Sifting through the primary sources

As he sifts through box after box of notes and files, historian Dr Michael Kennedy says it's the personal details to be found in contemporaneous notes of great figures that is most interesting. Anne Byrne reports

'I never felt so relieved at the end of any day, and I need hardly say I am not looking forward with any pleasure to resumptions - such a crowd I never met. This place is (the) bloody limit. I wish to God I was back home." Michael Collins penned this exasperated note to Eamon de Valera on October 12th, 1921. A till receipt from Harrods, around the same time, shows the Irish delegation was turning to comfort food, scoffing sweets and cakes, in an attempt to console themselves during the Treaty negotiations.

Dr Michael Kennedy, a surprisingly youthful historian, says it's these personal details that appeal to him most: the complaints at the end of letters; the scribbled notes of phone conversations pencilled on jotters; the strand of dark hair stuck to a folder. As he sifts through box after box of notes and files, people who are now the stuff of history books come vividly alive.

Kennedy is reading through documents on Irish foreign policy from 1919 onwards, in order to put together a series of edited, organised and accessible volumes. Most of the boxes containing the documents are untouched since they were originally sealed. The dust is such that he doesn't wear white shirts to work, in the National Archives or on his trips to the UCD archives.

While much of the early documentation is concerned with establishing Ireland as a nation, on the world stage, later, there are glimpses of world events in the making. These include an account from the Irish legation in Berlin, in February 1933, noting that "by far the most interesting figure in German politics is Adolf Hitler. Even the President takes second place in popular interest, because his principles are known and understood and his actions in any given set of circumstances may be predicted with some confidence. Hitler, on the other hand, is a mystical and mysterious figure: no one knows what his principles and true policy really are, and one can only speculate as to his statesmanship."

On December 19th, 1938, there is an anti-semitic diatribe, justifying Germany's treatment of Jews. The official who wrote it was later recalled to Ireland.

The project is throwing up a wealth of disparate information, the stuff of a thousand theses. There's the early women diplomats, Máire O'Brien, Nancy Wyse Power, Mairéad Gavin Duffy and Cáit O'Ceallaigh, who played a significant role from 1919 to 1922, after which date the foreign service became an almost exclusively male preserve.

There's the desk jotters, a blue soft-back, and a hardback buff-coloured public-service issue copybook with a red spine, belonging to Joe Walshe, first secretary of the Department of External Affairs. In their pages lurk what amounts to the draft surrender of the German Legation, in May 1945. Kennedy says Walshe was "secretive, cautious, a very cunning diplomat. It's amazing to read something like this, written from first principles, unrefined. It's as good as hearing it from his own mouth." The series: Documents on Irish Foreign Policy is published by the Royal Irish Academy and funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Kennedy is a member of staff at the RIA. Two volumes, covering 1919-1922 and 1922-1926, have been published to date. A third, 1926-1932, will be published in September.

These dark-green volumes, with the harp on the spine, look like the stuff of academic libraries or the Government Publications Office. In fact, they're a fascinating read, accessible to non-historians.

Kennedy is dedicated to the project, happy to be around for another 12 volumes or so, when he will have to retire (he's only in his 30s now). Each volume is the result of a one-year research and one-year production cycle.

Kennedy is executive editor. Professors Ronan Fanning, Dermot Keogh and Eunan O'Halpin are also editors, meeting on a monthly basis, to discuss whether documents should be included, edited or excluded.

It is Kennedy who does the initial trawl through the raw material. "In a production year, I go through boxes and boxes of documents, picking out the key ones. You can never tell from one file to another what you will find. It might be the smallest personal note that is the most revealing, as in the case of Collins (quoted above) where you can feel his frustration mounting.

"Material can be in the most surprising places: it can be misfiled, or the file can be in the wrong series. You have to go through it with a fine-tooth comb.

"We're also looking at photos and building a large collection. You get these wonderfully stylish pictures, from the 1940s and 1950s, with the diplomats in double-breasted suits, wearing tortoiseshell glasses, a briefcase beside them, and a packet of gold flake on the table." From a service comprised of diplomats by accident, the Department of External Affairs (later the Department of Foreign Affairs), becomes confident and professional. Kennedy says this transformation is evident in the change in the letters and documents from volume one to volume two.

Michael Kennedy was always interested in history and international affairs.

" My parents were interested in current affairs and we always had the radio on during breakfast. In Marian College, I had an excellent history teacher.

It seemed everyone else was doing accountancy for the Leaving Cert and people said 'you'll never get a job with history'." Undeterred, he studied history and economics in UCD and then embarked on a PhD on Ireland in the League of Nations, later published as a book. "One of the first pieces of research I used was the recently released foreign policy archives (released in 1991). I had a foot in the door here from the beginning," he laughs.

Later, teaching in QUB, he says the external audits, such as the UK Research Assessment Exercise, instilled in him the importance of publication. "There's a close relationship between teaching and research." He continues to teach, on a part-time basis, and to produce publications other than the edited series on foreign affairs. "In a job like this, amassing all of this information, it's important to get out and teach."

He says: "The series fits into an international framework of foreign policy documents. There's a whole global ethic of publication. Ireland is a relatively recent entrant. One of the reasons the RIA is the ideal place for publication is its strong international connections."