the restless daughters
of the few farmers who held the land. The Devotional
Revolution of the post-Famine period terrorized
the natives into embracing piety rather than one
another, at least outside of the conjugally approved
state. The lowest rate of illegitimate births in
the world marked 20c Ireland, at one point not so
long ago, and this system was enforced by clerics
sworn to enforce chastity and separate, even in
infants' schools, the separation of the sexes. Families
grew, but few remained at home. The old few who
owned many farms gave their second and fifth and
eighth children the choice to stay and toil in fields
that they would never inherit, an often as celibates
unable to afford to marry. Those who emigrated,
Akenson shows, bettered any other migrants in their
devotion to save, invest, and better themselves
financially, wherever they found themselves in the
Diaspora. The author unsparingly expresses the material
success of the Irish abroad, as opposed to their
enduring and distorted love of a long-cherished
self-portrait of themselves--as much as their ancestors--as
downtrodden peasants and rosary-hobbled drunkards.
You may likely be angered by some part of these
pages, as all sides come up short. Myths demolished,
the historian imagines what he cannot always document,
and this invention accompanies the records and rolls
pored over by Akenson's more cautious colleagues.
But this professor, resident in Canada, reminds
us that the Irish experience is as far more often
Canadian, Pacific, African, rural American (only
44.5% of emigrants wound up in U.S. cities), and
Protestant. Yes, the Famine did tip the balance
away to the urban Yankee stereotype for a few decades,
but millions who emigrated stayed Catholic not long
at all--most descendents who claim Irish blood seem
to have at some point, or recurring points, abandoned
the Faith of Our Fathers for love, out of isolation
from its sacraments, or out of relief while out
on the wild frontier or made anonymous within the
sordid slum. Few genealogies if any reveal endless
generations vowing papist and republican fidelity
"in spite of dungeon, fire, and sword."
The "1848 Martyrs" transported to Australia
make for especially corrective demolishment of nationalist
hagiography. Read here how William Smith O'Brien
wound up his long life.
Akenson, if a moral can be wrested from so many
hundreds of scenes and seemingly thousands of characters,
would tell us that the Irish never really had it
so bad, compared to all those they helped subdue
in the name of Crown and Church. Slavery and its
ensuing market economy thrived on the colonial expertise,
not only as servants but bosses, that the Irish
provided willingly--anything to get off the island.
This is revisionism of a 'plague on both your houses
variety', therefore. No one is innocent, and we're
all, if we claim to be Irish, guilty of collusion,
bad faith, hypocrisy, and dissembling, to put it
mildly. Always readable, often cruelly funny, mordantly
moral, these two books' conclusions seem to unveil
our green and orange banners as torn bunting and
moth-eaten tapestries. Too many nations suffer today,
Akenson implies, partly due to a system all too
eagerly built by and sustained with Irish power
harnessed into the endless energy of capitalism,
clericalism, and imperialism. Yes, a few socialists
and caring missionaries and gentle reformers receive
fair recognition here. More than a few worthies
probably will emerge for the first time here before
a wider audience, and deservedly so. Ultimately,
the Irish claims to a particularly burdensome past
fade. More Irish have benefitted than languished
when the ledgers align. It may take hundreds of
years, but the conclusions here point--despite the
uncertainties glimpsed in 1969--to the Irish as
far ahead of the rest of the planet's more deserving
destitute. Truth's bright light diminishes the agonies
of a few million Irish placed against the torments
of so many billions. Perhaps more deserving in Akenson's
unrelentingly even-handed (he slaps down all hands
raised in allegiance or attention) analysis as an
aspiration than Loyalism, the nationalist cause
nevertheless receives cold comfort here. Akenson,
reading between as well as within these thousands
of pages would tell us that republicanism, despite
all of its claims to counter this thick imperial
thumb on the scale, by comparison, counts for probably
and ultimately very little correction faced with
such weighty corruption. Perhaps the third book,
post-1969, will reveal a happier ending that fulfills
the aspirations of 1798. We, however, need to craft
that narrative.
