Madam, - It is an objective fact that, the British Isles apart, the main international setting of Irish history between 1916 and 1965 was colonial and semi-colonial Africa and Asia.
It was principally in those countries that the Irish Revolution and Irish independence were significant and influential events. The intensive missionary movement of the decades following 1916 - the largest organised foreign enterprise in Irish history - was directed mainly to those same peoples.
And the party politics of post-independence Ireland inaugurated a new "left-right" pattern, different from Europe's, which became the typical party-political pattern of post-colonial Africa and Asia. (The UCD political scientist Tom Garvin demonstrated this 30 years ago.)
Yet very strangely, the "histories of Ireland" currently on offer do not reflect this large Afro-Asian dimension of our history during a 50-year period of the 20th century. It is much as if our historians, in their narration of Irish history from the sixth to the ninth centuries, were to omit ample treatment of the Irish missionary and scholarly impact on Britain and Continental Europe.
They do not in fact do such an unprofessional and blinkered thing, although that earlier Irish impact and enterprise was, by comparison, a smaller affair and, in its missionary aspect, casual and piecemeal rather than deliberately organised.
Not only are the general Irish history books deficient in the manner I have outlined: Tom Garvin's sectoral work apart, the basic research has not been done and published. There is not even one book supplying a comprehensive account of Irish missionary activity in the 20th century. Nor has the required research been done, let alone presented in book form, on the reception and influence of the Irish Revolution and Irish independence in Africa and Asia.
I write with this latter omission principally in mind. A future generation of historians may well try to make good the insularity and negligence of the present generation. They will have available the abundant archives of the missionary bodies. But they will be disadvantaged by the failure of the present generation of history professors, lecturers and Ph.D students to travel in post-colonial Africa and Asia, gathering direct evidence of the Irish influence from politicians, journalists and others who took part in the independence movement.
This consideration leads me to appeal and urge that, even at this late hour, with mortality reaping its harvest, what remains of this Irish historical resource be attended to. - Yours, etc.,
DESMOND FENNELL,
Anguillara,
Rome.