Remarkable how often defending the rights of democratic "plucky little Belgium" emerges as a reason for enlisting. Irish catholic bishops, broadly in tune with Redmond's stance, would have looked dimly on their continental catholic co-religionists being mauled by the protestant "Hun" and this attitude would have percolated down readily enough to parish level synergising with existent recruitment propaganda. The Schlieffen plan, which was designed to avoid a war on two fronts via the rapid crushing of France, required the German army to cut a path through "neutral" Belgium. The Belgians put up fierce and brave resistance but they were hardly neutral; their borders looking on to Germany had long bristled with forts while on the French side there were none; in addition to which tacit understandings had long being held between Belgian sovereign Albert and the Entente powers. It was a scarcely a democracy either, parliamentary votes were weighted on property criteria and the whole was overseen by a semi-autocratic king, much like the Reichstag was in the hands of the Kaiser. "Truth" they say, is the first casualty in war and the propagandistic war-presses stepped into over-drive
reporting on alleged German atrocities including widespread rape, slicing off women's breasts and chopping off the hands of young Belgian boys. This last charge was ironic given Belgian King Leopold's decimation of the Congo less than a decade earlier reducing the population by over a third & causing directly or indirectly the deaths of some 10 million Congolese tribes-people; an event brought to the world's attention by Irish nationalist and British consul, Roger Casement with the help of WWI pacifist Edmund Morel. The pursuit of rubber in the boom-time era of a burgeoning auto-industry had Leopold's mind warped with avarice, over-seeing a system whereby in order to save the expense of bullets his station captains demanded a severed hand as proof of each discharged round. Whole families were kidnapped while their menfolk scraped rubber from trees; forced slave labour in the name of Christianity which accrued an estimated net profit of £1 billion equiv. for Leopold and the Belgian exchequer. I was astonished to read recently that Lady Gregory in a letter to Yeats on the 1916 executions confessed she had "never heard" of Casement so, if someone as "well-read" as her knew nothing ..
..... about the Congo or its history, what chance an ordinary minimum wage semi-literate tenement dweller enrolling to "bash the Bosch" in the name of Irish freedom at the behest of Redmond asking you to uphold on your bishop's injunction the rights of "poor little catholic Belgium"??
Tales of German atrocities in Belgium were of course exaggerated out of all proportion. The Bryce Report most notably (compiled in 1915) is now regarded as being "contaminated" by war-time hysteria; witness statements were all taken from Belgian refugees based in England and reported anonymously, none from occupied Belgium itself. Darrow, a US lawyer, became so exasperated with the apparent disconnect between truth and fiction, he offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who could find victims of German mutilations; no-one ever came forward. Cartoons from the period repeated ad infinitum in the British and Irish press often showed slavering "Huns" bent lasciviously over the semi-naked body of Belgian women ... in turn, German soldiers, their honour impugned, rallied even stronger to the Kaiser.
He also seems to have met or crossed swords with multiple well known personalities and usually has a telling anecdote or two to spare for most of them. As a runner for Pearse and Connolly during Easter week conveying messages hither and thither he once had to report to a startled GPO that the Helga was in the Liffey "bombarding Liberty Hall", to which an unfazed Connolly, evidently seeing a chance to break a bit of tension replied; "It can't be, I sent six men down to stop it!"
he 1918 Reform Act tripled the UK electorate (of which Ireland was a part of course at this time) abolishing at last all property criteria (for men) but the bulk of these new voters were not working class (though there numbers were substantial) but women, admitted to the franchise for the first time.
They now comprised just over 40% of the electorate and their proportion would have been far higher (given the millions of men who had been slaughtered in the trenches) had there still not been exclusions such as a 30 year voting age and the retention of certain petty property qualifications.
Perhaps, in fact, in light of this franchise revolution we should refer to the 1918 SF victory as the "Oestrogen Rising" ??
there seems little justification for the inclusion of Fermanagh and Tyrone which, according to the Census of 1911 had a 56.2% and 55.4% Catholic majority respectively. Antrim (79.5%) and Down (68.4%) were the strongest Protestant enclaves with Armagh (54.7%) and Derry/Londonderry/Stroke City at 54.2%.
