FIELD DAY REVIEW 120 Photograph: Charles Hewitt/Picture Post/Getty Images. Mapping the Narrow Ground Geography, History and Partition Mary Burgess In 1952 J. C. Beckett wrote with a certain finality that ‘the real partition of Ireland is not on the map but in the minds of men’.1 1 J. C. Beckett, A Short Ten years later, M. W. Heslinga quoted Stewart have consistently used the past to History of Ireland Beckett as the epigraph to his The Irish explain and justify existing state divisions in (London, 1952), 192 2 M. W. Heslinga, The Irish Border as a Cultural Divide: A Ireland, unionist conceptions of geography Border as a Cultural Contribution to the Study of Regionalism have been decidedly unstable, leading to a Divide: A Contribution to in the British Isles (1962), a book that did curious insecurity in the crucial marriage the Study of Regionalism much to promote both the border and the between unionist interpretations of history in the British Isles (Assen, 1962). For the pervasive companion theory of two nations as facts of and the geography of the north of Ireland. influence of Heslinga, see nature and history.2 And fifteen years after Arthur Green, ‘Homage to Heslinga, A. T. Q. Stewart, in an even more From the moment the Irish border was Heslinga’, in Joep Leerssen, ed., Forging in influential book, The Narrow Ground: drawn, ‘with a bland subordination of the Smithy: Representation Aspects of Ulster 1609-1969 (1977), wrote: topography to self-interest’, it hardened into in Anglo-Irish Literary ‘The truth is that partition is not a line permanence in northern unionist politics.6 History (Amsterdam, drawn on the map; it exists in the hearts Certainly, the levels of violence and coercion 1995), 145–59. 3 3 A. T. Q. Stewart, The and minds of Irish people’. Beckett, which attended the birth of the state did not Narrow Ground: Aspects Heslinga and Stewart were arguing against represent an auspicious beginning, or as of Ulster 1609–1969 the imagined geography of nationalism (an natural a resolution to the ‘Irish Question’ as [1977] (London, rev. edn. 1989), 157. In the 1989 island ‘limned by God in water’) and for an Stewart and Beckett, among others, would edition (159–60), Stewart alternative imagined geography of unionism have us believe. The border would become went further: ‘Nationalists in which the six counties would appear as a one of the most contested and militarized may or may not be territorial unit separate from the island of state-boundaries in European history. It still justified in their attempts to remove [the border] and which it formed a physical part, but closely retains the sense of unease, of impermanence annex the other six bonded to an island from which it was and of contention that characterized its counties of Ireland to the separated by a stretch of sea.4 In Language inception. This is so in spite of a long and Republic, but there is little and Symbolic Power, Pierre Bourdieu complex effort by unionists to manufacture a point in doing so unless they can find a way to contends that geographical ‘“reality” … is sense in which the Northern Irish state has eliminate that other border social through and through’ and that ‘the always ‘really’ existed. of the mind.’ frontier, that product of a legal act of 4 See, in a different context, Oliver MacDonagh, States delineation, produces cultural difference as The potential for violence in the very idea of Mind: A Study of the much as it is produced by it’. For Bourdieu, of the border has diminished. Especially Anglo-Irish Conflict, indeed, ‘the most “natural” classifications since 1998, there has been such an 1780–1980 (London, are based on characteristics which are not in enormous increase in cross-border initiatives 1983), 15: ‘The Irish problem has persisted the slightest respect natural but which are to — educational, commercial, economic, because of the power of a great extent the product of an arbitrary cultural and political — that it is widely geographical images over imposition.’5 This essay argues that, while claimed that it is losing both its relevance men’s minds.’ partitionist scholars like Beckett and and its divisive potential.7 FIELD DAY REVIEW 1 2005 121 FIELD DAY REVIEW One of the great ironies of this situation for of Public Records in Northern Ireland, 5 Pierre Bourdieu, Language unionists is that, in the formative years of published A History of Northern Ireland. and Symbolic Power, ed. John B. Thompson and the state, regionalism added cultural density Unsurprisingly, since ‘Northern Ireland’ had trans. Gino Raymond and to the idea of partition. Now, in the ‘Europe then been in existence for less than a Matthew Adamson of the Regions’ this is no longer the case; decade, Chart’s book was relatively brief, (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), the border matters culturally only to an yet it managed to confer on the recently 222 