The late Tip O'Neill, speaker of the US House of Representatives, claimed "all politics is local", which contains an important grain of truth. If it were entirely true, it would surely follow that all history is local.
Over 30 years ago, when I was contemplating historical research on the last great political crisis of the ancien régime prior to the French revolution, the exiling and remodelling of the French parliaments in 1771, I consulted my father's colleague, Betty Behrens, a historian of early modern Europe.
She was the wife of E.H. Carr, who wrote a dozen volumes on the early Soviet Union. In a telephone call early one morning, she told me with some asperity that my choice of subject was a bad idea, and that I should get down to the communes and study the real problems.
It was an article of faith of the Annales school, heavily influenced by a Marxist outlook, that historical understanding comes from the bottom up, ignoring "superficial" court politics.
Having a fascination with political history, and not fully accepting her premise about its unimportance, I stuck to my original plan. But my appreciation of local history has grown since.
Local history provides communities with a depth of belonging, even where family ties to a particular place may be recent.
Local history is thriving in this country, through the efforts of historical societies and libraries, gifted teachers and writers, journals and county histories, and through interest in the past kept alive by anniversaries and by local newspapers.
Local authorities and the Department of the Taoiseach through the Commemoration Fund play their part in encouraging local initiative.
For a long time, priority was given to recording recollections of the War of Independence, while participants were still alive. Today interest has broadened to include practically every subject, including those that might have been considered unfashionable or too sensitive.
National history may be defined as developments that impact on the country as a whole. National and local history overlap, for example, in 1798, sometimes described as the Wexford rebellion, though there were risings elsewhere.
On Sunday, December 14th, the Taoiseach unveiled a striking statue of Michael Dwyer, a couple of miles from Dwyer's cottage in the Glen of Imaal. The War of Independence was largely made up of a patchwork of local armed engagements.
However, local history is not mainly about national events occurring locally, though it is always interesting to study their differential regional impact.
Indeed, accumulated local studies, as in the case of the French Revolution, can modify the received national picture. But they are more about people, activities and organisations that are local in range, and who provide virtually inexhaustible source material.
I am most familiar with the local historical output relating to Tipperary, which I am sure can be replicated for other counties. Tipperary: History and Society published in 1985, edited by Willie Nolan, was interdisciplinary, a pioneer in a series of county histories.
Three years later the Tipperary Historical Journal edited by Marcus Bourke, parliamentary draftsman, appeared and rapidly found its feet as a first-class outlet for those interested in and researching local history. More recent books referred to below are ones I was asked to launch over the past 15 months.
Des Marnane, a most prolific, balanced and meticulous historian, has just published a history of the barony of Clannwilliam from pre-history to 1660 to complement his Land and Violence in West Tipperary, which focuses particularly on the Land War. It records the early rise of Brian Boru, who won the battle of Solohead in 967, and also how Emly lost out to Cashel in terms of ecclesiastical pre-eminence.
Noreen Higgins, another teacher, published last year a study of the tithe war in Co Tipperary, a short, sharp and effective campaign in the aftermath of Catholic emancipation in the early 1830s, with some accompanying violence.
At a stroke, it greatly reduced the excessive wealth and confidence of the established church, characteristic of Archbishop Agar's day, that had gone into building, in some cases unnecessarily, new churches and glebe houses, and into increased livings.
One of the best documented towns is Fethard, whose medieval walls have survived because it was well off main routes. The Royal Irish Academy has just published its 13th Historic Town Atlas of Fethard by Tadhg O'Keefe. Fethard has two medieval churches, the 13th-century Holy Trinity and the Augustinian Priory, both of which need further help with conservation.
The old Fethard corporation vigorously enforced planning laws, requiring, for example, between 1710 and 1715, a forge to be removed because it was too close to a line of cabins, and a wall to be taken down that was overshadowing another building.
Passing Clonmel, where the restored Main Guard from the Duke of Ormonde's time is a great addition, Carrick-on-Suir has recently seen its history over the past 200 years written by Patrick C. Power.
The Act of Union had a devastating effect on the industry of a fine successful town. Most improvements in housing and social conditions came post-independence. It has yet to benefit fully from recent economic prosperity and badly needs to catch the tide on decentralisation.
A sequel to the two-volume Wexford Gentry by Art Kavanagh and Willie Hayes on the Tipperary Gentry is an unsentimental account of about 20 families, including my own. It does not gloss over the judicial murder of Father Nicholas Sheehy of Clogheen in 1766.
An interesting figure, Gen Sir William Butler, a Catholic, who retired to Bansha Castle after a distinguished colonial career, having quarrelled with his superiors on the tactics which provoked the Boer War, is the subject of an excellent biography by Martin Ryan.
Whether or not all history is local, local history fills out the picture and often gives a much better feel of what living conditions were like for most people in times past.