Just for the record, and while I have them beside me, the comparable Catholic proportions for the rest of Ulster were Donegal (78.9%), Monaghan (74.7%) and Cavan (81.5%).
So, Catholics had a majority in five of the nine Ulster counties in 1911 (with an overwhelming majority in three), while Protestants had the majority in four (with an overwhelming majority in two).
The original partition template advanced by some Unionists included the whole of Ulster but this was quickly down-sized to six, then four, then back up to six again - the juggling pivoting on how much territory it was feasible to expropriate and how manageable the Catholic nationalist population summarily incorporated would likely to be.
we're all kind of over-looking the IPP leaflet here. What I found interesting too is that in their warnings to the Irish electorate that a SF vote would leave the Ascendency in Westminster there seems to be an assumption that SF are BLUFFING when they say they will not take their seats if elected
Apart from his writing, Lecky had an interesting career as a Conservative back-bencher pushing Balfour's programme of 'killing HR with kindness' during the 1890's and beyond. As an historian, and in context of the propaganda you mention, he thought it imperative that Britain face up to the injustices and misrepresentations it had meted out in the past, all the better, that is, to reconcile the Irish to the necessity of maintaining the Union in the present, as the Desmond passage you quote perfectly illustrates.
His "History of Ireland in the 18th C", largely a response to the perversely one-sided "history" of J. A. Froude who had extolled Ascendency and the "Glorious Revolution" contains one of the most sympathetic treatments of the difficult penal-era rural conditions of the Irish catholic tenant farmer you are likely to find anywhere - even in the pages of Mitchel (who had himself taken Froude to task for his confabulation of 1641 "massacre" figures in "Crusade of the Period".)
Home Rule was a desultory terminus to over a century's direct campaigning which, despite IPP bluster, still left us in an English straightjacket. Makes me wonder if anyone's actually read the Home Rule Bills? On the templates given, we had about as much independence as Carolina has from the US Federal Government. Any Dublin Parliament erected under such a model would have been cleaved at the onset by more radical separatists - possibly with an armed fringe as satellite pressure group. Much like we got anyway in fact - but minus the important caveat; the Dáil wasn't procured through fawning, beggar-bowl ignominy.
I'd just add that the inherited skewered and imbalanced land distribution (so many unviable holdings of 15 acres or less) was a structural factor that any new government would find hard to remedy - thus the continued "flight from the land". It was from the smaller farms in particular where much of the haemorrhaging from the land was occurring filling up the urban tenement slums and abroad via emigration. Prior to the famine these small plots would have been subdivided equally among kin but the horrors of that visitation convinced the majority of smallholders that it were best to switch to primogeniture whereby the first born inherits the lot leading to the effective disinheritance of younger siblings. Poor and unskilled with no future on the land before them they made up much of the army of surplus labour & the disaffected ranks of urban unemployed. For the middling farmer (who was also loathe to subdivide) he could afford to school his children to secondary level for non-farming clerical or civil service careers but barriers yet remained for Catholics taking top posts creating further separatist fissures.
"The comments on the pension brings back memories of the many arguments my mother (RIP) used to have with my grand uncle over his refusal to apply for an IRA pension - he had been an IV officer, a flying column member and had been on the run for most of the war so there was no doubt that he was entitled to a full pension. It always ended with him stating "All I did was my duty and I never expected a penny for it - that's an end to it now!"
- James Dooley, Reclaiming the Cost, 4.13.
Also worth noting that anti-Treaty republican IRA regarded the term "Irregulars" as a derogatory slur. This description, wherever it manifested, was soon used ubiquitously by the Pro-Treaty press to further discredit them. Firebrands like Seamus Robinson would likely deck you at the time for using the word.
I've a strong memory of emerging from secondary school with a very negative impression of Protestantism principally by the way the Reformation was taught. Henry VIII too, being associated with the new Tudor drive to 'tame Ireland' via 'surrender and re-grant' did nothing to upset this impression. Conversely, I find in reading general histories of the British Empire by British authors there is a distinct lack of interest to incorporate Ireland into the narrative and often wonder whether this has its roots in the English history syllabus itself. I did a stint recently teaching Irish history in an adult community context and was surprised by the number of older learners who told me they were never taught anything about the Famine, the United Irishmen, even the War of Independence and Civil War ... the latter was simply "too raw" and the memories too fresh to be put on the syllabus. By the end of it all, I was asking myself ... what exactly was being taught as history in this country? It all seemed very superficial.
