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Introduction The history of Irish physical-force republicanism—the desire for complete separation from Great Britain and the willingness to use violence to achieve it—is as old as the late eighteenth century, when the United Irishmen rebelled against British imperialism. Led mostly by middle-class Protestants, but supported by Catholic groups like the Defenders, the rebellion began in 1798 in what is now Northern Ireland, and eventually spread to the southeast and the far west.The United Irishmen failed due to a lack of coordination, and their cause was further hindered by the rebellion in Wexford descending into sectarianism.The republican tradition of the United Irishmen continued throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries , as Irish republicans took up arms against Great Britain in 1848, 1867, 1916, and 1919. The 1919 rebellion led to the creation of the semi-autonomous Irish Free State, but in 1921 Great Britain partitioned six mostly Protestant counties in Ulster, thus creating Northern Ireland.The new state remained part of the United Kingdom, and its leaders denied the Catholic population in Northern Ireland certain rights and privileges. Since the 1960s, this form of republicanism, associated with militant organizations such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army and its various splinter groups, which are made up almost solely of Catholics, persists in its aspiration to drive the British out of Northern Ireland. The violence perpetuated by all sides (republicans, Orange Loyalists, and British officials) during the Troubles has been devastating, as the weaponry has become more sophisticated and the violence more random. Most Americans, even those unfamiliar with Irish history and politics, are aware of the recent history of the terroristic bombings by the IRA. Americans, however, are less familiar with the role that Irish Americans have played in supporting the IRA with money and weapons. Although the Good Introduction xii Friday Agreement of 1998 brought a plan for peace to Northern Ireland, violence continues to plague Northern Ireland, especially during marching season in the summer when loyalists, to demonstrate their supposed superiority, march through Catholic neighborhoods. Physical-force republicanism has wrought terrible destruction , indeed; but Irish republicanism has been a response to British colonial oppression.To better understand its origins, we need to better understand its history . One such antecedent was the Irish Republican Brotherhood, also known as the Fenians. In July of 1848, a group of middle-class intellectuals started a revolution to overthrow British rule in Ireland. As famine devastated the country, a number of well-educated, prosperous gentlemen, who had earlier formed the cultural nationalist organization known as Young Ireland in order to support Daniel O’Connell’s peaceful call for repeal of the Act of Union, had come to the conclusion that physical force was necessary to save Ireland. O’Connell, known as “The Liberator ” for his role in winning Catholic Emancipation in 1829, had opposed the Act of Union, which made Ireland part of the United Kingdom. Young Irelanders, however, became disenchanted with O’Connell’s passive form of constitutional nationalism and his assertion that Ireland should abide by the British constitution while opposing English colonization. After O’Connell’s death in 1847, and as the Famine grew worse, many Young Irelanders came to agree with John Mitchel that revolution was the only solution to Ireland’s woes. Led by the landed Protestant William Smith O’Brien, the group made an infamous stand at Widow McCormick’s farmhouse in Ballingarry, County Tipperary. The revolution was a dismal failure, and most of its leaders were soon arrested. Two of the men who took part that day, James Stephens and John O’Mahony, escaped arrest and made their way to Paris. While in Paris, the two expatriate rebels conspired to create a more popular and formidable organization, and in 1858, Stephens and O’Mahony, who had subsequently made his way to America, respectively created the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Ireland and the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States. The Fenians, as members of this transatlantic society came to be known, were radical republicans who called for Irish independence from British imperialism as a means to resolve the island’s political and social afflictions. Imbued with violent rhetoric that emanated from survivors of the Great Famine, Fenians insisted that physical force was the only way to eradicate British tyranny and oppression. The organization grew stronger, particularly in the United States after the Civil War, as thousands of Irish Americans believed that their martial skills could be effectively utilized to establish an independent Irish nation...

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