It's hard to envisage now, but in the 1920s Ireland was a tiny, almost imaginary little state. In a world of titanic clashes between empires, oblivious to - and largely uninterested in - an insignificant country trying to achieve recognition, those who forged the modern Ireland were attempting to realise, by cunning, force and diplomacy, the very existence of the nation they had carved out.
The excitement and the desperation of the crucial years at the beginning of the State, as well as the ingenuity and determination of her servants, have never been clearer than in a collection gleaned from the archives of the State and private individuals, called Documents On Irish For- eign Policy, Volume 1, 1919-1922. The Irish diplomatic service was founded during these confused and confusing years. Significantly, the first step taken by the Dail government was to lobby the Paris peace conference of 1919 for recognition of the new, self-declared Irish state in the aftermath of the first World War. The Irish were among a multitude of hitherto unthought-of nations clamouring for recognition; Woodrow Wilson was wryly to remark subsequently that he might not have demanded the self-determination of European nationalities had he realised how many of them there were.
Despite its lack of success, this mission to Paris under Sean T. O'Kelly was Ireland's first diplomatic mission abroad, and several of its members went on to become prominent Irish diplomats.
Under Eamon de Valera, a mission to the US to raise funds and sympathy for the Irish cause was organised, to bring Irish-American opinion and a general American sympathy to bear on the Irish cause.
This is the first in a projected series of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, first proposed by Ted Barrington, then political director of the Department of Foreign Affairs and since then Irish Ambassador to the UK. Dick Spring, then Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, sanctioned the proposal and Dr David Craig of the National Archives permitted it to go ahead and encouraged the project subsequently. The Royal Irish Academy also agreed to assist in the work and played a central role. Expert advisers from the Department of Foreign Affairs (Gary Ansbro, Gerard Keown), the Royal Irish Academy (Patrick Buckley) and the National Archives (Catriona Crowe) also contributed centrally.
This collection of selected documents gives us the basic documents on the development of Irish government foreign policy and the Irish diplomatic service from January 21st, 1919 to December 6th, 1922: from the Declaration of Independence by Dail Eireann until the establishment of the Irish Free State on the December 6th, 1922, one year to the day after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
The most dramatic and core diplomatic activity of the Irish government in embryo was, of course, to be the negotiation of a settlement with the British government in 1921. Paris, the US and Britain constituted the world of Irish diplomacy at that time.
The division over the Treaty also split the aspirant diplomats. Treatyites and anti-Treatyites denounced each other not only in Ireland, but in the US and elsewhere, much to the general damage of the Irish cause, and caused its near-bankruptcy in the US. But despite this internecine feud, the Irish Free State gradually won international recognition and began to develop its own networks of international contacts, understandings and allegiances. An early achievement was membership of the League of Nations, following the precedent of Canada. Indifference to foreign relations marked much of Irish government policy later on, reflecting a general isolationism which Irish diplomats and foreign ministers had to fight against.
A general impression that leaps out from this first volume is the central character of propaganda in the establishment of the State and its subsequent international recognition. The emergent polity was blessed in having propagandists of genius in the persons of Erskine Childers, Desmond FitzGerald and Frank Gallagher, all involved at one time or other in the production of the Irish Bulletin, an extremely informative and well-written news sheet which won respect among foreign journalists for its relative moderation of style and scrupulous documentation of police misbehaviour, Black and Tan atrocities and the general mendaciousness of British political leaders during the Anglo-Irish conflict.
NONE of these documents, with some trivial exceptions, has ever appeared in print before. They are excerpted from the Dail Eireann files of the period, Department of Foreign Affairs files, Department of the Taoiseach files and the personal collections of George Gavan Duffy, Ernest Blythe, Desmond FitzGerald, Mary MacSwiney and Eamon de Valera, most of which are held in the archives of University College, Dublin. Included is the text of the Declaration of Independence and Message to the Free Nations of the World, which are well known, but these are followed immediately by dispatches to and from various Irish leaders and diplomatic emissaries sizing up Ireland's chances of recognition, possible sources of sympathy and even alliance and general assessments of the international situation of the time.
Arthur Griffith writes from Gloucester Prison on January 23rd, 1919 emphasising the need for propaganda. South American countries should be reminded of the prominent role Irishmen had played in their wars of independence and early state-building; if Irish delegates could not be found to go to the conference in Paris, Irish-Americans should be used, or Irishmen who had US citizenship. "Remind Liberia and Haiti that Ireland is the only European country that never engaged in the Negro slave trade." The French nationalist right and the Catholics should be sympathetic, he thought. "Mobilise the poets. Let them address Wilson, and let them remind him in their best verse that he has the opportunity and the duty of giving the world true peace and freedom . . . Perhaps Yeats would use his muse for Ireland now."
Sean T. O'Kelly emerges very early on as a highly active and shrewd diplomat and special agent, increasingly close to de Valera as time goes on, eventually becoming Dev's personal lieutenant. On March 7th he proposes to tackle Wilson openly and in a barrage of propaganda. French parliamentarians and newspaper editors are being tackled. A real problem is that nobody has heard of Ireland, and the French are obsessed with squeezing everything they can from the Germans, whereas the Germans are fighting for their economic lives. Ireland, it emerges, despite her self obsessions, was very small beer indeed on this world stage.
