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LIBERTY AND NATIONALISM IN IRELAND, 1798–1922

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2008

EUGENIO F. BIAGINI
EUGENIO F. BIAGINI
Affiliation:
SIDNEY SUSSEX COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
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Type
Review Article
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The Historical Journal , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , September 2008 , pp. 793 - 809
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Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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References

1 L. Namier, 1848: the revolution of the intellectuals (London, 1944).

2 E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge, 1990).

3 T. Blanning, The culture of power and the power of culture (Oxford, 2002), pp. 15–25, and idem, The pursuit of glory: Europe, 1648–1815 (London, 2007), pp. 305–18; A. M. Banti, L'onore della nazione: identitá sessuali e violenza nel nazionalismo europeo dal XVIII secolo alla Grande Guerra (Turin, 2005); Martin Thom, ‘Rape for the state’, Times Literary Supplement, 9 Feb. 2007, p. 11.

4 A. M. Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento: parentela, santitá e onore alle origini dell'Italia unita (Turin, 2000); A. M. Banti and P. Ginsborg, ‘Per una nuova storia del Risorgimento’, editors' introduction, Storia d'Italia, Il Risorgimento, Annali 22 (Turin, 2006).

5 A. M. Banti, ‘Sacrality and the aesthetics of politics: Mazzini's concept of the nation’, in C. A. Bayly and E. F. Biagini, eds., Giuseppe Mazzini and the globalisation of democratic nationalism, 1830–1920 (Oxford, 2008), p. 62. For the alternative, classical interpretation see D. Mack Smith, Mazzini (New Haven, CT, and London, 1994).

6 Banti, ‘Sacrality’, p. 65. My emphasis. It should be added that there his interpretation is controversial: see N. Urbinati, ‘The legacy of Kant: Giuseppe Mazzini cosmopolitanism of nations’, and M. Isabella, ‘Mazzini's internationalism in context: from the cosmopolitan patriotism of the Carbonari to Mazzini's Europe of nations’, in Bayly and Biagini, eds., Mazzini and the globalisation of democratic nationalism, pp. 11–36 and 37–58, respectively.

7 C. Barr, ‘Giuseppe Mazzini and Irish nationalism, 1845–70’, in Bayly and Biagini, eds., Mazzini and the globalisation of democratic nationalism, pp. 125–44.

8 For Mazzini and Carlyle, see E. F. Biagini, ‘Mazzini and anticlericalism: the English exile’, in Bayly and Biagini, eds., Mazzini and the globalisation of democratic nationalism, pp. 145–66.

9 O. McGee, The IRB: the Irish Republican Brotherhood from the Land League to Sinn Fein (Dublin, 2005), p. 28; R. V. Comerford, The Fenians in context: Irish politics and society, 1848–1882 (Dublin, 1985), p. 212.

10 Barr, ‘Mazzini and Irish nationalism’, pp. 140–1.

11 Richard English, Armed struggle: a history of the IRA (London, 2003).

12 O'Leary, B., ‘Cuttlefish, cholesterol and Saoirse’, Field Day Review, 3 (2007), pp. 187–203Google Scholar.

13 E. Gellner, Nations and nationalism (Oxford, 1983); B. Anderson, Imagined communities: reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism (London, 1987); Hobsbawm, Nations and nationalism; A. D. Smith, The ethnic origins of nations (Oxford, 1986), and idem, National identity (London, 1991); and A. Hastings, The construction of nationhood: ethnicity religion and nationalism (Cambridge, 1997).

14 D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (2nd edn, London, 1991), see for example pp. 148–9, 214–15, 388.

15 M. Elliott, Partners in revolution: the United Irishmen and France (New Haven, CT, and London, 1982), pp. 10, 16, 26–8, 32–3, 47; P. Kelly, ‘Perceptions of Locke in eighteenth-century Ireland’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 89, c, 2 (1989).

16 V. Morley, Irish opinion and the American Revolution, 1760–1783 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 3–14; A. T. Q. Stewart, A deeper silence: the hidden origins of the United Irishmen (London and Boston, MA, 1993); McBride, I., ‘Presbyterians in the penal era’, Bullán, 1 (1994), pp. 73–86Google Scholar; but see K. Herlihy, ed., The politics of Irish Dissent, 1650–1800 (Dublin, 1997), for a different view.

17 W. Doyle, The Oxford history of the French Revolution (Oxford, 1990), pp. 7, 9, 36, 138, 142, 144–7, 410–11; G. Spini, Risorgimento e protestanti (Naples, 1956); see also P. Nord, The Republican moment: struggles for democracy in nineteenth-century France (Cambridge, MA, 1995), pp. 88–110.

18 Cf. Elliott, Partners in revolution, pp. 52, 59–61; eadem, Wolfe Tone: prophet of Irish independence (New Haven, CT, and London, 1989), pp. 118–19; K. Whelan, The tree of liberty: radicalism, Catholicism and the construction of Irish identity, 1760–1830 (Cork, 1996), pp. 101, 109; D. Dickson, ‘Paine in Ireland’, in D. Dickson, D. Keogh, and K. Whelan, eds., The United Irishmen: republicanism, radicalism and rebellion (Dublin, 1993), pp. 135–50.

