Projecting the Nation through Sport and Culture: Ireland, Aonach Tailteann and the Irish Free State, 1924-32

Abstract

This article explores the attempt by the newly-independent Irish state to stage a major sporting and cultural event, Aonach Tailteann, in the 1920s and 1930s. The event has to be understood in the context of a new nation trying to promote itself on the world stage by defining, through sporting and cultural happenings, those ideals which the state would embrace. The article reveals that, despite the high idealism of Aonach Tailteann, the whole event was hamstrung by the financial realities of statehood and the problematics caused by a long-neglected national economy. Such financial conservatism also demonstrates that the state, while built on the ideals of revolutionary Sinn Féin, was loath actively to support such an explicit recognition of cultural revivalism. The article also illustrates a central problem that would dog the whole lifetime of the Free State: whether or not to champion traditionalism in the face of cultural and political modernism.