Efforts to rewrite history by authoritarian leaders will “reopen” old wounds and national enmities, and define national identities by allegiance to a narrow and dangerous understanding of the past, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said.
His warning came in remarks at the announcement of Alvin Jackson as the first Childers professor of Irish history at Cambridge University, funded by a once-off €4.5 million donation by the Irish Government.
The Government’s support for the position reflects its “belief in the power of higher education, and the urgency to ensure that our countries respond to these times by acting to deepen and secure our connections”, the Taoiseach told a gathering at Trinity College in Cambridge.
“It is also a signal of our belief in the central importance of independent historical scholarship in protecting core democratic values.
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“We need fewer people singing about old certainties and more who are willing to find new perspectives. Overcoming entrenched views of others is an unrealised and essential step towards sustained progress.”
In Alvin Jackson, he said, Cambridge has chosen “a historian of the very highest rank”, who has offered “broad and essential contributions” on the issues that have defined Irish and British history for 200 years.
The funding of a permanent professorship of modern Irish history in Cambridge is part of a wider purpose to strengthen British-Irish ties “at a time when we could easily drift apart”.
The new post “will not create Irish history in Cambridge – there is a long tradition of Cambridge historians writing important works in the field”, but it will “guarantee and expand this tradition”.
It is a demonstration of the “growing importance of rigorous, independent, historical scholarship when these values are under threat”, and, finally, in the choice of Childers, father and son, to honour important Irish figures.
Emphasising the importance of teaching history, the Taoiseach said: “It is also a signal of our belief in the central importance of independent historical scholarship in protecting core democratic values.”
The most destructive recent development has been “the growth of populist sentiment and polarised information environments”, and the assault on scholarship by those demanding “fixed views” on complex issues.
“Even in secure democracies, we see efforts to stereotype and dismiss the importance of disciplines which are not deemed practical enough. The discipline of history has been a particular target,” he said.
So far, the most extreme example is seen “with the neo-imperialist Putin regime in Russia”, where president Vladimir Putin has “essentially banned all historical work which pointed to dark points in Russia’s history”.
Putin “now routinely terrorises and jail people” who point out the Russian sins of the past, evoking George Orwell’s warning of “a nightmare world in which the Leader or some ruling clique controls not only the future but the past”, he said.
The Taoiseach said that despite the progress since the Belfast Agreement “We should be deeply concerned about our failure to address lasting sectarianism and deep economic disadvantage. We have done little to develop a sense of Irishness, our history, our shared interests and our future, which is more than a cover version of old orthodoxies.
“No one could look at the ways in which certain groups use our flag or their aggression towards those who do not toe the ideological line, and fail to worry about the damage which this might cause in years ahead.”
