While contemporaries regularly looked to the similarities of the Irish and Finnish experiences, even as informed a student of European politics as Gladstone needed tutoring on the topic. In undertaking his preparatory research on home rule in 1885–6, Gladstone had worked hard on a range of continental European and imperial analogies, emphasising (somewhat prematurely, as it happened) the perceived success of the united kingdoms of Sweden and Norway and of the constitutional arrangement of 1867 which had delivered the Austro–Hungarian empire. He looked with similar care at the Canadian and United States constitutions. All of these exemplars served to illustrate, for Gladstone, the dividends which flowed from combining self-government within different forms of union settlement. But – as an earnest young Helsingfors (Helsinki) student, Alexander Grönberg, pointed out in April 1886 – Gladstone, in searching for global paradigms for Irish legislative independence, had made a striking error of omission: the Grand Old Man had apparently forgotten Finland.Footnote ¹

Grönberg argued that, whatever might be said about Sweden–Norway or Austria–Hungary, Finland, as a largely autonomous grand duchy within the Russian empire since 1809, constituted ‘a more striking instance of a well-directed self-government’ than those publicly highlighted by Gladstone. Grönberg’s rather flattering portrayal of the Finnish condition emphasised the 700 years of foreign domination (by Sweden), now replaced by a constitution wherein Finns enjoyed their own parliamentary government, with their own established church, two official languages, their own finances and their own legislation more generally, and supposedly minimal Russian intervention. In this assessment, Finns were broadly content with the Russian connection, and would only rebel if their considerable autonomy within the broader imperial connection were threatened in any way.

It would seem that Gladstone was originally unimpressed by the Finnish analogy and exemplar; and on the whole Irish historians – certainly until lately – have been of the same mind. The reasons for this relative neglect are worth identifying, not least because the connections between the Irish and Finnish experiences, particularly in the nineteenth century, were apparently so clear. There were certainly some practical challenges: Ireland and Finland were at opposite ends of Europe, and travel between the two was for long more than usually challenging. There were also linguistic barriers, in so far as Finnish and Russian lay beyond most educational curricula across Ireland. Russia was also, of course, the great ‘Other’ for many European liberals, and analogies which underlined the sunny experience of the Russian empire or the perceived beneficence of tsarist rule were not likely to gain immediate traction in such quarters.

More widely, however, the comparisons and connections between Ireland and Finland have been neglected because Irish historians have – for all sorts of professional reasons – sometimes been leery of embarking upon work which involves substantial international comparison. Yet it is possible for the profession to be too self-deprecating in this respect: assessments of Irish historiographical insularity need to be more carefully calibrated than has been commonly the case before now. Medieval Irish historians have for long routinely engaged with much wider worlds than the insular; so too have early modernists, where there has been a range of distinguished work placing Ireland in a range of Atlantic and continental European contexts (recent examples include the work of Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin).Footnote ²

Late modernists, often dominant in numbers in schools and universities, have not always been so far-sighted – yet even here some analytical calibration is required. It is often complained that the literature is overwhelmed by an insular historiography which connects Ireland to Britain, but in fact this is only partly true: it would be more accurate to say that the literature is dominated by a metropolitan historiography which connects Ireland to bits of Britain, and in particular London. There is still all too little on (for example) the relationship between Ireland and Wales, though the work and legacy of the excellent A.H.R.C. Ireland–Wales research network have greatly helped matters.Footnote ³ On the other hand, even some overviews of modern Ireland have successfully and substantially evoked an array of international comparators: there are also weighty literatures on diplomatic history, and connecting Ireland and north America, and Ireland and empire.Footnote ⁴ There are several excellent edited collections linking Ireland with continental Europe in a variety of resonant ways.Footnote ⁵ Moreover, some at least of the vast amount of historical work on Northern Ireland has offered deeply researched continental European and wider analogies (as in the case of Frank Wright, Adrian Guelke and latterly Tim Wilson and Richard English).Footnote ⁶

In addition, the recent engagement by Irish historians with the wider transnational historiographical boom across the discipline is much to be welcomed; but transnational history, properly defined, is quite different from comparative work which perhaps accepts more readily the reality of contemporary state and other institutional structures, but which shares with transnational history the goal of ultimately transcending these structures. Comparative historians of this kind remain open to the criticism that they are too respectful of the confines of the nation state, real or imagined – or even (in the more bracing indictments) that they may become effectively complicit within the goals and workings of the nation state; but transnational historians are also susceptible to the criticisms that they may be more ‘national’ than ‘transnational’ – and that they, too, may be in harness – though to wider globalising and supranational forces and funders. There is, in fact, an ongoing need for comparative scholarship which addresses those remaining areas of insularity within Irish historiography, and which deals – in a suitably interrogative manner – with the reality of the late modern nation state, while simultaneously seeking to transcend its boundaries, and remaining open to transnational themes.

This edition of Irish Historical Studies constitutes a remarkable advance in the historiography of Ireland’s links with Finland; but it is also a significant document in a wider comparative historiography which seeks to illuminate both the national and supranational through painstaking original research. Gladstone, in considering Ireland, may originally have neglected Finland; but henceforth Irish historians are unlikely to do so.