I love reading history. And when it comes to history, you can’t often beat a first-person account. I have read a couple of different “Eyewitness to..” type of history books, which are compilations of first-person historical accounts. And so on my current quest for reading about Ireland, I was happy to find ‘Eyewitness to Irish History’. Of the Ireland books I’ve read so far, this was easily my favorite. From Ancient Ireland to recent history of the 90s, the historical accounts in this book give you a front row seat. And interspersed among them are very helpful, context providing text. Here’s one example, describing the aftermath of The Battle of the Boyne.
Althought the conflict at the Boyne was not a significant victory in military terms, for the Jacobite army was able to withdraw, regroup, and fight on for another year, James panicked and fled from Ireland back to St. Germain in France, earning him the title among the Irish of Seamus an Chaca (James the
One moving account is from the diary of Gerald Keegan, an immigrant who recounts setting out for Canada just days after his wedding in 1847, and the tragedy of their trip on what came to be known as a ‘Coffin Ship’ due to the suffering, disease and death that was so pervasive on them. His wife did not survive the trip, and Gerald lived only a few days after arriving in Canada, where he gave his journal to his Uncle, telling him, “It will tell to those unborn what Irishmen and women have suffered in this summer of sorrow.”
And more than any of the history I’ve so far read of Ireland, these accounts brought home the shocking degrees of suffering and oppression that the Irish have suffered for centuries under the English. From evictions, starvation, murder, slavery, deportation… there’s little the Irish haven’t suffered at the hands of the English. It’s a painful history captured in the books final sentences;
James Joyce, in Ulysses, was expressing the feellings of most Irish people when he caused his hero, Stephen Dedalus, to observe: “History is the nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” It is a nightmare from which Ireland is still struggling to awake.
This is an excellent read that I recommend to anyone interested in Irish history.