ABSTRACT
The effects of national independence are at long last showing in Ireland. Until recently, few countries were less able to face the truths of history and more firmly convinced of its legends, but the natural feelings of a long suppressed and oppressed nation-feelings too readily enshrined in post-liberation politics-have of late begun to abate sufficiently for serious historical writing to become the rule rather than the exception. Most of this writing is, in consequence, revisionary and still very much in the stage of producing scattered results which have not yet reached the ordinary textbooks or the larger consciousness; there the flattering legend may still be more influential than the sometimes uncomfortable truth towards which, to their great credit, Irish historians are nowadays working. However, there is a good recent introduction to Ireland’s modern history in Beckett’s textbook.1290
