Writing Ireland's Historical Geographies

This paper seeks to review the progress that has taken place in Irish historical geography during the twentieth century, and to assess the way in which published writings have produced an extraordinarily evocative and colourful elucidation of Ireland's past histories and geographies. It is shown how revisionist writings have played a significant role in the revising of traditional nationalist interpretations of Ireland's past, and how new interdisciplinary links have been established by Irish historical geographers with cognate disciplines such as economic and social history. In terms of methodology, it will also be shown how Irish geographers have moved away from their former ethnographic concentration on the morphology of the Irish landscape to a more manuscript-orientated approach to reconstructing the history of Ireland's past geographies. Recent work by 'new' cultural geographers on Ireland's 'modern historical geographies' is also explored.