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Respondent
Dr Niamh Gallagher
Breaking down binaries: Empire, the First World War and Partition
Machnamh 100 – Seminar Two participants: Professor Eunan O’Halpin, Professor Alvin Jackson, Dr Marie Coleman and Dr Niamh Gallagher
Thank you, President Higgins, for inviting me to respond to Professor Horne’s paper on the wider dimensions of the centenary we are now living through. I have found, President, your own reflections on ‘ethical remembering’, Richard Kearney’s ‘hospitality of narratives’, and on challenging what you call a ‘feigned amnesia’ around the uncomfortable aspects of the shared history between Britain and Ireland to be very useful when contemplating the themes of sovereignty, nation and empire.1
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Machnamh 100 – Rannpháirtithe Seimineár a Dó: An tOllamh Eunan O’Halpin, an tOllamh Alvin Jackson, an Dr Marie Coleman agus an Dr Niamh Gallagher
An imperial world Professor Horne reminds us that sources of sovereignty were not fixed in the period leading up to and after the First World War and that the world map of 1920–1 looked very different to that of today. We are often accustomed to remembering only one empire when we think of Ireland in these years, but this was a world made up of empires. During the First World War the British Empire was joined by the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Romanov, and German Empires, whose territories extended across continents and incorporated a diverse array of peoples, ethnicities, and nationalities. Some of these entities, such as the Ottoman Empire, had existed for more than 600 years.
President Michael D. Higgins, ‘Of Centenaries and the Hospitality Necessary in Reflecting on Memory, History and Forgiveness’, President of Ireland, Media Library, 4 December 2020 <https://president.ie/en/media-library/speeches/of-centenaries-and-the-hospitalitynecessary-in-reflecting-on-memory-history-and-forgiveness>.
