Brahmins and carnivores: the Irish historian in Great Britain

This paper is concerned with the teaching of Irish history in Great Britain, with the students, the teachers and their subject. Each merits a brief mention before any detailed discussion, in order to draw attention to the problems that exist, and to clear up any misunderstanding or ignorance about the task that is to be performed.In the great controversy between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine occasioned by the French Revolution, Paine made at least one telling remark in his refutation of Burke’s defence of tradition and usage: he declared that an hereditary monarch was about as sensible as an hereditary mathematician. An hereditary Irish studies student in Great Britain makes about as much sense as both. Much nonsense is talked about the inherited genes of the Irish in Britain, on the assumption that (somehow) an interest in, and ability to comprehend, Irish studies can be transmitted from one generation of Irish immigrants to another. This may be the case; but if it is, it probably takes its rise from social rather than hereditary factors; and it is no more likely to produce an intelligent, perceptive student of Ireland than of France.