Edward Raymond Turner, Ireland and England, In the Past and Present, 1919

What is inside?

Published in New York in 1919 and republished here is the first edition of Edward Raymond Turner's Ireland & England in the Past and in the Present. Containing some 504 printed pages, the original publication is fully-indexed, and concerns itself with the complex relationship between England and Ireland from the earliest times to the present - in this case 1919. The central thesis of Turner's publication is that Ireland 'deserved' its freedom from England and that the majority of the people of Great Britain 'wished Ireland well and [were] resolved to do complete justice' in this aspiration. While Turner's thesis can be seen in hindsight as somewhat naïve, his views on the complex relationship that had brought Ireland and England to the point of war at the time of his publication are viewed through the synthesis of an American academic with Irish ancestry. Turner (1881-1929), an America historian and academic, was professor of history at the University of Michigan. The author of still widely read Women's Suffrage in New Jersey and The Negro in Pennsylvania; Slavery-Servitude-Freedom, 1639-1861, the later of which was written under the biennial Justin Winsor Prize. Ireland and England is divided into three parts.

The first traces the history of settlement and civilisation in Ireland starting from the pre-Christian establishment of Gaelic Society, the spread and rapid conversion to Christianity and the arrival of the Anglo-Normans and the subjection of the native peoples. Part I is concluded with the advent of Henry Grattan's Parliament, the Union with Great Britain and the impact of the Famine on the political Union. Part II provides an analysis of the attempts made by Great Britain to redress the grievances of the Irish without granting full independence. These include the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, the various attempts of introducing a more equitable form of land tenure and the various land legislation that this entailed before ending with the various attempts to introduce Home Rule with an analysis of the arguments for and against this course of action. Part III gives the arguments for independence as Turner saw them at the time of writing. Beginning with the Irish revival movement and the existence of the Irish language and literature he then dwells on the attitudes of Ireland towards Britain at the time of WWI, the conscription crises, the growth of Sinn Fein, before concluding with some attempt to explain the complex relationship between America and Britain over the 'Irish Question'. Well written and very readable, Ireland and England does not profess to be a scholarly work. However, it is a synthesis of ideas and facts, that should appeal to anyone who is just starting to examine and consider the complex relationship between Britain, Ireland and America as this existed on the very cusp of Irish independence.

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