It's like anything else in Irish history; if you want to get to the bottom of it you have to sieve out the "real facts" (lol!) by consulting multiple 'reputable' sources or else roll up the sleeves and dig them out for yourself. Same thing for War of Independence casualty figures - those who wish to convey a "horror of it all/it was SO un-necessary" impression will exploit ambiguity between "civilian" and "IRA" deaths in favour of the former whereas those wishing to paint a more heroic narrative will ramp up the tolls of the latter. The extremes of both in action can cause such mind-boggling variations as to make you wonder whether they are depicting the same conflict at all - which of course they're NOT as its the biased filters scanning, rejecting & approving all this varied documentation for "analysis" and eventual publication.
well the last couple of genetics books I got (Oppenheimer etc.) tells me the Gaels themselves are blow-ins with 90% of the contemp. pop. having DNA markers that pre-date "Celtic" incursions by thousands of years.
Seems there was no large displacement c.350.bce- 100ce and the Celtic speakers diffused culturally rather than physically just like in England where the Anglo-Saxon "wipe-out" hypothesis (a-la Gildas) of the Britonnic Celts now seems disproven.
Anthony, whoever brought the Celtic language and wherever they came from (La Tene/Hallstadt looks shaky now) their impact registered a 5-10% ripple on the island's DNA "stock" so it was a slow diffusion engrafting a numerically small elite just like the Normans over a 1,000 yrs later.
......... You even go back 400 years at 4 generations a century and the average person will have over a 100,000 separate blood-lines assuming there's no 'crossed cousins'. All Adams has inherited is the "name" from one of those ancestors i.e father's father father .. etc ... 95% of the rest of them could be O's or Mac's. Same with Terence O' Neill.
How you "self-identify" is the important thing is it not?
a typical Irish tree for 16 g/g/g/parents might have 4 O's, 4 Mac's (i.e. Gaelic/Scots Gaelic), 3 Norman, 1 Norse, 2 English, 1 Welsh, 1 Anglo-Scots ... or whatever, just in terms of surnames .. is that mongrel??
I guess it is ... but its very hard not to identify with one or other of these groups as your reading history.
As you get older I suppose you recognise all the subtle inter-penetrations but generally speaking most people "take sides".
they're both centre-right neo-liberal free marketers who toady first and foremost to bankers, developers & foreign investors. The idea that FG possessed an especial foresight that rendered them immune to the smorgasbord of lies and evasions that characterised Anglo's attempt to extricate itself from its over-leveraged insanity simply isn't tenable.
The property over-heat went under everyone's radar bar one or two economists who were depicted as wailing Cassandra's but it was Lenihan's decision to accept the terms of the bank bailout as a fait accompli which drowned us in a multi-generational black hole debt cesspit.
I've no doubt FG/Labour, or whomever, would've collapsed under like pressure from advice from PriceWaterHouse/Brussels/Central Bank and even the US who had just voted a $1.5 trillion bailout for their own banks.
This was simply the done thing - and as Lenihan said at the time "in line with the best financial advice available".
They can't think for themselves is my greatest objection - letting Anglo fly to the wall; "represented a systemic threat to the entire economy" - rubbish, it was a corporate/property developer concern and nothing more.
We're just incorrigible gabblers anyhow but when you throw such flammables on to the barbie your going to get a flame of Olympian proportions.
The HSE is rapidly replacing Cromwell as the Irish equivalent of Godwin's Law so may be a while to go yet.
Keeps the hands warm anyhow b'gad :-)
Anyhow, Ireland for good or ill was part of the Union and soldier recruits throughout the isles came from the lower socio-economic groups (I'm with the cannon fodder thesis - see 1860's Crimean War supply scandal); so naturally Ireland gave a disproportionate share.
An estimated third of the British army in the 19th .c were Irish and Irish regiments were to the fore carving out Empire in India, Afghanistan, Burma, Ceylon etc
Press-ganging was still a problem in the early 19th .c but many were glad of the regular pay & the thrill of adventure.
