Historical Narratives and European Nationalisms: Germany and Ireland In
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Historical Narratives and European Nationalisms: Germany and Ireland in Comparison Shane Christopher Nagle Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History, 2013 1 2 Abstract This thesis is a comparative study of nationalist history writing in Ireland and Germany between circa 1848 and circa 1930. It builds on recent historiography on the cross-European comparison of different national historical traditions in Europe and challenges the customary comparison of ‘peripheral’ national historical traditions with ‘mainstream’ ones. More specifically, it provides a comparative perspective on the development of one aspect of Irish nationalist culture, recognising that the comparative method is still under-used in Irish historiography and relocating the study of this ‘marginal’ tradition into a more comprehensive European frame of reference. It offers a more comprehensive understanding of the similarities and differences in the historical representation of the nation in different contexts by comparing two traditions that have been regarded as ‘mainstream’ and ‘peripheral’, respectively. The thesis is concerned with the question of to what extent, by way of this comparison, we can make judgements about a distinctive European form of national history writing manifested in ‘peripheral’ as well as ‘mainstream’ contexts. The thesis focuses on a sample of historians in both contexts whose historical work centred on the national past aiming to arrive at a medium between the primarily comparative focus and a reasonably detailed examination of the German and Irish national historiographical traditions. Individual chapters focus on the representation of the nation’s ‘origins’ of the and foundational events in the nation’s past; the relationship between religion and the nation in the national historical narratives; the application of ‘race thinking’ or the idea of race to the nation’s past; and how the territory of the nation was historically delineated, how the relationship between region and nation and regional challenges to the unified national historical narrative were dealt with. A final, ‘supplementary’ chapter briefly examines transnational connections between historical representations of the nation in these contexts. 3 Acknowledgements Writing a PhD is both a solitary and a collaborative process, a strenuous one which I could not have completed this thesis without the assistance of a number of people who must be mentioned. Firstly, I must thank my family, particularly my mother and father; without their support this thesis would not have been possible. I thank Royal Holloway College, University of London, for providing me with the College Research Scholarship which allowed me to complete this thesis. Though they would not have noticed me as I toiled away for hours with countless books, I extend my thanks to the staff and librarians of the British Library, Senate House Library, the Wiener Library, the National Library of Ireland, the Library of the German Historical Institute in London (a priceless institution for UK-based German historians), and the Berlin Staatsbibliothek. I thank the Friendly Hand Foundation for providing me with funding during the course of my PhD. For helping to make the experience of graduate study less solitary than it might have been, I thank my fellow convenors of the Institute of Historical Research History of Political Ideas Seminar B, and the Royal Holloway Postgraduate History Seminar. In the course of my PhD I also had the opportunity to help organize the 23rd Annual Conference of the Association of the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, for which I am most grateful to ASEN. As a student of nationalism, the work of ASEN has been invaluable to me, as has been the opportunity to meet and converse with the leading academics in the field of nationalism studies that have helped make ASEN such an important organization. For frank and helpful comments given during the course of my PhD upgrade, as well as before and since, I thank Professor Dan Stone and Dr Rudolf Muhs, both of Royal Holloway. I also extend thanks to Professor Vincent Comerford and Dr Jan Rüger. Though he was not involved in my PhD, I also extend thanks and appreciation to one of my MA tutors, Professor Axel Koerner of University College London, from 4 whom I have learned much about the importance of thinking comparatively and transnationally. Lastly, but never least, I must extend whole-hearted thanks and appreciation to my supervisor, Professor David Cesarani. From encouraging me to think imaginatively at the very beginning of my time as a graduate student, he has become a friend and mentor as well as a supervisor during the course of my PhD, has read hundreds of pages of my work over the years, has encouraged me when I have felt despondent, and has always challenged me to sharpen my clarity of argument (and to tidy up my footnotes). He and Dawn Cesarani have been a source of much hospitality. I will fondly remember the summer and winter get-togethers in West Hampstead, and the occasional free book sent my way… Needless to say, all errors and misjudgements in the following are entirely my own. 5 Historical Narratives and Nationalisms in Europe: Germany and Ireland in Comparison Contents Introduction 7 1 – The Nation and its Origins 31 2 – The Nation and Religion in History 88 3 – The Nation and National Territory in History 142 4 – Historical ‘Self’ and Historical ‘Other’: Race, Descent and National Enmity in the Nation’s History 201 5 – Connections: The Comparative and the Transnational 267 Conclusion 291 Bibliography 305 Appendix – ‘Dramatis Personae’ 340 6 Introduction History and nationalism have since the first stirrings of the latter been intimately, even inseparably linked. Historical enquiry both underpinned nationalism, and developed into a modern discipline in tandem with nationalism.1 This thesis is a comparative thematic study of nationalist historical narratives in Ireland and Germany between the 1840s and the end of the 1920’s.2 The central question will be how the historical framing of the distinctive ‘special path’ of the nation’s history which was regarded as bearing fundamental implications for the modern nation’s political existence differed and paralleled. This will in turn provide an answer to the question of how far, in light of this comparison, it is permissible to speak of a specific European ‘form’ of nationalist historical narratives. The comparison will be framed in terms of an engagement with four crucial themes: origins, religion, national territory, and ‘race’ and ‘Othering’, all of which were interrelated, and all of which defined the writing of national history. How were the nation’s historical origins in each case understood? How had inter-confessional conflict shaped understandings of each nation’s historical identity? How had these nations become understood in historically in terms of their territorial extent and delineation? How were the identities of the peoples of these nations been historically defined? These are the central questions structuring this thesis. 1 Ilaria Porciani and Jo Tollebeek, ‘Institutions, Networks, and Communities in a European Perspective’, in idem (eds.), Setting the Standards: Institutions, Networks, and Communities of National Historiography (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 5, 14. Hugo Frey and Stefan Jordan, ‘National Historians and the Discourse of the Other: France and Germany’, in Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz (eds.), The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 200. Eva Gkotzaridis, Trials of Irish History: Genesis and Evolution of a Reappraisal, 1938-2000 (London, Routledge, 2006), p. 19. 2 To speak of ‘Germany’ and ‘the Germans’ in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is to refer to a number of different territorial configurations and cultural communities, but is considered here in terms of the region of German-speaking Europe that comprised the non-Habsburg lands of the German Confederation and which became the German ‘Empire’ in 1871, with ‘the Germans’ are referred to in the same basic sense. 7 It is no new insight to identify the indispensability of historical inquiry (and, importantly, historical error) to nationalism or national identity. However, most studies of national histories have largely eschewed in-depth comparison, itself a reflection of how historical research remains structured along ‘national’ lines with relatively little systematic comparison. Yet in order to arrive at any generally- applicable conclusions about a historical phenomenon, and about nationalism in particular, historians must analyse comparatively, transnationally, indeed ‘globally’.3 The underlying argument of this thesis is in agreement with that of Joep Leerssen in his National Thought: A Cultural History: that despite a multiplicity of national paths and fine-grained differences important broad similarities in European national histories and nationalist historical narratives can be discerned. 4 If significant similarities and parallels can be found between two ‘canons’ of historical narratives which developed relatively independently of each other, this may permit broader conclusions about the nature of national history writing across Europe during this time. This study is located within the context of more recent efforts to render systematic comparison to the study of nationalist historiographies, and to relocate ‘marginal’