A History of Ireland in International Relations. Owen McGee

      First published in 2020 by

      Irish Academic Press

      10 George’s Street

      Newbridge

      Co. Kildare

      Ireland

       www.iap.ie

      © Owen McGee, 2020

      9781788551137 (Paper)

      9781788551144 (Kindle)

      9781788551151 (Epub)

      9781788551168 (PDF)

      British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

      An entry can be found on request

      Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

      An entry can be found on request

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, except Frank Aiken at the UN, courtesy of UN Photo/MB.

      Typeset in Minion Pro 11.5/14.5 pt

      Cover front: detail from J.M. Morton, The New Ireland (London, 1938).

      For Ailis

      Contents

       Introduction. Has Ireland a Significant International Story to Tell?

       1. Ireland’s Place in World History: From the Fianna to the First World War

       2. A Republican Moment: Ireland’s Independence Struggle in a Global Context, 1919–1922

       3. Financial Quagmires and Legal Limits: Irish Free State Diplomacy, 1922–1938

       4. A Spirit of Non-Alignment: Ireland in and out of the British Commonwealth, 1938–1955

       5. Introducing Ireland to the United Nations and the European Community, 1955–1968

       6. Small Worlds: Globalisation, the Northern Question and Irish Crisis Diplomacy, 1968–1982

       7. Ireland and the Reinvention of the European Political Order, 1982–1994

       8. Beyond Hegemonies: Ireland in the EU and on the World Stage since 1994

       Conclusion. The Evolution of Ireland’s Role in International Relations, Past and Present

       Select Bibliography

       Index

Introduction

      Has Ireland a Significant

      International Story to Tell?

The writing of international history always has an economic focus, even within strategic studies.1 Within this ‘macro-economic’ field, if the resources of all nations theoretically count, the politics of small nations usually figure only when they are deemed significant within the world of international finance.2 Reflecting this, most studies of Ireland on the world stage do not precede the country’s embrace of the Eurozone. Thereafter, the Irish experience was often treated as a case study of modernisation.3 Degrees of influence within international relations have often been equated with an ability to determine ‘whose story wins’.4 As small nations rarely figure prominently in international relations, their stories are even less likely to do so. This can produce defensive reactions. Some nineteenth-century Irish writers attributed the absence of studies of Ireland on the world stage to the fact that ‘our souls were not confined to the pages of a cheque-book’ and the Irish public’s belief that ‘we have not been exclusively created for the worship of the golden calf’.5 More recently, Irish foreign ministers have claimed a century of continuity in the Irish state’s sense of values.6 However, the fact that the first Irish policy document on foreign affairs dates only from the time of the country’s entry into the European Union indicates the relevance of the aforementioned scholarly consensus regarding the writing of international history.7

Up until at least the 1970s, knowledge of international affairs in Ireland was reputedly confined to ‘a small circle of cognoscenti’.8 This consisted mostly of diplomats who kept a very low profile, did not author books and believed that public discussion of Ireland’s role in international relations was best avoided, even in the country’s national parliament, because the geopolitical realities governing the Irish state were matters that ‘few Irish policymakers outside the military and diplomatic nexus understood’.9 In a curious parallel with the former eastern bloc, Irish state archives only began to be fully opened during the 1990s.10 Ireland may not have been worshipping the golden calf, but its inhabitants could have been forgiven if they wondered why their government was so secretive. Nevertheless, certain realities were self-evident. Ireland did not receive a state visit from any country until the 1960s; an event that is still in the living memory of much of its population.11 Reflecting this, during the storied political career of Éamon de Valera (1882–1975), Ireland went from a position of having no recognised ambassadors to a grand total of fourteen ambassadors, but this was still less than a quarter of the diplomatic representation of the smallest of mainland European states. Only in the last couple of decades has Ireland developed a diplomatic corps of a size comparable to that of a small European nation and, in turn, started to embrace a truly broad range of international concerns.12 What value, therefore, lies in a strictly chronological and historical study of the evolution of Ireland’s international profile?

Historians have a natural tendency to be preoccupied with the notion of roots and branches, even if they are not necessarily believers in the idea of canonical texts whose influence is felt throughout all ages.13 In the United States, for instance, this has been reflected by a deep preoccupation with the vision of the state’s founding fathers and the degree to which it either remains relevant or was ever truly coherent in the first place.14 Few have doubted A.J.P.