Book Description

This book examines one of the means through which successive Irish governments between 1922 and 1972 attempted to control the historical interpretation of the Irish past. This control was affected, though ineptly, by neglecting the care and development of government archives whilst rigidly restricting public and academic access to State-held historical documents. Chapters detail the slow recovery of the Public Record Office and State Paper Office following the catastrophic events of the civil war, and explore the tortuous relationship between civil servants, politicians and historians as a struggle began to secure a more liberal access policy. Another chapter investigates further the competing priorities of officials and academics as governments first established and then tried to control the operations of bodies such as the Irish Folklore Commission, the Irish Manuscripts Commission, and the Bureau of Military History. The book continues with two detailed case studies of how successive governments tried to manipulate the publication and availability of the Dáil proceedings of 1919-22, and attempted to retrieve from Britain the mortal remains of Roger Casement whilst refusing to engage on the issue of his 'embarrassing' diaries.