19 I. McBride, Scripture politics: Ulster Presbyterians and Irish radicalism in the late eighteenth century (Oxford, 1998).

20 N. J. Curtin, The United Irishmen: Protestant politics in Ulster and Dublin, 1791–1798 (Oxford, 1998).

21 Whelan, The tree of liberty, pp. 129–35, and idem, ‘Reinterpreting the 1798 rebellion in County Wexford’, in D. Keogh and N. Furlong, eds., The mighty wave: the 1798 rebellion in Wexford (Blackrock, Dublin, 1996).

22 Although this was not only the age of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but also of the beginning of toleration in parts of Europe, for example in Ducal Prussia and the Hohenzollern Rhineland, as well as for Italian Protestants in their Piedmontese valleys: C. Clark, Iron kingdom: the rise and downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947 (London, 2007), pp. 122–4; A. A. Hugon, Storia dei valdesi, ii (Turin, 1989), pp. 197–204. Notably, the duke of Savoy's ‘liberal’ strategy (adopted in June 1690) was more effectively ‘conservative’ than the one adopted by the English and Irish governments with their Catholics. The Waldensians, who had been so troublesome over the previous century, from the time they received toleration became a pillar of dynastic loyalism in Piedmont.

23 Elliott, Partners in revolution, p. 17.

24 Whelan, The tree of liberty, p. 139. As late as 1868 some Irish Anglicans were still denying that Ireland was a Catholic country: A. Shiels, The Irish Conservative party, 1852–1868: land, politics and religion (Dublin, 2007).

25 Whelan, The tree of liberty, p. 140.

26 C. Barr, Paul Cullen, John Henry Newman and the Catholic University of Ireland, 1845–1865 (Notre Dame, IN, 2003).

27 D. Bowen, The Protestant crusade in Ireland, 1800–1870 (Dublin, 1978), and idem, Paul Cullen and the shaping of modern Irish Catholicism (Dublin, 1983).

28 K. T. Hoppen, Elections, politics and society in Ireland, 1832–1885 (Oxford, 1984); for liberal values permeating the movement before the Famine see idem, ‘Riding a tiger: Daniel O'Connell, reform and popular politics in Ireland, 1800–1847’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 100 (1999), pp. 121–43Google Scholar.

29 Indeed the author has felt it necessary to append to his preface a disclaimer against the suspicion that his book is partisan in inspiration (p. ix).

30 With the land agitation and Cymru Fydd: D. Rowland Hughes, Cymru Fydd (Cardiff, 2006), and E. F. Biagini, British democracy and Irish nationalists, 1876–1906 (Cambridge, 2007); see also the older N. Masteman, The forerunner: the dilemmas of Tom Ellis, 1859–1899 (Swansea, 1972), pp. 71–114, and K. O. Morgan, Wales in British politics, 1868–1922 (Cardiff, 1980).

31 Comerford, Fenians in context; see also J. Newsinger, Fenianism in mid-Victorian Britain (London, 1994); O. Rafferty, The church, the state and the Fenian threat, 1861–1875 (New York, 1999); J. Doughty, The Manchester Outrage: the Fenian tragedy (Oldham, 2001); McGee, The IRB; Mairtin Ó Cathain, Irish Republicanism in Scotland, 1858–1916 (Dublin, 2007); and M. Ramán, A provisional dictator: James Stephens and the Fenian movement (Dublin, 2007).

32 A. J. Reid, editors' introduction to E. F. Biagini and A. J. Reid, eds., Currents of radicalism: popular radicalism, organised labour and party politics in Britain, 1850–1914 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 16–17.

33 R. Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian agitation (London, 1963), pp. 80, 150, 158–60; N. Mansergh, The Irish question, 1840–1921 (Toronto, 1965), p. 81; B. Porter, Critics of Empire (London, 1968), p. 312; D. MacCracken, The Irish pro-Boers, 1877–1902 (Johannesburg, 1989), p. 159; A. Pottinger Saab, Reluctant icon: Gladstone, Bulgaria and the working class, 1856–1878 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 159–60; S. Howe, Ireland and empire: colonial legacies in Irish history and culture (Oxford, 2000), pp. 43–4; idem, ‘Historiography’, in K. Kenny, ed., Ireland and the British Empire (New York, NY, 2004); J. H. Murphy, Nationalism and the monarchy in Ireland during the reign of Queen Victoria (Cork, 2001), pp. 276–89.

34 Among the few exceptions, Comerford, Fenians in context, p. 220; N. Lynch, ‘Defining Irish nationalist anti-imperialism: Thomas Davis and John Mitchel’, Éire-Ireland, 42 (Spring–Summer 2007), pp. 82–107; and Biagini, British democracy and Irish nationalism, chs. 3 and 6.

35 Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian agitation.

