John Marcus O’Sullivan and Philosophy of Treatyite Conservatism

We begin again the postgraduate bursary winner blog series. First up is Seán Donnelly (Teeside) on his BAIS funded visit to archives in Dublin.

The help I received from the BAIS bursary enabled me to spend a week in Dublin this summer at the University College, Dublin Archive (UCDA). My visit focused on exploring the papers of John Marcus O’Sullivan (LA60), the Chair of Modern History at UCD (1910-1948), who served as Minister for Education (1926-1932) on the W.T. Cosgrave-led Cumann na nGaedheal Executive Council that governed the Free State from 1922-1932.

My PhD is principally concerned to explore how the colonial dynamics of the Anglo-Irish relationship helped to shape an emerging Treatyite politics against the backdrop of the Civil War. Such, it is hoped, might go some way towards contributing to the ongoing attempt to ‘re-intellectualise’ the history of the Irish revolution and its aftermath by highlighting the role of ideas and political languages in shaping the development of the Free State.

Clearly, the papers of an academic historian/philosopher, such as O’Sullivan, is essential viewing for any student seeking to better understand the range of intellectual forces that shaped the politics of the Cosgrave administration and I derived a great deal of useful material from my study of these documents/sources.

One of the most striking features of O’Sullivan’s papers is the central significance he ascribes to the role of ideas in assessing politico-historical causation; this is particularly noteworthy in light of the commonplace depiction of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government as being somehow non-ideological or only interested in power and not concerned, therefore, to articulate sets of principles and beliefs to justify political action.

Reflecting on the significance of ideology in the American and French revolutions in an article published in The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (LA60/17), for instance, O’Sullivan wrote that historians make a ‘great error to deny the considerable driving force that such abstract dogmas and ideals may possess’, noting that ‘they have more than once proved themselves powerful political agents, and in combination with economic causes have displayed a truly volcanic energy.’

He judged the revolutions in America and France to be ‘the first great step…in the practical formation of democratic and republican ideas’ and scorned the ‘cynics’ who conceive of political ideologies as ‘nothing but the promptings of selfishness.’ For although O’Sullivan was firm in asserting that ‘abstract logic cannot supply the place of statesmanship’ in the operation of everyday political life (such would emerge as a trope in Treatyite discourse), he maintained that ‘for the bulk of the [revolutionary] rank and file, and even for the prime movers’, political principles (‘noble ideas’) are ‘the goal to be reached’ and ‘become occasions for self-sacrificing endeavour.’ ‘Ideas’, he concluded, are ‘explosive forces…for good or for ill’ and must, therefore, be treated seriously by historians.

O’Sullivan’s historiographical outlook was, of course, heavily shaped by his background in philosophy; he won a Royal University Studentship in Philosophy and in 1904 went to Bonn and later Heidelberg, where he was awarded the degree Doctor of Philosophy with distinction in 1908 for his thesis Vergleich de Methoden Kants und Hegels auf Grund ihrer Behandlung de Kategorischen Quantität.

However, the central role afforded to theory and ideas throughout his papers – from eugenics and Social Darwinism, to neo-Thomism and corporatism – demonstrates that, beneath a veneer of stagnation, ideas continued to be central to Irish life in the 1920s, including at the highest level of government.

Such perspectives are unlikely to accord with contemporary social mores; however, it is imperative that they are treated seriously by any scholar seeking to understand the austere social and economic conservativism that characterised the Cosgrave Government. ‘We stand in unbroken unity with the past’, O’Sullivan declared, echoing Edmund Burke’s conception of the social contract as an inter-generational bond; ‘But we are also connected – again organically – with the future. We have duties to those that come after. In a sense, our forebearers and ourselves form one body.’

I wish to extend my thanks to the archivists at UCDA and the BAIS for affording me the opportunity to engage intimately with such fascinating texts.