Myth and the Irish State

IN the 1950s, myth surrounded recent Irish history, especially in relation to the Easter Rebellion, the struggle for democracy, and partition. History in our schools stopped around 1916.

What the people got was what John M Regan refers to as public history, “the version of history that gains currency in the public domain and represents popular understanding of what happened in the nation’s past.” This differs from academic history, “based on research on contemporary records, conducted in accordance with the historical discipline’s methodology”.