Documents on Irish Foreign Policy: v. 7: 1941-1945

Description

Volume VII of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy chronicles Ireland's struggle to remain neutral and sovereign during the 'Emergency' years. The volume provides the clearest and most accessible explanation to date, through original sources, of the rational underpinning of Ireland's wartime neutrality. The taoiseach and minister for external affairs Eamon de Valera believed that Ireland's independence would suffer if the country took part in great power quarrels. The volume gives evidence for a very real fear that participation in the war would lead to renewed civil war, given the wide public support neutrality had. The sources presented reflect British-Irish, Irish-American and Irish-German relations during the government's drive to maintain neutrality. As the likelihood of Allied victory rose, Dublin had also to ensure Ireland's independence and freedom among the great powers of the post war world. In 1945 the rise of the Soviet Union and the United States' looming replacement of Germany, Britain and France as the western superpower led to concerns that Ireland's image abroad might shrink to insignificance. Volume VII marks the beginning of this period of fundamental change in the nature and scope of Irish foreign policy.

Sujets

• Diplomacy
• Ireland
• International relations
• Stephen Ireland
• Diplomatie (homonymie)

Informations

• Publié par: Royal Irish Academy
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908997333
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

Acadamh R oga na h ireann An Chartlann N isi nta An Roinn Gn tha Eachtracha

C ip is ar Pholasa Eachtrach na h ireann
Imleabhar VII
1941 ~ 1945
E AGARTH IR Catriona Crowe Ronan Fanning Michael Kennedy Dermot Keogh Eunan O Halpin
Royal Irish Academy National Archives Department of Foreign Affairs

