Newsgroups: soc.culture.celtic
Subject: Re: Irish Books/U.S. Bookshops
From: Eamonn Gormley <E.P.Gormley@massey.ac.nz>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 00:41:50 GMT
Organization: Massey University
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1

In article <1993Jan22.015749.20961@nuscc.nus.sg> C R Pennell,
hiscrp@nuscc.nus.sg writes:
>Personally I think this is nonsense, because it confuses Ireland
>and its relatively minor role on the world stage today (which is
>true enough) with its importance in "understanding today's world"
>which seems to be the thrust of Dunphy's interest. But if you
>want to understand today's world, then it makes sense to knwo
>where we are coming from - and as Chris Dunlea pointed out,
>Ireland bulks pretty large in the history of imperialism. It's
>also hard to imagine Christian culture without its Irish input.
>However, leave that aside for the moment. I think Dunphy is way
>off beam, but we can argue about that.
>...... The rest deleted.

Chris,
        thank you very much for clearing the the air with what I consider
historical criticism rather than what I perceived as as 'over the top'
personal criticism, last week.  I accept that my original timespan of 100
years might have implied that I didn't consider any previous events as
being important in the development of the modern world.  When looking at
the present day super-power status of the countries in question (Japan,
Russia, China), I tend to trace  their emergence to the forefront of
world affairs directly to events of the last 100 years. This includes
changes within these countries and outside ( a myriad of alliances
leading to, and resulting from, world conflict, etc.).  You are
obviously, through your field of study, in a much better position to
analyse events further back in time and place, and judge their relevance
to the development of todays world. Nevertheless, I suspect that the
average non-expert (I might include myself in this group) would focus on
particular incidents in relatively recent historical times as being the
'crucial' events leading to today's world, with different countries
contributing more or less, at different times. I don't think that this
viewpoint actually dismisses the role of previous events.   We cant all
be pratts for thinking like this............ can we??  I agree it's true
that many assume that what happens or has happened in Europe is all that
is important, but much the same might be said of north African countries
where Arab history is the dominant theme ( and when this gets intertwined
with Islamic history, it must cause some confusion!). And why not?  There
are very few of us who could raise our hands and deny having an
ethnocentric bias.  Racist by implication, perhaps, but racist by intent,
definitely No!
Hmmm.... what has any of this got to do with comparing Chinese and Irish
histories???
                 																				Eamonn.

p.s. Now, who was the real pratt who wanted to discuss Norwegian history.
 I didn't realise they had any, that it was all just mytholgy with zilch
relevance to the world today. :-).  Judging by some of the postings there
seems to be immense interest in this subject?? Replies by Odinsday or
Thorsday please!!!
  



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 *Eamonn Gormley,  E-mail, E.P.Gormley@massey.ac.nz *
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