The gradual establishment of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland and the rapid evolution of what had been the British Empire into an authentic Commonwealth of equal nations, led by Canada and the emergent independent Ireland of the 1920s: this is the unifying theme of a new Royal Irish Academy book.
Documents in Irish Foreign Policy, Volume II, 1923-1926 (edited by Ronan Fanning, Michael Kennedy, Dermot Keogh and Eunan O'Halpin) is the second volume in a series of publications intended to give the public and the academic world an inside view of Irish Government thinking on political, social and economic relationships with the outside world. This volume deals with official documents dating from December 6th, 1922 to March 19th, 1926.
Through membership of the Commonwealth, friendship with the US and pioneering participation in the League of Nations, the Irish Free State made its mark internationally in an original way, despite partition and an always worrying and persistent campaign by a militant and destructive anti-democratic minority, in the form of IRA and communist organisations. These organisations were particularly destructive in the US, and damaged the cause of independent Ireland there in ways that are probably immeasurable.
Timothy A. Smiddy, an economist, crops up in this fascinating compilation of official documents. Smiddy represented the Irish Government in the US from early 1922. Another figure who features prominently is Kevin O'Sheil, who had been the first Dail local justice in Co Clare in 1920, and who found time during the Irish War of Independence to write a competent history of the American War of Independence, published in Dublin in 1920 and intriguingly entitled The Birth of a Republic.
O'Sheil's contempt for anti-Treatyites became evident early on. In a September 1922 memo to Cosgrave, in his capacity as president of the new Irish state, he remarks that various "Northern Sinn Feiners (chief of whom was Eamonn Donnelly)" were organised ostensibly for "guarding against partition, but in reality to molest and obstruct us in every conceivable way". He also observed acutely the Belfast versus "Ruralista" division within what was becoming Northern Ireland. Later, he argued that Craig, as prime minister of Northern Ireland, would take every advantage of IRA antics in the South to make what might be a convincing case for Northern separatism from the rest of Ireland. Every Protestant murdered in Munster and every sign the Dublin Government was vulnerable to subversion acted in his favour.
Smiddy, meanwhile, comes across as an altogether cooler mind. In late 1922, he warns Dublin that executions of republicans might damage its status in the minds of Irish-Americans and might "act in the minds of the young as an incitement to future rebellions". Smiddy kept a vigilant eye on Bob Briscoe as well. Michael MacWhite and Vaughan Dempsey feature prominently as highly competent diplomatic representatives, as does Joseph Walshe, secretary of what was emerging as the Department of External Affairs (the Department of Foreign Affairs). Sean Murphy, in Rome, warns Dublin in early 1923 of the unease that existed in Rome, in ecclesiastical circles, about the policy of executions.
O'Shiel deals with the "Boundary Question" in early 1923, and worries the North may be able to argue for a rationalisation of the frontier along the lines of the railways: "The North wishes to include Pettigo . . . and perhaps one or two neighbouring districts in. . . Donegal. In east Donegal, they quite clearly wish to include at least enough territory to give them the whole of the Great Northern Railway from Strabane to Derry and they would probably take the whole of the Inishowen Peninsula if they got it". However, they would cough up bits of Fermanagh and might be willing to give up south Armagh, whatever about south Down. Already, the two Irelands were arguing about tiny chunks of land.
Smiddy documents James Larkin's involvement not only with the anti-Treatyites but also with the Bolshevik government in Moscow in 1923. "Larkin was told . . . that any remarks about bourgeois or middle-class people came with very poor grace from him, as it was the bourgeois that got him out of Sing Sing when his own bunch could not do anything for him."
The Department of External Affairs displayed an early awareness of the analogies between the emergent independent Ireland and parallel events in Finland in the early 1920s. The Irish Government was informed of the Carelia problem, a bone of contention between emergent Finland and Soviet Russia. Carelia was divided between western Finns of Lutheran faith and eastern Finns of Orthodox religion. Some of the latter hankered after a union with the Soviet state. The Irish analogies were implicit.
MacWhite celebrates the admission of the Free State to the League in November, 1923. He writes proudly: "Henceforward, [Ireland] is a part of the European comity, to whose civilisation she contributed so unstintingly during the Middle Ages." Desmond FitzGerald has a rather heated meeting in late 1923 with British representatives over the question of a separate Irish citizenship. He avers that the term "British subject" included everyone from Baldwin to "an undiscovered savage in British Guyana".
Diarmuid O'Hegarty, as an apparent last throw, proposes an All-Ireland federation in 1924, remarking at one stage the North "will not consent to give up its legislature or its executive as it is at present constituted". He warns of the grim prospect of there being eventually a separate Dominion of Northern Ireland. Intriguingly, he remarks: "Whether we like it or not, the Irish Free State will ultimately find itself unable to continue to demand the retention by Great Britain of powers in respect of any portion of Ireland."
This is a marvellous compilation, compulsory reading for any student of Irish political development. The series is in itself a major Irish intellectual landmark.
Documents in Irish Foreign Policy, Volume II, 1923-1926, edited by Ronan Fanning, Michael Kennedy, Dermot Keogh and Eunan O'Halpin, is published by the Royal Irish Academy (£30)
Tom Garvin is Professor of Politics at in University College, Dublin. His most recent book is 1922: the Birth of Irish Democracy. His Mythical Thinking in Political Life will be published in 2001