The revisionist attack on Irish history

The traditional view of Irish history is based on the premise that the Irish people had a moral right to fight for their political, economic, social and cultural independence from imperialist Britain. An opposing view began to emerge in Ireland in the 1930s, according to Dr. Christine Kinealy, author of A New History of Ireland. At that time, a number of leading Irish Academics began following the lead of earlier British historians, in setting an agenda for the systematic revision of traditional Irish History, which they claimed was rife with "nationalist myths". Their declared mission was to replace this so-called mythology with objective, "value-free" history. In her essay, "Beyond Revisionism", Dr. Kinealy says that the revisionist movement gained a new prominence in the battle for Irish hearts and minds during the 1960s when the IRA campaign intensified. Challenging nationalist mythology became an important ideological preoccupation of a new generation of historians.