Hope Against History: The Course of Conflict in Northern Ireland - Hardcover

So said a Belfast graffito of the late 1970s--a hauntingly accurate comment on the political violence that has raged in Northern Ireland for generations. The causes of that violence are complex, and all but impenetrable to outsiders: it has something to do with religion, something to do with economics, something to do with politics, and very much to do with memory and history, along with the local penchant for remembering wrongs and rights for years and years after the actual events.

New York-based journalist and historian Jack Holland, whose ancestors are Northern Irish, Catholic and Protestant both, does much to clarify the confusion with Hope Against History. He writes of the Troubles over the last 30-odd years, a time when militant forces favoring continued union with Great Britain battled those seeking union with the Republic, a battle that quickly degenerated into terrorist warfare that killed far more innocents than combatants. It took too long, and too many lives, before both sides began to see the wisdom of abandoning this senseless sectarian violence for a political solution; the slow evolution of that view takes up much of Holland's detailed narrative. Holland gladly gives credit to opposing political leaders such as Gerry Adams and Gary McMichael for recognizing that each side had a role in determining Northern Ireland's future. He also credits the Clinton administration for its efforts in the peace process--efforts, he suggests, that arose from Clinton's wanting to garner support among conservative American Catholics, but that soon transcended narrow political interest.

As Holland notes, the details of that solution are far from being settled. Still, he suggests, there is plenty of reason to hope that the Northern Irish people, of whatever heritage, will soon find a way out of violence and get on with the work of living together. --Gregory McNamee