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E rnest Blythe’s pro-Treaty speech to the Second Dáil pledged his allegiance to a Gaelic state, while noting the difficulties involved in such a creation: “I stand for a Gaelic State. I realise the difficulties that are before us in arriving at a Gaelic state. I know how far Anglicisation has gone in this country. I know the close relationship there must be between this country and England in any circumstances on account of Trade and Commercial interests.”1 Many Irish revolutionaries invoked this desire to create a Gaelic state in the wake of the dismantling of the British colonial apparatus, and they saw this creation as central to the success of the revolutionary project. Patrick Pearse’s call for an Ireland that was “not free merely, but Gaelic as well; not Gaelic merely, but free as well” was taken as a serious charge by most Sinn Féiners. In the various historiographical debates about the ideology of the revolution, most historians have agreed that Gaelicism was a critical component. Michael Laffan concluded, for example, that “insofar as Sinn Féin had an ideology and wished to transform Ireland and the Irish people, its ideology was linguistic nationalism.”2 Michael Hopkinson similarly identified a “resistance to British cultural influences,” and John Regan listed “gaelic state, national unity, self-determination and arguably conscription,” as the “ideological politics of the revolutionary period.”3 The problem, for historians and for Cumann na nGaedheal, came in defining what precisely was meant by the “Gaelic state.” Historians have generally left such claims unremarked upon, and the “Gaelic” elements beyond the language that were to make up the new state have been underanalyzed. Charles Townshend and Philip O’Leary are exceptions to this. Townshend 105 3 The Promotion of Irishness wrote that “the recovery of the Irish language would enable the nation to find authentic ways of remodelling every aspect of life—from law through economy to architecture,” although he does not really follow up on this insight in a short introductory essay.4 O’Leary’s Gaelic Prose in the Irish Free State discusses debates in the 1920s and 1930s about whether “Gaelicness” (Gaelach) meant something beyond a facility with the language and concluded that most writers at the time believed it to be something more than that, often pointing to other cultural practices or perceived Gaelic modes of thought.5 Speaking on financial estimates for the department of education, Eoin MacNeill said, Deputy McGoldrick suggested that the reason for causing Irish to be taught in all the schools was to lead up to the Gaelic State. I am sorry Deputy Figgis is not in his place. He is the only person that I know in this assembly who knows what the “Gaelic State” means. For my part, I have not the slightest idea of what is meant by the “Gaelic State.” If it means a political state of affairs that existed in Ireland a thousand or two thousand years ago, well, I will not follow either Deputy Figgis or Deputy McGoldrick in proposing to set it up again, not because such a state of things had not many admirable points and many virtues in its own time, but simply because a thousand or two thousand years have passed.6 Despite this skepticism expressed by one of Ireland’s foremost medieval historians and Irish language enthusiasts, it is often taken for granted by historians that “Gaelic” meant something tangible, but the notion is too often conflated with the language question, when in fact most revolutionaries’ definition was significantly more expansive. There were some who identified Gaelic with pre-British and others who identified it simply with notBritish , basically defining “Irish” or “Gaelic” as a recognition of the different conditions that existed in Ireland as compared with Britain. Viewed in such terms, Cumann na nGaedheal’s program to create a Gaelic state was much broader than is usually credited. Efforts to revive the language were definitely central to this program and were seen as crucial to other aspects of it. But in addition to resuscitating the language, Cumann na nGaedheal also tried to create a specifically Irish economy and an Irish politics. Here, the point of reference was not so much the preconquest period—no one seriously considered using cattle as currency or reinstituting the high kingship—but instead the postcolonial situation. The goal was to create an economic and 106 The Promotion of Irishness political system that recognized Irish difference from England...

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