caa a22 4500 388053461 CHVBK 20180307125059.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199812 xx s 000 0 eng 10.2307/3679288 doi S0080440100011051 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.2307/3679288 Townshend Charles The Meaning of Irish Freedom Constitutionalism in the Free State [Elektronische Daten] [Charles Townshend] The performance of Ireland as an autonomous state since 1922 remains a contentious subject. Joseph Lee's withering critique of Irish economic backwardness and cultural parochialism, which he holds to be rooted in a narrow adhesion to the ‘possessor principle' against the ‘performance ethic', charts a long-term failure to rise to the challenge of statehood. It is not appropriate here to attempt even a summary of his sprawling, bristling account; I want to focus on an aspect highlit by Denis Donoghue when he reviewed it in die London Review of Books. ‘The first and most important fact about modern Ireland,' Donoghue contended, ‘is that, after die Civil War, there was unquestioned transition to democracy.' On this view, modern Irish history is, pace Lee, in essence a success story. As Brian Farrell put it, die capacity of die Irish parliamentary tradition to ‘encompass, neutralise and institutionalise' the disastrous split of 1922 ‘makes die Irish experience unique among the new nation-states of the twentiedi-century world'. Tom Garvin has recendy reinforced this verdict by pointing to the surprising speed with which any tendency to military intervention in Irish politics disappeared. This after a Civil War in which die new Army—lacking any experience of subordination to the civil power— had saved die life of the infant Irish Free State. Indeed, far from witnessing the politicisation of the military, Ireland ‘rapidly became one of the most demilitarised societies in Europe'. Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1998 Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Cambridge University Press 8(1998-12), 45-70 0080-4401 8<45 1998 8 RHT https://doi.org/10.2307/3679288 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2307/3679288 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Townshend Charles NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Cambridge University Press 8(1998-12), 45-70 0080-4401 8<45 1998 8 RHT CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge