The Fenians: Irish Rebellion in the North Atlantic World, 1858–1876

Chapter 1. The Foundations of Fenianism

1 The Foundations of Fenianism The 1858 creation of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in Ireland and of the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States did not occur in a vacuum. The historical precedent set by nationalist groups like the United Irishmen in the late eighteenth century and Young Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century set the grounds upon which Fenianism was founded and operated.The modernization of state governmental structures, including the rise of democracy, industrialization, urbanization, and globalization, led to the establishment of various nationalist organizations in the Western world. That Ireland was occupied and governed by the most contemporary of these states ensured that modernization would affect Ireland.That many of its people made their way to the United States, perhaps the second most contemporary nation, would explain the appeal of nationalist organizations to Irish Americans. More importantly, the IRB and the Fenian Brotherhood , founded by James Stephens and John O’Mahony, respectively, were manifestations of real historical grievances, and the two men used perceived injustices to galvanize average Irish men and women. Despite the efforts of Stephens and O’Mahony, the IRB and the Fenian Brotherhood remained virtually inconsequential entities during the first three years of their existence; however, they started to threaten British national security by the beginning of the American Civil War. Stephens and O’Mahony had minimal early success recruiting supporters after they founded their respective organizations in the spring of 1858. In time, however, predominately lower-middle-class Irish nationalists started forming secret IRB cells throughout Ireland and the United States. Irish Americans from impoverished backgrounds who had secured The Foundations of Fenianism 2 a limited degree of financial stability were ideal Fenian recruits. Hoping to join the middle class, they subconsciously cited unjust British rule over Ireland as the reason why they had not readily acquired a higher standard of living. Fighting under the Fenian banner for an independent Irish republic, in their estimation, would help them obtain a better life in their new home. The IRB and the Fenian Brotherhood might never have been established if British government leaders had provided sufficient public relief to Irish victims of the Great Famine. Almost exclusively dependent on one crop for nourishment and income after the seventeenth century, the population of Ireland was reduced by one-fourth after the parasitic microbe Phytopthora infestans ravaged Irish potato fields for four years, beginning in 1845. Potato blights had led to relatively brief food shortages in Ireland on many prior occasions, and Phytopthora infestans had surfaced in the United States and Belgium earlier in the decade. However, in Ireland, four years of abnormally moist weather encouraged the devastating fungus to proliferate. British prime minister Robert Peel, the leader of the paternalistic Conservative Party,authorized government subsidization of public works projects as well as the purchase of American corn meal to supplement soup kitchens funded by the Quakers and other private charities. Yet peasants often had to leave their land in search of food when affluent landowners either ignored—or could not fulfill—their legally mandated responsibility to underwrite road grading, wetland drainage, and other labor-intensive projects near their property during times of economic crisis.1 Many malnourished Irish men and women, moreover, were unfamiliar with corn and did not know how to grind grain products properly. As a result, some of the peasants became ill from consuming raw corn. As potato crops continued to fail, many wealthy farmers heartlessly increased the size of their pastures in order to raise animals at a time when greater staple food production was more imperative. Thousands of penniless cottiers consumed seed potatoes that had been originally earmarked for the next planting season and eventually resorted to eating grass. The ascendancy of the Whig Party in July 1846 would only exacerbate the situation in Ireland, leading many Irish nationalists to espouse that the British had perpetrated genocide to depopulate Ireland. As a proponent of laissez-faire economics, the new prime minister, Lord John Russell, refused to place price controls on Irish commodities. Hibernian farmers thus freely sold locally produced grain and livestock on the open market during the latter stages of the Famine, while thousands of evicted tenants starved to death as they squatted along public carriageways and other makeshift places of refuge. Typhus, cholera, and other illnesses subsequently became nineteenth-century Irish equivalents of the Plague. About one million people ultimately perished, as communicable diseases spread The...