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The Shadow of the Gunman: Irish Historians and the IRA

This article explores the ways in which Irish historiography has been shaped by paramilitary violence, counter-insurgency and the intimate, close-quarter killings that characterized the Troubles. Irish historiography, as a professional or academic enterprise, had long been committed to ideals of impartiality influenced by Herbert Butterfield and Michael Oakeshott. It was also acutely conscious of its proximity to violent political upheaval, and during the 1970s would display a heightened sense of the urgency of dispassionate historical inquiry. Prominent scholars believed that professional research would dispel the ‘myths’ that sustained the gunmen of the Provisional IRA. In the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement, however, historians face the challenge of explaining the militant republicanism which they had previously sought to defuse. This article considers several recent analyses of the Provisional movement. It reveals the extent to which the most vociferous criticism of the Provisionals descends from the far Left of republicanism itself — from those who belonged to the Official IRA or its successor organization the Workers’ Party, or from the ‘dissident’ republicans of the 1990s.