Abstract
Reviewed by: R. V. Comerford, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland
The introduction to this volume quotes as follows from a Sinn Féin manifesto issued in the run-up to the general election of 1918, in which that party obtained a mandate for an independent Irish government: ‘The Czecho-Slovaks are demanding Independence. Nobody is quite sure who the Czechoslovaks are. But the whole World knows who the Irish are and would wonder if that ancient Race did not demand Independence’ (9). A more telling expression of small-nation chauvinism might be difficult to find. By quoting it at the outset the editors give evidence of the frank integrity of their enterprise. At every point this volume resists the temptation to set the Irish–Czech connection in any exaggerated or undeservedly flattering light. In the same candid spirit there is no pretence that this collection of studies provides anything like a definitive account of Czech–Irish connections. Even if these connections are not exceptionally rich, a few volumes of this size would be required to provide a substantial corpus of comparative material. However, by setting realistic limits to the scope and ambition of this collection the editors have enabled themselves and their fellow contributors to produce a model of inter-country studies.
The anchor contribution is Gerald Power’s 30-page ‘Monarchy, nobility and state formation in Bohemia and Ireland, c.1526–1609’. This is comparative history at its best. The Czech lands and Ireland in the late 1520s were under the suzerainty of dynasties controlling composite monarchies, the Habsburgs and the Tudors respectively. Common to both was the impulse of the monarchy to gain firmer control of the territories in question through dominating their hereditary landed elites. However, the circumstances of the respective dynasties and the nobilities were radically different in various ways. In particular, the Bohemian nobility was part of a well-established framework of law-making institutions that could, and did, operate independently of the monarchy, whereas the only collective existence of the nobility in Ireland was in the context of a parliament summoned by royal decree and that, in any event, had only limited territorial reach across the island. Religion became a key factor in both countries. In Ireland the greater part of the old nobility embraced Counter-Reformation Catholicism as a mode of resistance to the intrusion of monarchical power and by the first decade of the seventeenth century they had been largely displaced in favour of a Protestant elite, mainly English. In Bohemia in 1609 the concession of the Letter of Majesty by King Rudolf marked the success of the nobility in asserting their power under the banner of religious toleration.
The victory was short-lived and within 12 years the Bohemian nobility was facing large-scale displacement to the advantage of an international Catholic interest loyal to the Habsburgs. Among this influx displaced Irish Catholics were prominent, especially as mercenary soldiers. The fortunes of a small number of Irish families who acquired land are elucidated here by Jiří Brňovják. The Irish Franciscan College established at Prague in 1625 and surviving until 1786 fits into the same frame of Habsburg Catholicization and Irish Catholic exile. The making of Ireland–Bohemia comparisons by British and German travel writers in the period 1750–1850 is examined by Martina Power in an exceptionally strong chapter.
Lili Zách shows that a number of Irish Catholic intellectuals commented on aspects of Czechoslovakia between the wars, but generally in somewhat tentative terms. From Daniel Samek we learn of the impact of the distinctive Czech Sokol gymnastic movement in Ireland in the mid and late 1930s. The somewhat patchy reception of Irish poetry and prose by the Czechs since the late eighteenth century is delineated by Bohuslav Mánek. Justin Quinn’s study of the poetry of Miroslav Holub sheds light on a significant influence on Seamus Heaney. Ondřej Pilný writes about the reception of Irish drama in the Czech lands since 1900 with great flair and authority. It is intriguing to learn that Martin Mc Donagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore, set in Ireland but so little seen there, has enjoyed enormous critical and popular acclaim in the Czech Republic. It is understandable why this devastatingly powerful repudiation of rule by tyrannical ideologue should strike a chord in a country with a historical experience such as that of the Czechs in the half century beginning 1938. Ireland in the twentieth century had its own brushes with terror and exclusivist ideologies, whence Mc Donagh’s material. Many comparisons and contrasts between the two countries beckon for those who would undertake a follow-up to this work. The volume adds further lustre to the excellent series ‘Reimagining Ireland’ edited by Eamon Maher at the Tallaght Institute of Techology, Dublin.