Documents on Irish Foreign Policy
Volume VII
1941 ~ 1945
E DITORS Catriona Crowe Ronan Fanning Michael Kennedy Dermot Keogh Eunan O Halpin
First e-published in 2017 by Royal Irish Academy 19 Dawson Street Dublin, Ireland
All rights reserved
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-908997-33-3 EAN 9781904890638
Publishing consultants Institute of Public Administration, Dublin
Design by Jan de Fouw Typeset by Carole Lynch Printed by ColourBooks, Dublin
Contents
Editors and Editorial Advisory Board
Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
List of archival sources
Biographical details
List of documents reproduced
Documents
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Appendices
1 Months of the year in Irish and English
2 Glossary of Irish words and phrases
3 List of Irish missions abroad 1941-1945
4 Calendars for years 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945
Editors
Ms Catriona Crowe (Senior Archivist, National Archives)
Professor Ronan Fanning MRIA (Professor Emeritus of Modern History, University College Dublin)
Dr Michael Kennedy (Executive Editor, Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, Royal Irish Academy)
Professor Dermot Keogh MRIA (Professor of History, University College Cork)
Professor Eunan O Halpin MRIA (Professor of Contemporary Irish History, Trinity College Dublin)
Assistant Editor Dr Kate O Malley (Royal Irish Academy)
Editorial Assistant Mr Eoin Kinsella (Royal Irish Academy) (August 2009 to April 2010)
Editorial Advisory Board
(In addition to the Editors)
Mr Patrick Buckley (Royal Irish Academy)
Ms Sarah Callanan (Department of Foreign Affairs) (from February 2010)
Ms Julie Connell (Department of Foreign Affairs) (from August 2007 to February 2010)
Mr Ciaran Madden (Department of Foreign Affairs) (from August 2007 to December 2009)
Ms Maureen Sweeney (Department of Foreign Affairs)
Mr Tim Mawe (Department of Foreign Affairs) (from December 2009)
Abbreviations
The following is a list of the most commonly used abbreviated terms and phrases in the volume, covering both documents and editorial matter. Other abbreviations have been spelt out in the text. BTNI British Troops in Northern Ireland DFA Department of Foreign Affairs collection, National Archives, Dublin DT S Department of the Taoiseach, S series files, National Archives, Dublin G2 Military Intelligence GOC General Officer Commanding IPP Irish Parliamentary Party IRA Irish Republican Army LOP Look Out Post MP Member of Parliament NAI National Archives, Dublin RUC Royal Ulster Constabulary TCD Trinity College Dublin TD Teachta D la (Member of D il ireann) TNA The National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office), Kew, London UCC University College Cork UCD University College Dublin UCDA University College Dublin, Archives Department UNRRA United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
Preface
The National Archives Act, 1986, provides for the transfer of departmental records more than thirty years old to the National Archives of Ireland for inspection by the public, unless they are certified to be in regular use by a Department for administrative purposes, or unless they are certified as withheld from public inspection on one of the grounds specified in the Act. The bulk of the material consulted for this volume comes from the records of the Department of Foreign Affairs (previously the Department of External Affairs) and the Department of the Taoiseach, all of which are available for inspection at the National Archives of Ireland at Bishop Street in Dublin. Other material comes from the holdings of the University College Dublin Archives Department, The National Archives, Kew, London and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. The Department of Foreign Affairs documents in the National Archives of Ireland have been made available to researchers since January 1991. 1
The concept of a multi-volume series of documents on Irish foreign policy was put forward in 1994 by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Mr Ted Barrington, then the Political Director of the Department of Foreign Affairs, brought the proposal to a meeting of the Royal Irish Academy s National Committee for the Study of International Affairs of which he was then a member. The then T naiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Dick Spring, sanctioned the proposal, which was also welcomed by the Director of the National Archives of Ireland, Dr David Craig, whose permission was necessary for the publication of material in his care. The Royal Irish Academy agreed to become a partner in the project when Council approved its foundation document on 3 April 1995.
The main provisions of that document are:
that the project s basic aim is to make available, in an organised and accessible way, to people who may not be in a position easily to consult the National Archives, documents from the files of the Department which are considered important or useful for an understanding of Irish foreign policy ;
that an Editorial Advisory Board, comprising representatives of the Department, of the Academy and of the National Archives, in addition to senior Irish academics working in the fields of modern history and international relations, would oversee decisions on publication;
that the series would begin at the foundation of the State and publish volumes in chronological order and that the basic criterion for the selection of documents would be their use or importance in understanding the evolution of policies and decisions .
These arrangements found public expression in the 1996 White Paper on foreign policy, Challenges and Opportunities Abroad (16.48), which provided that -
As part of the Government s desire to encourage a greater interest in Irish foreign policy, it has been agreed that the Department of Foreign Affairs, in association with the Royal Irish Academy, will publish a series of foreign policy documents of historic interest. It is hoped that this initiative will encourage and assist greater academic interest in the study of Irish foreign policy.
Provision for the project was first included in the Department s Estimates for 1997 and a preliminary meeting of what became the Editorial Advisory Board, in Iveagh House on 10 April 1997, agreed that an assistant editor should be appointed in addition to the editors nominated by the National Committee for the Study of International Affairs: Professors Ronan Fanning MRIA, Dermot Keogh MRIA and Eunan O Halpin MRIA. Dr Michael Kennedy was appointed in June 1997 when work began on the selection of documents. Dr Kennedy was designated as executive editor in January 1998, and is responsible for the direction and day-to-day running of the Documents on Irish Foreign Policy Project. At the December 2003 meeting of the DIFP Editorial Advisory Board, the important contribution of the National Archives to the Documents on Irish Foreign Policy (DIFP) project was officially recognised and the National Archives formally became a full partner to the DIFP project. Accordingly, Ms Catriona Crowe, Senior Archivist at the National Archives, who had attended meetings of the editors since June 1997 and who was de facto a fifth editor of DIFP, was formally appointed an editor of the DIFP series.
The first volume, Documents on Irish Foreign Policy I , covering the period 1919 to 1922, was published in November 1998 in the run-up to the eightieth anniversary of the founding of the Department of Foreign Affairs in January 1919. Subsequent volumes have been published at two-yearly intervals, with volume VII being published in November 2010.

1 The Department of Foreign Affairs was known as the Department of External Affairs from December 1922 to 1971. From January 1919 to December 1922 the Department was known as the Department of Foreign Affairs or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (see DIFP Volume I for further details).
Introduction
This volume of selected documents, the seventh in the Documents on Irish Foreign Policy (DIFP) series, runs from January 1941 to August 1945. It commences with neutrality firmly established as the central tenet of Irish foreign policy during the Second World War. Neutrality was strongly influenced by Taoiseach and Minister for External Affairs Eamon de Valera s belief that as a small powerless state Ireland could not take part in great power quarrels and that Ireland s independence would only suffer if the country was drawn into the world war. There was also the very real fear that participation in the war, particularly at Britain s instigation, would enhance support for the IRA and even lead to renewed civil war in Ireland. While certain aspects of neutrality, such as the preservation of Ireland s sovereignty and the commitment that Ireland would resist militarily an attack from any quarter, remained fixed principles, neutrality could accommodate responses to the changing fortunes of war around and over Ireland, and was adapted as the international situation facing Ireland evolved. Neutrality had wide public support, and the policy enabled the Department of External Affairs to keep Ireland out of the almost five years of global conflict covered in this volume.
Through the Second World War the development, control and execution of Irish foreign policy remained in the hands of a small group of senior officials in Dublin working directly to de Valera. The group was headed by the Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, Joseph P. Walshe, and included Assistant Secretary Frederick H. Boland, Legal Adviser Michael Rynne, and Walshe s private secretary, Sheila Murphy. They executed policy in line with the Taoiseach s views on Ireland s