At this time too (1805) there was an equivalent 3,000 strong force of Irish in Napoleon's Irish Legion formed (as one contemporary put it); "from the almost endless stream of enthusiastic Irishmen that appeared whenever there was an Englishman to be shot” - and this despite the greater difficulties in language, travel etc.
All of these figures pale however beside the estimated 100,000 strong sworn United Irishmen and Defenders whose rebellion was brutally cut down by Pitt in 1798 - not all of them rose, but that was the number factored in by Castle authorities.
For land issues -
Jim Donnelly, (ed.) Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest 1780-1914
Land and the People of Nineteenth Century Cork
Captain Rock: the Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821-1824
Phillip Bull, Land, Politics and Nationalism (great for an overview of 19th .c land question)
Séan Donnacha, Land, Popular Politics and Agrarian Violence in Ireland (Kerry 1872-1886) - (ex. recent local study surveys much of what's out there).
Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles (land ownership & social structure, full of insights)
Peter Gray, Famine, Land and Politics (1st half v. good, Dev Comm etc. 1820-1840 Br. policy on land)
Robert James Scally, End of Hidden Ireland: Rebellion, Famine and Emigration (v.important study I think; rundales, case study Ballykilcline, Roscommon)
Kevin Kenny, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires - (1st 40 pgs g. insights agrarian secret societies)
David P. Nally, Human Encumbrances (robust critical analysis land conditions prior to famine)
Peter Duffy: Killing of Major Mahon (v.g. journo's tale + g. b/ground info on land dispute + its Co. Rosc).
Social side -
James H. Murphy, Ireland: A social, cultural and literary history, 1791-1891 (great sources, biblio etc).
Carla King (ed.), Famine, Land and Culture (dozen essays 1840-1900 mainly, some v.useful)
Peter Gray (ed.) Poverty and Welfare in Ireland, 1838-1948 (poor law unions, labourers etc)
Estyn Evans, Personality of Ireland (blends archae. anthrop. folk customs etc.)
Kevin Whelan, Tree of Liberty (1750-1840 focus, land & social mores, original insights)
Patrick O' Donnell, The Irish Faction Fighters of the 19th .c (not best f/noted but int. material)
Travel Writers? - Asenath Nicholson, Harriet Martineau, Thackeray, Carlyle, Beaumont etc..
Novelists of course - Carleton, Banim. Griffin, Edgeworth
Paul H. Davis, Castle Rackrent to Castle Dracula: Anglo-Irish Agrarian Fiction in 19th c. (v.good study)
Niall O Cosain, Print and Popular Culture in Ireland, 1750-1850 (as it says on the tin, great for sources)
Antonia McManus, The Irish Hedge School and its Books, 1695-1831 (much new here, g. tracking & comp.)
Rossa's Recollections quite good too for this purpose
Some good tips there too Nuala, much obliged. Yes, Betterworld is always my first port of call, by far the best value. Norton I've been tempted but have only seen pricy copies as yet. Riotous Assemblies I've passed over several times in the local Chapters but will probably get eventually - I love Rudé's stuff on the crowd in the FR and his 'Wilkes and Liberty' & 'Capt. Swing'. (Am also interested in English working class at this time - Cobbett, Great Reform Act, ACLA, Chartists etc. All integrated in my mind). "Marx and Engels on Ireland" publ. by Lawrence & Wishart is v.gd on land too.
Foster & Hoppen are peas in a pod, the latter once called the Act of Union ''a defeat for almost everyone and a victory for almost nobody at all' Yeesh!! - revisionist gank of the worst variety. O Tauthaigh is light but well written and not a bad survey & I have O' Connor (but have yet to read) & Corkery (a must read). I thought Kinneally's "This Great Calamity" was exc. on Poor Law Unions + Hansard debates part. Smith O' Briens contributions on PLU. https://openlibrary.org/ is a gd. site to add with the archive & google bks. DIPPAM, NLI & PRONI mais oui! Tks for LDS, will check.
