Option 1 Ireland: The invention of Tradition

What do you understand by the notion of an ‘invented tradition’? In what ways have Irish nationalists used ‘invented traditions’ to shape a common understanding of the national past? Discuss with reference to no more than three examples.

        The culmination of the fight for independence for Ireland was The Easter Rising. The yearning for separation from Britain had been voiced from the late eighteenth century onwards. Finally, in 1922, Ireland became an independent state. For the rest of the twentieth century, the traditions of the old nationalist movement dominated its governments. Before and after independence, Irish nationalist politicians relied profoundly on reference to an immemorial Irish past, mainly one which emphasised the heroic, independent, culturally distinct Irish in contrast to the foreignness of the English. (Laurence, 2008 p. 151) Restoration of an Irish past by the nationalist movement can be described as ‘the invention of tradition’, using the word invention to mean something crafted or forged.

        Firstly, the ‘invented tradition’ can be explained as accounts of the past which are moulded by people and movements in the present to serve their own needs.  (Laurence, 2008 p. 154) In Reading 5.1 Hobsbawn suggests that ‘the invention of tradition’ is occurring ‘more frequently when a rapid transformation of society weakens or destroys the social patterns for which ‘old’ traditions had been designed.’ The construction of ‘invented tradition’ involves the use of ancient materials, such as symbolism. New tradition could be based on existing ones, which could be devised by borrowing from official rituals, religion or folklore.

        Laurence (2008, p. 157) states that ‘what we see of the historic past around us is the product of both conscious and unconscious ideas about the past.’ The decisions about what to preserve, reconstruct and adapt, are made on deeply felt ideas about which aspects of the past should be represented. The process of what to preserve of the past is often highly selective. There are many ways in which the Irish nationalist movement tried to shape the common understanding of national past, but this essay presents just two. Firstly, Irish cultural nationalists encouraged others to follow a distinctly Irish culture and revive the Irish language. Secondly, the preservation of Irish national built heritage shows the distinction from British past, such as The Hill of Tara and Newgrange.

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                 Therefore, the first ‘invented tradition’ analysed is the common goal of the Irish cultural nationalists: to establish that the people of Ireland had a rich and ancient culture which justified their sense of nationhood. Unlike political nationalists, such as O’Connell, Thomas Davis with the group ‘Young Ireland’ believed that an essential part of the existence of a sense of nationhood amongst the Irish is the Irish folk culture. The group published The Nation newspaper in 1842, which inspired to look at the ancient Irish past.

        Davis mostly wrote about Irish Celtic past, published the works of George Petrie, and also campaigned ...

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