It is A truism that Ireland and Scotland share much history in common. From earliest times the two countries united by the sea formed a single cultural, religious, linguistic and economic zone. The first settlers in Ireland in the prehistoric period probably crossed the North Channel from Scotland. In the first millennium, it was Irish tribes, the Scoti, who invaded the Western Highlands and subsequently gave their name to the new coherent kingdom which was emerging across the Irish Sea.
The role of Irish monks, personified above all by Columba, in the Christianisation of the infant kingdom is well documented. Indeed so well-developed and enduring was the Irish-Scottish political and religious connection that Scotland's heroking, Robert the Bruce, could regard himself as belonging to the same nation as the Irish and this sense of ethnic kindred was still very much alive in the 14th and 15th centuries.
The warmth of that relationship was unlikely to survive the Reformation as Presbyterianism soon established supreme hege mony in Scotland while the Irish for the most part remained defiantly Roman Catholic. Nevertheless in modern times each country has still had a profound impact on the other. In the 17th century as many as 100,000 Protestant Scots settled in Ulster. The political and religious effects of that remarkable migration have left a deep mark on Irish history to the present day.
Then in the 19th century, as part of the enormous global diaspora of the Irish, many thousands moved to Scotland in the search for employment. Their labour helped Scottish industrialisation to take root rapidly. They also became Scotland's single largest group of immigrants in the modern period with marked effects on the social, religious and cultural life of many areas, especially in the Western Lowlands.
Given this range of historic interconnections it is at first surprising that it is only in the last two decades that the serious comparative study of Ireland and Scotland has become established within the universities. The two countries may have had an intimate and enduring set of relationships over two millennia and more, but they have been virtually ignored by scholars in the 19th and for much of the 20th centuries.
The story of Ireland and Scotland was not only marginalised but virtually ignored by historians, students of language and social scientists in both societies. In a review a few weeks ago in The Irish Times, the new Irish Consul-General in Scotland, Daniel Mulhall, wrote that "for many Irish readers, I suspect, our closest Celtic neighbour disappears from the radar screen sometime in the 17th century".
The force of Mulhall's comment is undeniable. At some point between the 17th and 18th centuries the two countries, once so close, diverged in fundamental ways. The Reformation was an obvious watershed. After it there emerged a mainly Catholic Ireland and a mainly Protestant Scotland at a time when religious loyalties defined national identities and much else besides. Partly as a result of the religious revolution, each country developed dramatically different relationships with England. The Scots entered a Regal Union with their southern neighbour in 1603 followed by a Parliamentary Union just over a century later in 1707.
As that new relationship matured, Scotland came to view itself as a fellow partner in Empire with England. By contrast, Ireland was conquered, colonised and the mass of its people subjugated by penal legislation. Scottish regiments of the line were part of the army of occupation. There was also a sustained intellectual assault on the ancient bond forged over hundreds of years between the two nations.
The Scottish literati of the Enlightenment saw the Irishness of Scotland as redolent of its primitive, archaic and barbarous past - something not only to be denied but actually erased from the historical record in the new age of progress, improvement and fruitful political alignment with England. Irish thinkers, on the other hand, became obsessed with Anglo-Irish issues to the exclusion of any interest in the Scottish connection, especially during the long nationalist struggle of the later 19th and 20th centuries.
In essence the two nations, though geographically close, developed in quite different ways. In 1700 both were rural-based societies. Some 150 years later Scotland had experienced an economic miracle and, after England, had become probably the second richest country on earth. While Scotland flourished, many Irish starved in the worst human catastrophe in Europe in the 19th century, the Famine of the 1840s.
But times are changing again. Academics in the 1970s and 1980s became more interested in comparative studies and realised the fruitful potential for investigation of two societies within the British Isles, so close to one another but yet so different.
Here economic and social historians in both countries were to the fore. They held five comparative conferences in succession sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council and in each case the proceedings were published. It was a unique achievement and demonstrated beyond any doubt the value of comparative historiography. We cannot know what is distinctive about the society which primarily interests us other than by comparing it with others with similar but also diverging experiences.
In 1700, Ireland and Scotland were broadly similar; by 1850 they were different types of society. Exploration of the reasons why yielded much insight into the influences which explain varying rates of modernisation. These successive symposiums were then followed by the formation of the Irish-Scottish Academic Initiative (ISAI). Originally an innovative consortium of three universities, Trinity College Dublin, Aberdeen and Strathclyde, it became a group of four in 1999 with the accession of The Queen's University Belfast. ISAI marshals a formidable range of academic talent in pursuit of interdisciplinary research and postgraduate study in Irish-Scottish language, literature and history.