Later, O'Kelly writes hopefully about a growing hostility to Britain in France, which the Irish might be able to take advantage of. In June, an official memorandum arguing for Irish independence is presented to the French government by O'Kelly and George Gavan Duffy. O'Kelly keeps many strings in his hands. He writes anxiously to Dublin about growing friction between the Devoy and McGarrity wings of the Irish-American movement, later to develop into pro- and anti-Treaty movements. Monsignor Cheretti, Bishop of Corinth, a Vatican representative at the Paris Peace Conference, has been "most sympathetic" to Irish argument.
Harry Boland is sent to the US in part to resolve the American squabble. He writes in July that American sympathy is very strong, but to keep the Americans interested you must make hard headed economic sense.
In August, de Valera warns at length against a British ploy of proposing "Colonial" home rule, and insists that under no circumstances should the Irish government even discuss it. "The Republic is established, is there, and our fight is to have it recognised."
George Plunkett reports steady progress in October in countering British propaganda and diplomatic offensives throughout the US and the Empire; de Valera's US visit has been an enormous success.
At the beginning of 1920, Michael Collins crops up, being informed about money matters by Sean Nunan in New York. Gavan Duffy reports sadly from Paris that the French are propaganda-proof. In February 1920, de Valera defends himself and his actions in the US to Arthur Griffith in terms that clearly indicate that he has himself become embroiled in American quarrels.
The Vatican's attitude to the situation is continuously monitored; the Archbishop Mannix incident, in which he was prevented from landing in Ireland by a British destroyer, has "keenly interested" the Pope. Dr John Hagan of the Irish College in the Vatican figures prominently as a go-between between the Irish and the Vatican officials. Later, he was to oppose the Treaty, but was subsequently an important agent in the process by which de Valera reluctantly embraced constitutional politics in the late 1920s.
Later in 1920, French public opinion takes a sympathetic turn, in part because of French clerical pastorals on the Irish situation, in part because of French resentment of Britain. French Catholicism in general has come to recognise that "an independent Ireland will be a bulwark of religion in a godless world". In January, 1921 Gavan Duffy writes from Rome, describing a situation where there is considerable sympathy and where British propaganda has been ineffective. In January, 1921 de Valera circulates all members of Dail Eireann with an essay on tactics to be adopted in the forthcoming election in Northern Ireland. "I have not yet studied the P.R. system in use . . ." The death of Terence MacSwiney generated enormous interest and sympathy worldwide, reported FitzGerald.
Gavan Duffy, writing in March, contributes a general and intriguing essay on possible alliances for an independent Ireland. Originally he had favoured a "Pan-Latin" link-up with France, Italy, Spain and the Catholic portions of German-speaking Europe. But "Italy hates the French", "Spain hates France more than she hates England", and "France is a decadent and decreasing country". He proposes instead that the Irish should throw in their lot with an emerging German-US understanding, involving investment in the emergent Russian Republic. The diplomatic network grew impressively in 1921, with reports coming in from Germany, Russia, South Africa and Latin America in addition to the French, Italian and US reports. A shrewd report from Patrick McCartan describes the emerging Bolshevik dictatorship. "Anything they are likely to do for Ireland will be done in the hope of helping to break up the British Empire and thus further the world revolution."
About half the papers are devoted to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Early peace feelers are documented, some of them indirectly indicated. An interview with Carson and British government representatives in London in January 1921 saw Dominion Home Rule mooted semi-officially, and not for the first time.
A persistent theme in this section of the papers is a widespread misapprehension of what the powers of the emergent British dominions actually were, tending to an underestimation of them. A tragic aspect of the time was that no one else was clear about it either, as the real status of the dominions was effective sovereign independence masked by legalistic symbols of subordination to the Crown and the British government. The luck of the Irish had it that the War of Independence took place during this confusing time of transition from Empire to Commonwealth. Here lay the seeds of the Irish Civil War.
DETAILED memoranda from the Irish principals are included on guarantees of neutrality, military matters, the status of Northern Ireland and Commonwealth status versus External Association. While most of this is known, it is fascinating to have it all assembled in one splendid book, which is going to be the handbook of all serious students of the period in future. It is also fascinating reading for the general public, and contains many an eye-opener. It seems clear, for one example among many, that Collins was satisfied that two of the six partitioned counties would revert to the South in the event of the North seceding from the original, notional 32-county Free State. Why he thought this to be so is unclear - perhaps it was wishful thinking, or perhaps the general obsession with the question of sovereignty and the Oath clouded his mind. Perhaps it was simple exhaustion.
The gradual stabilisation of the Free State is documented, as is the rapid organisation, in Irish America, of a vocal and clever propaganda campaign against the new Irish government and all its works and pomps. An Irish diplomatic memorandum in early 1922 minutes at length the central place that publicity abroad had had in forcing the British to come to the negotiating table at all in the first place. This very early lesson tended to be forgotten afterward by some Irish political leaders in the introspective decades that followed the momentous and tragic events of this period.
Royal Irish Academy/Department of Foreign Affairs Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, Volume I, 1919-22 is edited by Ronan Fanning, Michael Kennedy, Dermot Keogh, Eunan O'Halpin and is published by the Royal Irish Academy, price £30
Tom Garvin is Professor of Politics in University College, Dublin. His books include 1922: the Birth of Irish Democracy (1996), Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland (1987) and The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics (1981).