Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

thinkers at the time of world war. Hegel was not a warmonger but he did not morally condemn war. Jones could not abandon his Hegelianism just as in fact the leaders of European states were incapable of abandoning the realist political doctrines to which Hegelianism at the international level gave rise. It was to be another generation of leaders, and after the experience of another devastating war, who were to drag Europe from the barbarism of interstate war. Achieving this required a political doctrine which encouraged points of allegiance other than that of the state. A commutarianism that confines itself to the boundaries of one state is a danger to all states. This book is the work of two excellent and maturing scholars. Perhaps they do not get the balance right between notes and text in their presentation, with over forty pages of notes to less than two hundred of text. But the argument is always interesting and elegantly put, though revealing too little perhaps of the authors' own complex relation- ship to British Hegelianism. HOWARD WILLIAMS Aberystwyth IRELAND DIVIDED: THE ROOTS OF THE MODERN IRISH PROBLEM. By Michael Hughes. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1994. Pp. 143. £ 7.95. Michael Hughes's book forms part of a series designed to introduce students, in particular, to important historical themes and questions. His first chapter, 'Myth as History', is followed by five chapters describing the origins and implementation of the partition of Ireland, the consequences, and more recent developments. A final section offers a set of documents so that the reader can examine the evidence at first hand. Hughes's discussion of the 'revisionist' controversy in modern Irish history sets out the two sides of the argument, between those who believe that objectivity may be striven for, if never wholly attained; and those who think that history must defend a nation's concept of itself. He is surely right in claiming that the productive aspect of the business has been the writing of very stimulating work; he is equally justified in denying that this work has any impact on contemporary Irish politics, though he might have gone further and considered why it is the case today that historians, and not just Irish historians, are being pushed into a more political stance: the German historiker- streit, which Hughes would have known off by heart, would have provided useful comparisons. The chapters which follow are based on an intelligent reading of recent work in the field, though they would have benefited from a more self- conscious consideration of how far the 'roots' of division are indeed located in the more distant Irish past, and how far they were the result of decisions made by hard-pressed politicians on both sides of the Irish Sea. Redmond, for example, turned down the plan of a home-rule Ireland with six or so counties held under the direct rule of Westminster. but reflecting their Irish character through rule by Dublin Castle-a scheme which no Irish government has even got close to, despite decades of anti-partitionist rhetoric. Still, the narrative, if unexceptional, is clear, balanced and concise. At times there are some good insights, for example when Hughes, drawing upon his Welsh experience