Mutual Interest: A Study of Cultural Cross-Border Cooperation in Ireland, 1938-1968

This dissertation studies the extent and implications of cultural cross-border cooperation between Ireland and Northern Ireland during the period 1938-1968. While official cooperation between the North and South was limited, many people interested in pursuing common cultural interests formed and maintained cross-border working relationships and friendships throughout the half century after partition. I examine four case studies of intellectual and artistic cross-border cooperation in order to re-trace some of these all-island interconnections: the academic journal Irish Historical Studies; the literary networks of Sean O Faolain and John Boyd; amateur dramatics and the All-Ireland Drama Festival; and the Yeats International Summer School. The significance of this contact in Ireland was two-fold. First, in order to erode Northern fears about economic or political cross-border cooperation, the South needed to secularize in both thought and attitude. Due to the Republic's strong ties to the Catholic Church and its irredentist attitude toward Ulster, many Northerners preferred to keep the South at arms length, even at the detriment of their own interests. By forging a community of intellectuals committed to modernization and internationalism, cultural cross-border contact encouraged liberalism and eventually eroded Northern fears about cross-border cooperation on a broader scale. Second, through their focus on internationalism, it is this outward looking group of intellectuals that set the groundwork for inter-state cooperation in the late twentieth century. The Peace Process in Northern Ireland, and eventually the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement that arose from it, was based upon consociational, or power-sharing, ideas; consensus among Britain, Ireland, and Northern Ireland officials became crucial to the success of a sustainable peace. In this regard, official political actors often took their cues from community groups and grass-roots organizations that had utilized cross-border cooperation for years prior.