Irish mission was seen as imperial

Given Ireland's PAST, it's often assumed that the Irish have uniformly negative views about the British Empire and imperialism. But is this true? The question exercises Fiona Bateman, a post-grad in English at NUI Galway. Bateman has recently embarked on a PhD thesis, Ireland's Spiritual Empire. "I am interested in the Irish relationship with empire and imperialism," she explains. "It was less straightforward than you might think and attitudes varied at different times."

Bateman has narrowed her research to Africa and Irish missionaries there. "I am concentrating on the 1920s to 1940s, because there was a huge upsurge of missionary activity then. There are vast amounts of literature on the period - missionary texts, histories of orders, biographies and articles looking at the discourse of the Irish spiritual empire," she says.

At a recent conference in Germany, Bateman talked to African and Indian delegates who told her that Irish missionaries working in outposts of the British Empire were regarded as an arm of imperialism. "The Irish don't seem to have empathised with the local people," she comments. "There was no sense of their having experienced a similar history."

However, the real issue is less about what the missionaries thought they were doing or their motivation and more about the effects they had on local societies, she argues. Although the missionaries brought enormous benefits, particularly in terms of education and medicine, they did so at enormous cost. "The people's cultures were torn apart. The mission schools separated children from their families. Children moved away from home and were brought up separately. The missionaries had the impression that the people they were converting had no culture and no history. But in Africa, the traditions were handed down orally and mission-school children missed out on this." Villagers were often barred from enjoying their traditional festivals, she notes. Her PhD apart, Bateman is currently involved in organising an international conference, Defining Colonies, in NUIG June 17th to 20th www.nuigalway.ie/enl/colony/conference.htm).