36 The alleged exception is represented by Davitt's denunciations of Jewish capitalism in South Africa. As King points out, this went together with his advocacy of the rights of Jewish refugees from the Russian pogroms (some of them settled in Ireland, many more in England). However, there was no inconsistency here – in contrast to what King argues – for the attack on the Uitlander Jews was an attack on exploitative capitalists, not on an ethnic group as such; while Davitt's championing of the refugees was similarly unrelated to their ethnic identity: see pp. 129–30. For similar attitudes among contemporary radicals see Biagini, British democracy and Irish nationalism, pp. 347–8. An important, recently published, work on Irish Jews is C.Ó Gràda's Jewish Ireland in the age of Joyce: a socioeconomic history (Princeton, NJ, 2006).

37 Victoria's Ireland? p. 122.

38 Freeman's Journal, 16 Oct. 1882.

39 D. George Boyce, ‘Max Weber and leadership, Butt, Parnell and Dillon’, and J. Loughlin, ‘Nationality and loyalty: Parnellism, monarchy and the construction of Irish identity, 1880–1885’, both in Ireland in transition, pp. 17–33 and 34–56, respectively.

40 M. Cronin, Country, class or craft? The politicization of the skilled artisan in nineteenth-century Cork (Cork, 1994), and idem, ‘Parnellism and the workers: the experience of Cork and Limerick’, in F. Lane and D. Ó Drisceoil, eds., Politics and the Irish working class, 1830–1945 (London, 2005), pp. 140–53.

41 D. Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish life, 1913–1921: provincial experience of war and revolution (Dublin, 1977).

42 Although Wheatley finds no evidence of sectarian prejudice, except when the religious divide coincided with local class conflicts, as in Sligo town (see pp. 81, 139–41) and, more seriously, after the Belfast riots and the expulsion of Catholic workers from the shipyards at the end of 1912.

43 See for example T. Villis, Reaction and the avant-garde: the revolt against liberal democracy in twentieth-century Britain (London, 2006).

44 P. Hart, The IRA at war, 1916–1923 (Oxford, 2003).

45 T. Garvin, 1922: the birth of Irish democracy (Dublin, 1996); J. M. Regan, The Irish Counter-revolution, 1921–1936 (Dublin, 2001).

46 See the splendid recent biography by F. McGarry, Eoin O'Duffy: a self-made hero (Oxford, 2005).

47 R. English, Radicals and the Republic: socialist republicanism in the Irish Free State, 1925–1937 (Oxford, 1994); idem, Ernie O'Malley, IRA intellectual (Oxford, 1999).

48 Including John Locke, Friedrich List, Lajos Kossuth, and the Boer Republics of South Africa: A. Griffith, The resurrection of Hungary: a parallel for Ireland (Dublin, 1918). Locke is cited on p. 87. The famous parallel with Hungary has been studied by W. O'Reilly and A. Penz in their important Freiheit und Unabhängigkeit als imperative Postulate: Nationale Bewegungen in Irland und Ungern im Verleich (1780–1870) (Graz, 2006), a book which covers the impact of liberalism, and examines both the confessional and land dimensions of the two case studies.

49 E.g. Townshend, C., ‘The meaning of Irish freedom: constitutionalism in the Free State’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 8 (1998), pp. 45–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and White, T. J., ‘Nationalism vs. Liberalism in the Irish context: from a post-colonial past to a post-modern future’, Éire-Ireland, 37: iii and iv (2002), pp. 25–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the 1937 constitution see D. Keogh and A. McCarthy, The making of the Irish Constitution, 1937 (Cork, 2007). De Valera has been reappraised by D. Ferriter, Judging DeV: a reassessment of the life and legacy of Eamon De Valera (Dublin, 2007).

50 Janet Nolan, ‘Unintended consequences: the national schools and Irish women's mobility in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’, in Ireland in transition, pp. 179–92.

51 In particular, A. Gailey, Ireland and the death of kindness: the experience of constructive unionism, 1890–1905 (Cork, 1987), pp. 190, 102.

52 P. Bew, ‘Moderate nationalism and the Irish revolution, 1916–1923’, Historical Journal, 42 (1999), pp. 729–49, and idem, ‘Sinn Féin, agrarian radicalism and the war of independence, 1919–1921’, in D. G. Boyce, ed., The revolution in Ireland, 1879–1923 (London, 1988); and idem, ‘The national question, land and “revisionism”: some reflections’, in D. G. Boyce and A. O'Day, eds., The making of modern Irish history: revisionism and the revisionist controversy (London, 1996).

53 P. Bew, Conflict and conciliation in Ireland, 1890–1910: Parnellites and radical agrarians (Oxford, 1987); Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish life; M. Laffan, The resurrection of Ireland: the Sinn Fein party, 1916–1923 (Cambridge, 1999).

54 Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish life; P. Maume, The long gestation: Irish nationalist life, 1891–1918 (Dublin, 1999).

55 Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish life, pp. 194–209.

56 Even in 1861, 43 per cent of landlords were Roman Catholics, in comparison to 48 per cent belonging to the Church of Ireland (p. 288). The Famine had caused the first, large-scale redistribution of land ownership, which would then be continued under the Land Purchase Acts from 1885.

57 L. W. McBride, The greening of Dublin Castle: the transformation of bureaucratic and judicial personnel in Ireland, 1892–1922 (Washington, DC, 1991), pp. 303 and 312.