Name: Eamon de Valera
Party: Fianna Fáil
Terms of Office: December ‘37-February ‘48, May ’51-May ’54, March ’57-June ‘59
Ah. The big one. Right so.
Great Man History, or the historical method of viewing past events as some great epic story whose course is controlled by a handful of heroes and villains, is largely bunk. World War 2 was not a personal duel between Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Tojo and Stalin but the result of a billion different political, military and economic factors all crashing into each other. Real history is incredibly complicated, massively messy and almost entirely too big for any human being to comfortably conceive. And yet, the thirties, forties and fifties of Irish history really feel as if they belonged solely to one man: Eamon de Valera. In Ireland Dev personifies that whole era of our history in the same way that Andrew Jackson did his in the States, and like Jackson the appraisal of his legacy is incredibly controversial and getting more negative with every passing year. I quite purposefully put de Valera right smack dab in the middle of the rankings. For me, Dev is like a ninja assassin. I disagree morally with what he did, but I have to admit he was, very, very good at it.
Ironically, despite being the towering figure of Irish history for much of the twentieth century, Dev wasn’t born here. He was born in New York in the 1880s to an Irish émigré named Catherine Coll and her husband, the Spaniard Juan DeValara. Maybe. The historical record on this is actually super sketchy and no marriage certificate for Dev’s parents has ever come to light. In fact, no evidence has ever come to light that Juan de Valera even existed, leaving questions of his parentage and legitimacy that would dog de Valera all his life.
Lost Targaryen Prince. Calling it now.
Anyway, after Juan’s death (uh-huh), the now widowed (riiiiiiiight) Catherine sent the infant Eamon to Ireland to be raised by his grandparents. He grew up an excellent student and devout Catholic, even considering joining the priesthood before deciding against it because of the issue of his possible bastardy. He became active in the Irish independence movement and joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret society that had controlled or influenced virtually every Irish freedom organisation both political and military since the 1850’s. He was a commander during the Easter Rising of 1916 and just barely escaped being executed by the British because of American diplomatic pressure. As quite literally the last man standing of the rising’s leaders, de Valera was elected president of Sinn Féin, a political party formed to win total independence from Great Britain (as opposed to the wishy-washy “Home Rule” that the Irish Parliamentary Party had been trying and failing to get for decades). Sinn Féin had been founded by a man named Arthur Griffith who was an absolutely brilliant thinker (also a bit of an anti-Semite, but you can’t have everything). Griffith’s ground-breaking notion was this: instead of trying to win Irish independence within the British power structure, simply set up an Irish government with its own departments, police force, postal service, bureaucracy and ignore the British government until it goes away. Absolutely revolutionary. Might even have worked. As it turned out, Sinn Féin under de Valera did succeed in creating an entire alternate government capable of providing services that equalled (and in some cases even proved superior to) the British institutions they were competing against. This is especially incredibly when you consider that we’re talking about an illegal organisation running a government while being on the run from the government. But Griffith’s vision was for non-violent resistance to British rule and that did not happen. Because while Sinn Féin under de Valera was wresting political control from the British, the Irish Republican Army under Michael Collins was showing them this new thing he’d invented called “modern urban guerrilla combat” and why that was going to be something of a game changer for the rest of the twentieth century.
During this time de Valera toured America to raise publicity for the Irish cause and to try and get Woodrow Wilson to acknowledge the Irish Republic. He didn’t get recognition, but he did win significant support and donations for the Irish cause. He also visited the Chippewa reservation and spoke of the shared history of oppression and colonialism of Native Americans and the Irish people. He was then made an honorary chief of the tribe, and I get to use this picture.
This is a good day.
Back home, the war raged on until finally the British sued for peace. de Valera then made one of the most controversial and debated decisions of his entire career (which is saying a whole heap). With peace negotiations scheduled in London, the expectation was that Dev would lead the Irish delegation himself. Instead, he decided to sit this one out and sent Michael Collins in his place. Now, the deal that the Irish delegation ended up getting was, in retrospect, pretty darn good. Ireland would get dominion status, essentially the same relationship to Britain as Canada and Australia. Ireland would have its own flag, and its own freely elected government.
unshavedmouse 