[Leica] OT: The Big Fellow and The Long Fellow

[Marc James Small <msmall@infionline.net>]

At 12:01 PM 7/19/03 -0400, Chandos Michael Brown wrote:
>Right Marc.
>
>Funny to imagine that a professional historian sitting in his office at
>a research university needs to "eschew" web sites.  This review is
>merely typical and accessible to those on the LUG.  Coogan has *no*
>credibility as an historian, and I am happy to provide a number of
>references that will require those who have no access to First Search or
>JSTORE to examine the appropriate paper references.
>
>Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Marc.  I giggle when you presume to
>lecture us on "established" scholarship.

Chandos,  if you wish to discuss things without resort to personal obloquy,
I will be pleased to continue this discussion on-list or off-list, but I
find your tone but lessening of you and upsetting, so I shall simply not
respond if you continue to employ jejeune language in discussing a topic on
which I am rather well-read.

Yes, I would appreciate your list of "references".  Coogan has provided us
with the most useful biographies to date of Collins and de Valera and has
employed much original research and a rather extensive list of interviews
with many of the participants made during his tenure as a reporter from the
1950's into the 1980's.  I suspect that your list of "references" will
consist of mealy-mouthed denunciations by professional historians that one
not of their number could write a creditable biography of either man.

University College Cork held a conference on the significance of Collins on
28 FEB and 1 MAR 97.  The proceedings of this have been published as
MICHAEL COLLINS AND THE MAKING OF THE IRISH STATE (ed. Gabriel Doherty and
Dermot Keogh, Cork, Island, Mercer Press, 1998.  ISBN:  1856352110).
Contained herein are a number of essays dead on-target and taken from
current Irish historiography.  One such is from Professor Joe J Lee:

"It is nevertheless hard to avoid the impression that historians and
biographers, despite the objective obstacles to be overcome, could have
advanced the study of Collins much further if they had shown the degree of
committment and imagination that Tim Pat Coogan did in tracking down
sources, not least oral ones, for his best-selling biography.  There can be
differing views about Coogan's interpretation of much of his material, but
finding the material in the first place made an important contribution to
the history of Collins." (pp. 20 - 21)

There are others of like mien.

For sources independent of Coogan, you might want to read Ulick O'Connor's
MICHAEL COLLINS AND THE TROUBLES, an independent assessment of Collins
without reference to Coogan or his work, and David Neligan's memoir, THE
SPY IN THE CASTLE.  Both are still in print, I believe, and are readily
available.  There is nothing in either of these works which changes the
appraisal that Collins was a most significant contributor to the art of
guerilla warfare.  (Of course, the ultimate accolade to his contributions
came from Trotsky, who made Collins' teachings the heart of his own course
on how to conduct a successful guerilla war.)

Could it be that the "professional" historians dislike Tim Pat Coogan for
being a journalist who learned how to research, discovered a bunch of new
material, and produced the most useful biographies to date of Collins and
Dev?  (Similarly, "professional" historians have turned on a number of
other successful authors such as Fletcher Pratt, Byron Farwell, Stephen
Roskill, John Toland, Cornelius Ryan, and Emil Ludwig and have certainly
consumed their own, trashing luminaries such as Steven Ambrose, James
Robertson, and Bruce Catton, and even AHM Jones.)  Is there a bit of
jealousy at play here?  Hmm.  WHY would it be so, that "professional"
historians only seem to become embeded in invective when they are
confronted by someone else who manages to produce a wide-selling work which
brought the author riches?  Does the phrase "sour grapes" fit in here?

Chandos, you might want to subscribe to H-War and raise the issue there.  I
will welcome your contributions and will enjoy your defense of your
position in the face of academic and military historians.

But, again, pray lay off the invective.  Cicero could pull it off
successfully, as could Burke and Pitt and Churchill and Senator Bilbo, but
few alive today can do it with the proper tone.

Marc


msmall@infionline.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bąs fir gun ghrąs fir!

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