the Provisionals can trace their descent directly to the Volunteers of our revolutionary period but they're the rump of a rump of a rump via the anti-Treaty split, the founding of Fianna Fáil (1926), and the split with the Officials (1969), all of which centred on the question of abstentionism and the need to recognise the Republic of the Proclamation, or "First Dáil principles" and the election mandate of 1918. The "true" abstentionist lineage following on from this process rests today with Republican Sinn Féin who split from Sinn Féin & the Provisionals in 1986. Each of these splits occurred in vastly different circumstances & under wildly differing levels of public support - the latest manifestation having least of all. The Officials, who were Marxist in orientation, thanks to Cathal Goulding, who decided to "go red" after the disaster of Operation Harvest, which garnered insufficient levels of public support & therefore required an intensification of community-based activism, called a ceasefire in 1972. From this group came the Worker's Party & Democratic Left until they merged in coalition with Labour c. 98 or 99.
Cuthbert Lucas yes, Cork No.2 brigade under Liam Lynch I think held him for a couple of months in the summer of 1920, as you say, in an attempted hostage exchange. Wasn't executed though, far from it. They treated him well, supplied him with whiskey and allowed him exercise (& even play tennis) but it was a drain on much needed manpower & resources. More hassle than it was worth taking care of him, especially since it was known Churchill had given the case top priority. In the end, when he made his escape, according to Michael Brennan, they made little effort to track him down.
.
For the gargle's dimmed me brain,
I remember Dublin city
In the rare auld times."
Pubs were the beating heart of the revolution especially for the wink and a nod type subversion by-passing the Castle radar that characterised the War of Independence. No better co-conspirator than a life-times boozing buddy and no easier place to spot a spy on his rounds.
Regulars only.
Also useful, tho I'm sure your aware:
Although it could be part of the plan of a destructive Creator? All qualities ascribed to "God" being in any case anthropomorphisms which probably pre-date writing, its really difficult to know, assuming there is a "God" what "His/Her/Its" intentionality really is towards finite, time-bound, seeming inconsequentials such as ourselves. I am quite drawn to the idea of a quasi-malevolent omniscient entity (for evolutionary purposes far beyond our ken) hurling all sections of the globe into conflict with one another just to shake up the gene pool a little bit and incidentally provide himself with a little diverting drama. I mean we are talking about a dude here who explodes stars just to filch a bit of carbon for organic life .. not to mention wiping about millions of species to provide an evolutionary foil for the successful adaption of a relative few which he appears (momentarily anyhow) to be "happy" with. With that type of awe-inspiring destruction on his resumé it would be logical to assume that God quite enjoys the spectacle of human beings idiotically tearing themselves apart all over some prismatic reduction ...
http://downsurvey.tcd.ie/ http://www.landedestates.ie/ http://titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie/search/tab/home.jsp
Forgot to mention Terence Dooley "Decline of the Big House in Ireland" - much here u won't find elsewhere but usually v. pricy.
Whelan you'll enjoy, Ferr & Don all gd, Bell long the classic intro. since superseded by avalanche of new titles. See also Thomas Moore 'Memoirs of Capt. Rock' for infl. contemp. acc.
Any other online resources for land?? What have you on the schools (hedge & national) btw, s/thing I want to look more into, part. pre-famine. http://www.questia.com/ I find v. useful at times, sub. site but cheap and lots of titles. I don't have JSTOR so its next best thing.
Why Catholicism in particular?
Blood sacrifice is the bedrock of all Christianity, the hinge on which the whole edifice turns.
"Christ the Redeemer" who died to take away the sins of the world. The "Resurrection".
But sacrifice, both human and animal, to revivify the land & fructify the spring-time fields is actually a practice and motif with a long pre-history almost universally observed among ancient indigenous cultures; e.g. the Lamb of God as pagan relic.
See the abundance of Corn-gods. Or Frazer's Golden Bough, the most exhaustive study, or Campbell's Masks of God. The legend of Arthur and the Holy Grail where the health of the land is tied to the virility of the king.
Almost qualifies as a Jungian archetype, so the "Easter Rising" is tapping into a deep and powerful reservoir whose affects will operate for the most part in an unconscious manner.
See Ekstein's "Rites of Spring" - trench warfare on all sides was implicated in Stravinsky's "dance". Kitchener's posters demanded it.
Russian dissidents brought the hunger strike to all Europe's attention in the 1880's and the English suffragettes were the first to practice it before the War; the Irish simply adopted a winning formula.
