The riots that followed the introduction in 1793 of a system of raising the newly refounded Irish militia regiments by ballot have attracted the attention of several historians. In more recent years the political importance of the episode has been emphasised, and the riots have been represented as marking a crucial stage in the breakdown of social and political relations within Ireland in the 1790s that eventually resulted in rebellion.

This was not the view of Sir Henry McAnally, author of the only complete history of the militia itself, which was written in the 1930s and published in 1949. As befitted the work of a retired civil servant, McAnally’s history was very careful and restrained in its account and analysis of the Militia Act of 1793 and the introduction of the ballot. He did not devote much attention to the operation of the act, regarding the ensuing riots as peripheral to his main focus of interest. Indeed, in comparison to the widespread and serious rioting that accompanied the establishment of the English Militia in 1757, the Irish disturbances appeared to McAnally to be a transient phenomenon, of limited significance. They did not leave ‘in the popular soul any such bitter memories as remained after other episodes in Irish history’. ‘May 1793 is not one of the black months in that story,’ he wrote; ‘it is not the first chapter of 1798.’

Although Gaelic sports have been played in an organised fashion for over a century in the United States, academic research on the development and role of these sports among the Irish diaspora has been extremely limited. This is hardly surprising, given the more general disregard of the significance of sport in the burgeoning literature examining the Irish experience in America. In its most general aspect, this study seeks to redress this neglect. Drawing predominantly on archival material from the John J. Burns Library at Boston College and from Boston Public Library, the article charts and explores the processes involved in the transfer of Gaelic sports from Ireland to one of the most significant focal points of Irish immigration, Boston. This analysis not only identifies and examines the key agencies and individuals responsible for the early development of Irish sports in Boston, but also seeks to explore the role they played in the promotion and preservation of a distinctively Irish ethnic identity. In particular, the article assesses the extent to which Gaelic games have functioned as an arena in which Irish nationalism was fostered in the greater Boston area during the 1880s. Before turning to these central concerns, it is important to understand the social milieu in which these games developed. Thus the article begins with a brief context-setting discussion that charts Irish emigration to Boston and offers some insights into the socio-economic and political environment encountered by the Irish on completion of their journey.

There is now an extensive literature on agrarian protest and unrest in Ireland from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, ranging from studies of secret societies to large-scale organisations such as the Land League. There has not, however, been any detailed published account of the dynamics and character of a most extensive and significant Irish agitation, the United Irish League, which was launched in January 1898. A study of this body is important, not only in its own terms, but for the light it throws on the nature of Irish agrarian agitation generally, especially as there exist more extant records than for earlier examples. By early 1900 this organisation had spread across most of Ireland, and it was to have major implications for the future course of Irish nationalism. Its methods were partly a consequence of a cumulative experience from the past, focused particularly on its immediate predecessors, the Land League of 1879–82, the subsequent Irish National League, and the Plan of Campaign in the latter half of the 1880s. Its political and agrarian purposes were to an unusual degree clearly articulated, thereby enabling a more precise analysis of the way in which particular methods of protest were related to objectives.

The Irish question in the form of home rule reasserted itself in British politics during the years 1910-18, first as the central issue in British political debate, then as a secondary, though still significant, concern for Britain during the First World War. One of Britain’s national institutions, Punch, a weekly magazine of political commentary and satire with a circulation of 100,000, reflected the significance of the Irish question by devoting a great deal of attention during these years to the leaders of the two opposing forces in Irish politics, the Irish nationalist leader John Redmond and the Irish unionist leader Sir Edward Carson. Redmond and Carson became regular members of Punch’s leading cast of characters in its political cartoons in the 1910s, a group which included the Liberal premier H. H. Asquith, his leading ministers David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, and the opposition leader Andrew Bonar Law.

During the 1920s the Communist International, or Comintern, attached exceptional importance to Ireland for the potential of its anti-imperialist forces to foment revolution at home, enlist the Irish diaspora, and encourage unrest in Britain and the Empire. In this way the Comintern might strengthen its relatively feeble bridgehead in the anglophone world and embarrass Britain, the keystone of Russia’s enemies. However, the Comintern encountered repeated frustration in attempting to direct its Irish sections until 1929 when it approved an initiative to create a Bolshevised party. At national level, Bolshevisation meant the application of the Leninist principles of unity, discipline and democratic centralism. Crucially, Bolsheviks understood their national sections to belong to a world party directed by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (E.C.C.I.) in Moscow. In the global context, it also meant the subordination of the Comintern to the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (V.K.P./b.), as the Soviet party was called, and the interests of the Soviet Union. Both levels of Bolshevisation went hand in hand in Ireland, where a new party was built from scratch between 1929 and 1933.