The only time i’ve been to Israel / Palestine was in 2013 to attend a conference on the Israeli wall building program. I was invited as someone who studied walls elsewhere - peace walls in Belfast - and my institute at UCD funded my attendance. It was a life altering experience. The conference was organized by colleagues at Bethlehem University and a Dutch NGO in the West Bank at a time when the walls were dividing Palestinians from their land and harassing those standing in their way. We knew the Israelis authorities would not allow our attendance.

There is something very triggering about NI twitter for the last few days, with the open accusations of ‘nationalists’ (Catholics) ‘infiltrating’ respectable professions and daring not to hide who they are. It all feels a bit 1950s. Many of us have long family histories of being sidelined, marginalized and aware that we were not considered respectable enough to stand alongside counterparts from the ‘other’ community simply because of our religion. Always a suspect community, allowed to rise only so high.

As Sunday morning culture wars from the Tory press moves from colonial legacies and Churchill to (checks notes) the Troubles, yet another reminder that many historians don’t know how archives work and seem to think there are magic secret stores of smoking gun files awaiting them. 1. Govt archives retain 5-10% of files they are offered to review (and with the move to retention schedules i’m unsure how much oversight archivists even have over that selection). 2. Files that aren’t retained are destroyed. They aren’t kept just incase.

A new front in the Tory culture wars?

Any historian who’d be involved in writing an official, Tory-sponsored history of the NI conflict would just be handing back any residual credibility and integrity as they receive their cheque.

https://twitter.com/swgannon/status/1459794447810678788

Writing a history of the Troubles is such a loaded and difficult task. It would not only involve creating some kind of chronology but also assigning cause and impact. It would need to take into account oral evidence as well as question a skewed, colonial archive.

Not going to directly reference the latest commemoration controversy but rather the underlying issues that are frequently sidelined in these cyclical discussions.

Firstly, commemoration is always a political act. What event, who organizes, attends, how it’s framed. Political. Second, to mark an event worthy of commemoration it must have some contemporary relevance.

Commemoration is never just about remembering what happened in the past; it always interplays with the politics of the present.

Still processing the powerful presentation and panel discussion with Jason de León - whose work on migrant deaths at the US-México border is just wow. Thinking about how we know what we know about the past (and present) and the role of research in presenting official absences. De León’s work provides tangible evidence of the known consequences of border policies that push migrants into taking ever more dangerous routes to cross the desert: deaths. His exhibition #HostileTerrain94 involves putting names and death details to every recorded death.

Subtweet: the scholarly study of the past is not the same thing as the public memory of the past. Choosing to commemorate the past is always about selection and it is always political. Nothing is neutral (especially when it is claimed it is). Subtweet 2: you can care about what commemoration, memorialisation, the past, heritage and museums means - and how they are used - and also care about contemporary healthcare, political structures, homelessness and any other social issue. It doesn’t have to be one or other.

I find this fascinating - in the long line of commemoration masquerading as neutral, apolitical and ‘reconciliation’ this may be the most bizarre. A cross-denominational church service in Armagh (whose cathedral?) with the British Queen in attendance. rte.ie/news/ireland/2… The service is to ‘mark the centenaries of the partition of Ireland and the formation of Northern Ireland’, even the strangled wording is so tortured. Wouldn’t it be much easier to accept that commemorating partition is not a neutral act?

Northern Ireland is a complicated place with a difficult history that has been caught in cycles of violence for what feels like forever. The reasons for it are never one-dimensional and they’re never just about external factors or high level politics. Throughout my life it’s always followed a pattern: tensions rising, politicians trying to stoke those tensions to maintain their power, sparking point and a release in the form of disruption on the streets. Finally, belated and often cackhanded condemnations by said pol.

Sometimes I wonder how many historians have really clear understandings of how archives work. How much the papers and ledgers (microfiche and scans) they access are shaped, wedded and refined by the institutions that created them, used them and finally archives them? Most historians know archives are not neutral repositories of the past. They know about the huge scandals - of colonial archives burnt and hidden by the British - but do they know how much the humdrum holdings of archives are also hugely selected? theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/n…

Where do you even start with such a disingenuous article? Its twisting logic, half truths and factual inaccuracies?

All Europe has a racism problem. Colonialism was lead by some countries, more benefited and its logics have permeated the continent spectator.co.uk/article/tony-s… Many imperial countries are the most multicultural- and for the longest period - for obvious reasons of having long-term ‘connections’ across the Globe but also due to push-pull factors. The UK retained colonies and ‘invited’ many subjects to rebuild the country esp post-war.

The media reporting on the removal of orientalising and sexualising 19thC decorative arts outside an international 5 * hotel in Dublin has been disappointing. There have been many opinions on this issue on twitter and the nuances of many of those discussions are being lost. The daily deluge of articles claiming emerging ‘expertise’ and ‘trench warfare’ on twitter misrepresents some of the interesting, measured and at times heartfelt opinions being shared as one note and polarizing. They have not always been. irishtimes.com/culture/herita…

It is quite dispiriting how soon after #BLM protests started the resurgence of #Irishslave #scottishslave and #wewereallslaves memes and bullshit ‘articles’ started circulating. I seem to be spending a lot of my time posting rebuttals to ppl / pages that should know better. Some basic facts for those who want to fight the good fight. Yes a large number of Irish and Scottish were forcibly sent to the Caribbean by Cromwell but that’s a tiny % of those who went in total. This included many Europeans (even the English) and was often voluntary.

Important article for Irish people to read, digest and sit with. As we know, Ireland has a complicated history. We like to talk about ‘800 years of oppression’ not so much the reality of being colonized but also benefiting from colonization irishtimes.com/news/ireland/i… Let’s deal with a few of the most typical ‘whataboutery’ comments that always appear BTL with such articles. Those Irish people who directly benefited from slavery were not just the ‘Protestant upper classes’. The Catholic landed and middle classes were slave owners too.

Why is it so difficult for some Irish people to use the term indentured servitude when talking about INDENTURED SERVITUDE? There are very clear differences between it and chattel slavery in tenure and status without mentioning the racialized nature of slavery. Don’t do this.

https://twitter.com/eimearmcsiacais/status/1269724811837812736

Using the correct term - indentured servitude - doesn’t lessen what was an horrendous experience for many but it does recognise the basic legal differences of being recognized as a human being (IS) bonded for a term of service -v- being assigned as property (CS) perpetually.

The #archaeobalt project webinar is now live on our YouTube channel. We will be live until 2:30pm CET. Join in whenever you would like to hear more about our #archaeology #excavations in the South Baltic areas The first presentation is by our PI Karolina from Gdańsk University - she is introducing the key concepts behind this EU Development Fund project. Starting with the idea of archaeotourism and the creation of a sustainable tourism route in the South Baltic.