Ireland, the Revisionist Debate

Abstract

Revisionism is an attempt to analyze Irish history from a more empirical, scientific, stance, testing long-held beliefs and ideas about the course of Irish history and its interpretation. Its main tools in this have been recourse to documentary evidence, contemporary witnesses, and statistical analysis and records to assess the assumptions and accepted discourse of traditional Irish (nationalist) history. In brief, it has resorted to an empirical methodology that stresses the need for objectivity in both method and output, which has challenged much of the accepted discourse of Irish history. As a result revisionists have tended to “debunk” as myth or exaggeration much traditional Irish history.