It was an “unspeakable war,” wrote one journalist, and “a story that nobody dared to tell.”
But contrary to popular assumption, the tragic Irish Civil War of 1922-1923—a wrenching, destructive run-up to the establishment of an independent Ireland—has long persisted in the national Irish memory, despite efforts to downplay or outright erase it from official discourse. The 电子游戏软件 Irish Studies Program will host a lecture by Irish historian and author Síobhra 艾肯, who has chronicled the determination of veterans and later generations to keep alive the story, 现在是它的百年纪念, 爱尔兰内战.
艾肯, a lecturer in the Queens University Belfast Department of Irish and Celtic Studies, will present “Forgetting the Irish Civil War (1922-23)? One Hundred Years of Silence Breakers,” on October 25 at 4 p.m. 在康诺利宅邸. Her talk will encompass research she published earlier this year in 精神上的创伤: Trauma, Testimony and the Irish Civil War, which will be available at the event.
Siobhra艾肯
The Irish Civil War grew out of intense disagreement over the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty that ended the Irish War of Independence against Britain. Fighting amongst Irish revolutionaries broke out after failed attempts to form a coalition between the pro-treaty forces and those who opposed it because, 除其他原因外, it called for a partition of Ireland that allowed six counties in the north to stay part of Britain and the establishment of an Irish Free State instead of a republic.
While the war lasted barely a year, ending with the pro-treaty side victorious, the toll was steep. Precise figures for combatant and civilian deaths have never been verified, but are estimated to be at least 1,500甚至更多, including renowned figures like Michael Collins, a beloved hero of the War of Independence. Guerilla attacks, government-sanctioned executions, and other brutal acts were carried out. The economic damage was substantial, which affected negotiations for the border between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland.
Civil wars are by nature a traumatic national event that can leave long-lasting psychological and emotional scars. 但是正如艾肯所写的 精神上的创伤, the impact of the 1922-1923 war on Irish people has been a complicated and often misunderstood matter. 在之后的几年里, politicians and other public figures stressed a process of healing “the wounds of war” over remembrance, while school textbooks and other historical publications mostly omitted references to the civil war. This led to the “unspeakable war” characterization (associated with journalist Eoin Neeson, who chose it for the title of his 1958 series of articles on the war)—a belief that there was a “code of silence” about the war, 她指出, despite the fact that many civil war veterans had published or otherwise shared their accounts, and later generations also contested the notion of total silence about the conflict.
“The wealth of this body of testimony suggests that the silence 爱尔兰内战 was not necessarily a result of revolutionaries’ reluctance to speak,艾肯写道, “but rather due to the unwillingness of the architects of official memory—journalists, 历史学家, politicians—to listen to the testimony of civil war veterans.”
Sullivan Millennium Chair and Irish Studies Director Guy Beiner, whose research—cited by 艾肯 in the book—explores how popular conceptions of national and local history are shaped not only by collective memory but also what he calls “social forgetting,艾肯被称赞为创新者, 有远见的学者.
“Síobhra is one of the most original and interesting new voices in the field of Irish studies today: She’s an historian who also works with literature and is fluent in Irish. In 精神上的创伤, she challenges long-held assumptions that ‘embarrassment’ is the reason why the Irish Civil War has been so neglected. Female survivors or relatives of veterans were especially marginalized, and some of them worked out their war-related trauma and experiences through writing fiction, which does not appear on the ‘A list’ of Irish literature. Síobhra dug deep to find these writings, and they help put this chapter of Irish history in a new light.
“The Irish Civil War’s impact was far-reaching and well worth examining, especially as we conclude the centenary commemorations of the Irish Revolution. All of contemporary Irish politics was framed by the war, 例如, and the conflict spurred emigration of anti-treaty Irish—some of whom came to Boston.”
For information on this and other Irish Studies events, go to the program's 网站.
Sean Smith | University Communications | October 2022