Ireland: Contested Ideas of Nationalism and History

Nationalism: The Case of Ireland—An Introduction

Nationalism The Case of Ireland—An Introduction At the dawn of the twentieth century, in the twilight of the continental empires, Europe’s subject peoples dreamt of forming “nation states,” territorial homelands where Poles, Czechs, Serbs and others might live free, makers of their own fate. When the Hapsburgs and Romanov empires collapsed after the First World War their leaders seized the opportunity. A flurry of new states emerged and the first thing they did was to set about privileging their national “ethnic ” majority—defined by language or religion or antiquity or all three—at the expense of inconvenient local minorities, who were consigned to second-class states.1 In these comments on the emergence of Europe’s “subject peoples” Tony Judt does not mention Ireland. Yet Ireland provides a striking example of the power of nationalism. The British Empire, unlike the Hapsburg, Romanov, and Hohenzollern regimes, did not collapse after  but the British government, during “the Troubles” of – was unable to control the rising tide of Irish nationalism, backed as it was by powerful lobbies among the Irish Diaspora, in the United States and Australia. The Irish situation was no doubt unique in many ways but as an example of the political power of nationalism it provides an illuminating case study for students of the modern world. The vision of a free and territorial homeland provided inspiration for all nationalists during the First World War. Unfortunately, for Irish nationalists , as for Poles, Czechs, Hungarians and Romanians, and other “subject peoples,” their homelands were contested territories. The concept of “nation” itself was contested and it was unclear how membership should be defined. Was it by religion, ethnicity or language or was the 33 nation a civic unit? In the case of Ireland, much of the North-East as well as parts of Munster had been colonized during the Reformation period by Scottish and English settlers, many of whom were committed Protestants. Urban areas such as Dublin and Cork as well as Belfast had substantial and wealthy Protestant minorities. The distinctive character of the North East had been reinforced by the spread of industrialization in the Lagan Valley. When the rest of Ireland was hard hit by the Great Famine of – the North East remained relatively, though not totally, unscathed and bitter memories of the Famine did not fuel resentment here as they did elsewhere in Ireland and among the Catholic Irish Diaspora in the United States. Despite Presbyterian involvement in the rebellion of , and the prominence of such individuals as W. B. Yeats in nationalist circles , Irish nationalism did not take root in the North among Protestant sections of the population. Indeed, as Home Rule became dominant in the South during the s, a British-centered counternationalism developed in the North. By  Ireland seemed on the brink of civil war. The outbreak of war in Europe postponed this crisis but not indefinitely. At Easter  a small group of committed nationalists with the backing of Germany and some Irish-American groups, seized control of the Post Office in central Dublin and in the name of the Irish people, declared an Irish Republic. In doing so, however, they inevitably aroused the bitter antagonism of the Ulster Protestant population, whose relatives were in France on the Western Front, the eve of the Battle of the Somme ( June ). The Rising of  thus polarized opinion between North and South even more bitterly than had been the case hitherto. In the rhetoric of the  Proclamation there was little hint that such divisions existed. The self-proclaimed leaders of the rising, Patrick Pearse and his followers, addressed all Irishmen and Irishwomen in the name of an unproblematic Ireland. In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom. Pearse also referred to an apparently undivided “Irish people,” declaring that In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. 34 Nationalism: The Case of Ireland—An Introduction Pearse went on to proclaim the Irish republic as a sovereign independent state and to pledge “our lives and those of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare and of its exaltation among nations.” In a reference to divisions within...