But perhaps the basic driving force in the renaissance of the serious study of Ireland and Scotland has been the new political dynamic within the British Isles. Devolution in Scotland has unleashed a remarkable interest in the nation's history and culture. One effect has been to prompt an interest in the historic links with Ireland. It is no coincidence, for instance, that the Scottish History Book of the Year for 1999, William Ferguson's The Identity of the Scottish Nation, focuses directly on this issue. More generally, as the process of devolution accelerates throughout Britain, Ireland is discovering once again the diversity of relation ships with her neighbouring island. The opening of an Irish Consulate General in Edinburgh is a powerful symbol of this new awareness.
This is the essential historical background for understanding the establishment of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen in 1998. To date this is the most ambitious and important manifestation of a new academic and cultural interest in Irish-Scottish studies. Aberdeen had a long-term interest in Scottish subjects but by the 1990s had also begun to recruit able young scholars in fields as diverse as Irish literature, language, film, culture and history.
Aberdeen's pioneering role in the field was confirmed when it created the first Chair of Irish Literature in English in Britain. The Institute will build on these firm foundations and the vigorous encouragement given to it both by senior management and the academic community for its future success.
The essential hallmark of the new Institute must be quality. The Institute's uncompromising aim is to become a recognised world-class centre of excellence. To ensure this, a very distinguished Advisory Board has been appointed as public affirmation of this intention. It includes Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Laureate; Christopher Smout, Her Majesty's Historiographer Royal in Scotland; Edwin Morgan, the great Scottish poet; Roy Foster, one of Ireland's leading historians, the Harvard academic, Helen Vendler, Seamus Deane, a key figure in contemporary Irish literature and academic life, and two pre-eminent language scholars, Seamas O Cathain and Cathal O hAinle. The Institute must also be at the cutting edge of research. The academic staff currently consists of a research professor and five postdoctoral research fellows, each with their own discrete area of scholarship. The Institute's international reputation will largely depend on the monographs and learned articles which this highly qualified term produce over the next few years.
Related intimately to this overarching research strategy is the postgraduate community of the Institute. Some of these are master's students enrolled in the unique MLitt inter-disciplinary programme in Irish and Scottish studies. This is a pattern of study which no other master's course in either Europe or north America can currently match. Students may specialise in either Scottish or Irish topics or both.
The course caters for their specific research interests while introducing them to areas outside their proposed specialisations. It is also intended as the gateway to doctoral studies. Central to the whole philosophy is the ideal of a scholarly community. Staff and postgraduates are all accommodated in newly-refurbished rooms in Humanity Manse, the home of the Institute. "Manse" in the tradition of north-east Scotland means the house of a professor or minister. Humanity Manse was therefore the elegant former 18th century home of the professor of humanity (or Latin and Greek) at Aberdeen which is now converted to new purposes.
Nevertheless, the ideal of a cohesive scholarly community must go alongside a deep commitment to the development of wider linkages. For the Institute to become introspective would be to take the road to certain disaster. The Institute enjoys particularly close relationships with the core departments of Celtic, English and History. But an effort has also been made to engage with scholars across the whole range of humanities and social science disciplines at Aberdeen with an interest in Irish-Scottish studies.
Over 70 staff, in a dozen departments, are members of the Institute's Associated Academic Staff Scheme. They include scholars of international distinction in areas as diverse as economics, law, philosophy, geography, art history, divinity and land economy. In addition, an ambitious scheme of appointment of visiting professors and honorary research fellows is currently underway while the Institute maintains close relations with the Irish-Scottish Academic Initiative through its director who is also current convener of the initiative.
The purpose of this Institute is to enlarge understanding of Ireland and Scotland, individually or in comparative context. Although only a year old, there is already considerably activity. Among the themes of the conferences and seminars organised for the winter term, 1999 are emigration, the Catholic community in modern Scotland, the democratic intellect, the Northern Ireland problem, Irish identity, and rural policies in Ireland and Scotland.
In addition, significant research projects have been launched. The largest-scale enterprise in the Diaspora Project in which the director and two of the research fellows are engaged. This studies the comparative experience of Irish and Scottish emigration. Both countries had the highest emigration rates in the 19th century of all societies in Western Europe and their peoples left a deep mark on the historical development of North America and Australasia.
The Leverhulme Trust sponsors a threeyear investigation into sectarianism in Scotland while the Taoiseach's office in Dublin has made substantial funds available for an annual Irish-Scottish Forum where leading academic, politicians, civil servants and journalists will meet to discuss issues of significance for the two countries. In a nutshell, the objective of the Institute is to maintain high academic standards while contributing vigorously to the wider public debate.
Tom Devine is director of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies and university research professor in Scottish history at the University of Aberdeen
