The main task of DIFP is to research and publish volumes in the DIFP series, but the project also plays its part in promoting interest in the history of Ireland and its international relations. The DIFP news pages highlight the publication of new volumes in the DIFP series and show some of the project’s outreach involvements.
February 2012
Kate kicked off the first of our outreach workshops for 2012 on 8 February with a very successful evening workshop on DIFP with the Munster Branch of the History Teachers’ Association of Ireland.
The workshop included a discussion on the value of electronic publications and, in particular, the value of a DIFP e-pub for use by secondary school teachers.
As it happened DIFP, with our colleagues in the RIA’s Digital Humanities Observatory, had been developing a text e-pub using the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty section of DIFP I.
The Treaty is a document analysis section of next year’s leaving cert history syllabus and so as a result of Kate’s meeting with the teachers we are fast tracking the publication of our Treaty e-pub. We’ll post more news on this as it becomes available.
DIFP entered into the ongoing debate on granting pardons for Irish Defence Forces deserters with an opinion piece in the Irish Times on 15 Feb arguing that the debate so far has been obscured by rhetoric based on inaccurate facts. Michael spoke to the TCD Centre for Contemporary Irish History on myths and realities of Ireland’s World War Two neutrality on the afternoon of 15 February.
We were delighted to welcome Ann Marie Graham to the DIFP office. Anne Marie is part-time intern with the project and is assisting in the compilation, editing and proofing of DIFP VIII.
Work is, of course, proceeding on DIFP VIII. The documents selected at the January selection meeting are being typed up and the project is checking the typed text against the original documents by reading the typescript out loud against the original.
Our colleague Ruth Hegarty in the RIA Publications Department sent us in this very positive review by Dr Daniel Leach of the University of Melbourne of DIFP VII. We take his point in the final paragraph!
January 2012
On 26 November 1940 Irish Minister to Paris Seán Murphy wrote to James Joyce, then at St-Gérand-le-Puy, that he was ‘both surprised and disappointed’ to receive a note from the German Embassy in Paris ‘to the effect that your daughter’s journey to Switzerland cannot take place.’ Murphy was at a loss to explain this change of German attitude. Murphy had been assured that Lucia Joyce’s British passport represented no problem to her travelling.
When my DIFP colleague Dr Kate O’Malley and I discovered this letter, some time in 2007, we were hopeful that we might find some of Joyce’s return correspondence. A letter from Joyce would make a wonderful addition to volume VI of DIFP (1939-41).
We had already found similar consular correspondence from Samuel Beckett to Irish diplomats in Paris and Vichy. We easily obtained permission from the Beckett estate to publish the material
DIFP research work is at times historical detective work. We hunt across files, collections and archives, piecing threads together until the bigger picture of Irish diplomatic relations and foreign policy become evident.
The painstaking work through DFA consular archives paid off. Two an a half pages of spidery almost indecipherable green ink on green paper. We were not even initially sure it was Joyce, such was our disbelief. We took digital photographic copies at the highest resolution available and alerted our colleagues in the National Archives of the find: a previously unknown letter from James Joyce written only a matter of weeks before his death. We had before us one of James Joyce’s last letters.
The text is at times difficult to make out, particularly if you are not familiar with Joyce’s writing. But our non-expert transcription is as follows:
‘Dear Mr Murphy,
Many thanks for your express letter of 26th ult. enclosing copy of note from the German Embassy at Paris of 20(?) ult. Unless this note should prove to be a direct reply to a direct request by Count O’Kelly I am not inclined to consider it either personal or final. It is exasperating, however, after your kind and successful intervention that … … .. … (words unclear) conditions of (?) administrative machinery should have prevented me from taking advantage of this exit
permit for my daughter during the entire three months it was in force. Our initial visa for Switzerland, requested as far back as July, reached Vichy, only yesterday morning. Seven weeks after the French Home Office issued an exit permit for me and the other members of my family. This will not have to be (word unclear) for a week as it expires today. My son is going to Vichy for this purpose either tomorrow or next day. If you will allow him he proposes to call on you then to submit to you some suggestions, concerning my daughter’s case. I would appreciate greatly your counsel in this matter and am sorry I cannot be my own spokesman, the travelling papers
for St Gerard le Puy to Vichy being made out in my son’s name only,
Sincerely yours,
James Joyce,
1 December 1940.
The letter immediately throws new light on the seemingly eternal question of Joyce’s relations with the Irish state. Yes, the Irish diplomatic service did assist him in his hope that Lucia could travel for treatment; yes, Irish diplomats and Joyce were on good terms; and, yes, Joyce seems to have valued their judgement and effort.
Sadly the conditions of copyright over the Joyce estate meant that it was so difficult that to obtain permission to publish the letter that we felt it best to leave the document out of DIFP VI. The ending of copyright allows us to place the text of the letter and the original photographs we took in 2007 on the RIA website.
As to the attitude of the Irish state towards Joyce’s death and funeral. We show in DIFP VII (1941-45) that Irish diplomats were in contact with Joyce up to his death and were in ongoing touch with his family and friends thereafter. Frank Cremins, the Irish Chargé d’Affaires in Berne, did not snub the Joyce family on receiving news of Joyce’s death, but sent a telegram from his office in Berne expressing condolences and explaining his inability to attend the funeral in Zurich.
Ireland and the world in 1912
On 2 January Michael appeared on ‘The Pat Kenny Show’ on RTE Radio 1 talking about Ireland and the world in 1912. The podcast is available here. Michael also appeared on the ‘Documentary on One’ on RTE Radio 1 on 7 January discussing the sinking of the Rosslare to Fishguard mailboat St Patrick by the Luftwaffe in June 1941. The podcast is available here.
On 12 and 13 January the documents that will comprise DIFP VIII were selected by the project team as DIFP entered fully into the postwar years and began exploring a relatively unknown period in Ireland’s foreign relations: the transition from the foreign policy of wartime neutrality to the new multilateral world of peace time diplomacy in the growing shadow of east-west tension and the cold war.
Many historians ignore Ireland’s immediate postwar foreign policy, but as DIFP VIII will show, 1945 to 1948 brought many tricky new problems for Iveagh House to confront.