6 MacDonagh, States of increasingly embattled and shrinking formed ‘Northern Ireland’ a pedigree of Mind, 21 unionist community. antiquity stretching back to the fifteenth 7 See, for instance, the large century and to make it identical with a new number of cross-border initiatives, projects and The earlier project of constructing Ulster version of ‘Ulster’, now a six-county, not a publications produced by accelerated after partition and was nine-county, province. The new political the Centre for Cross articulated in the works of geographers and formation became, at a stroke, ‘an old Border Studies, based in historians in particular.8 The relationship country’. Events which could properly have Armagh, and also the work of the Institute for the between regionalist geography and fallen within the ambit of Chart’s title — Study of Social Change, historiography in the construction of the violent political and sectarian events of based at University College Northern Ireland has always been central.9 1920–22, for instance, or the passing of the Dublin. 8 Relatively recent books and Geography determined the history of the Special Powers Act of 1922, or even the essays by Ian Adamson, region, and the history finally realized the wrangles over the border — made no and by two-nations geographical imperative. In 1928, a young appearance in the book. The fact of geographer Dennis Pringle, Welshman named E. Estyn Evans took up a partition was merely stated in the preface. in which the partitionist position is reiterated, have lectureship in geography at Queen’s Chart was resolutely unwilling to ‘reopen their foundation in the University Belfast (QUB). At some point in recent controversies and recall ... many work of earlier scholars. that year, Evans met with Thomas Jones, painful memories’.12 The conclusion of the See Ian Adamson, The Identity of Ulster: The sometime Professor of Economics in the Boundary Commission’s investigations had Land, the Language and university, and formerly David Lloyd changed the atmosphere if not the rhetoric the People (Belfast, 1982) George’s private secretary. Jones had been of Ulster; an editorial in the January 1926 and D. G. Pringle, One the British Prime Minister’s chief negotiator issue of the new Ulster Review declared: Island, Two Nations: A Political Geographical with Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith Analysis of the National during the Treaty negotiations which ended The signing of the Border Agreement Conflict in Ireland in the partition of Ireland.10 The content of wipes the political slate for us in Ulster … (Letchworth, 1985) and their conversation is unrecorded. It had We are like a garrison so surprised to find ‘Diversity, Asymmetry and the Quest for Consensus’, been Jones, however, who first mooted the a prolonged siege suddenly raised, and the Political Geography, 17, 2 idea of the Boundary Commission as a enemy quietly withdrawn, that we cannot (1998), 231–37. palliative to the Irish delegation; the quite believe in our good luck.13 9 Under the umbrella of geography were also possibility that the border was moveable, sheltered a regional study even ‘temporary’, was insinuated into the Chart’s History of Northern Ireland of ‘folklife’, archaeology officially inflexible rhetoric of partition suggested that the ‘stagnant optimism’, and a nascent Ulster from the outset.11 Given Jones’s own which G. K. Chesterton had observed in anthropology. 10 This meeting is referred to interest in geography, it is possible that they Belfast in 1918, was finally producing by Evans’s widow, discussed the border. Moreover, Evans’s results.14 Gwyneth Evans, in ‘Estyn: arrival in Belfast came at a time when A Biographical Memoir’, in E. Estyn Evans, Ireland and unionists were intent on making the recently In this new mood of confidence and relief, the Atlantic Heritage: drawn border permanent; throughout his born of the apparent gift of a clean ‘political Selected Writings (Dublin, career, he remained close to the slate’, the unionist establishment set about 1996), 5, and by Matthew establishment and this central ambition. naturalizing its new state. A cancel line Stout in ‘Emyr Estyn Evans and Northern Ireland: The would be drawn through the troubled recent Archaeology and Also in 1928, only three years after the past, and an older history would instead Geography of a New Boundary Commission made the border gain prominence. Chart’s history, a textbook State’, in John A. Atkinson, Ian Banks and Jerry permanent, D. A. Chart, the Deputy Keeper produced under the auspices of the new O’Sullivan, eds., Nationalism and Archaeology (Glasgow, 1996), 111–26. 122 MAPPING THE NARROW GROUND 11 Gwyneth Evans published régime, exhibits several features shared by Chart’s History of Northern Ireland was a strong refutation of many publications similarly devoted to the neither the first nor the last of its kind.