For Pearse's well known views on this see - http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E900007-002/
Robert Emmett was the lodestar and for the effect his speech and execution had on the Irish mind generally I'd recommend Marianne Elliott's study. His popularity was astonishing; assorted memorabilia being ubiquitous in Irish mud-cabins.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vy2dd
Well so long as I got that across - Foxe's Book of Martyrs was one of the most influential books ever written in the English language and 'dulce et decorum pro patria mori' flung half of Europe into the trenches.
Aside from this, there was a catholic martyrology borne of a specific Irish context in relation to the Penal Code era which easily dove-tailed with the sacrifices of the independence struggle e.g. the Manchester Martyrs & the suffering of Fenian prisoners in English jails.
When you add fresh folk memories of 'black 47' (an t-ochras/Gorta Mór) the hunger striker is compounding and refracting a triple resonance. The brutal death by force-feeding of Thomas Ashe had as heavy a reverberation on public opinion as any of the '16 executions.
Hunger strikes by English suffragettes became a useful tactic to adopt as the authorities wound up releasing them for fear of negative political fallout as they did scores of Volunteers after Ashe's death.
Thatcher, by denying political status and being oblivious to these histories, found herself in retirement staring at a significant portion of the UK being governed by a de-militarised PIRA.
I note when Pearse was translating one of the many Irish folk songs of Gráinne he left the Mhaol part in Gaelic - no doubt 'bald Grany' hadn't quite the same epic ring to it!
A nice twist to the tale - as a visiting chieftain she's normally entitled to Gaelic customs of hospitality but St. Lawrence (Lord Howth) being in the Pale disobliged.
As his g/son was the natural heir he set off at once to the O' Malley stronghold in Mayo with bags of silver and gold but she scorned all such inducements - only asking for the 'old traditions' to be honoured.
Struck at once by her unmercenary attitude he had a ring cut there and then to honour the pledge!
According to records kept by the St. Lawrence family, who still reside in Howth Castle, this ring was kept in the O' Malley family until 1795, when an Elizabeth O' Malley married a John Irwin from Roscommon & one of their sons brought the ring with him to America.
This Irwin's grandson, named John Vesberg, a New York solicitor, then apparently had the ring mounted on a brooch, in which form (we can assume) it remains to this day ....!!
(tho records seem unclear alas).
Wud be nice to know tho .. ?
read a deplorable article recently in the Independent (either from Myers or Harris) that imputed Pearse was deliriously insensitive at the prospect of forthcoming violence sparked by the 1916 Rising & executions as when he left his mother for the last time he had, according to this commentator; "a perverse grin on his face".
Even if this was true (which it probably was, though not about its "perversity" which is an entirely subjective matter) its also on record that his mother supported him and all his actions 100% down the line and the article in any case completely misunderstood the nature of Pearse's "humour": -
"Laughter is the one gift that God has given to men but denied to brutes and angels. Laughter is the crowning grace of heroes. The epic tells how the dying Cúchulainn noticed that a raven which had stooped to drink his blood, becoming tangled in the clotted gore, was ludicrously upset. 'Then Cúchulainn, knowing that it was his last laugh, laughed aloud.' I think that Emmet, I am quite sure that Tone, would have laughed in similar circumstances"
Pádraig Pearse, in From a Hermitage (August 1913).
Its consistent with the epic warrior-age ethos he was steeped in though Angela, don't you think? We are much more precious nowadays about children and what they should and shouldn't be doing at 14 years of age - I'd say few in the GPO thought much of it at the time. All hands to the pump etc.. What became of them though have you any idea?
In any case, I think it took someone half-steeped in a semi-mythic barbarous age of 'gods and heroes' to fashion the needs of the present & provide a locus of earnest intent. It concentrates minds when you know someone is half-mad up for it; his speeches and writings were practically begging for an army to coalesce around him.
I've nothing but respect (tinged with a little wonder and awe) for that type of clinically obsessive propheteering which winds up yielding the goods; to moan about the "legacy" is to ignore the beggar bowl ignominy of constitutionalism. British rule deserved a thrashing not sub-committees, Bills and blather
there's a "cause deficit syndrome".
Earnest well-meaning youth have seldom had so little to strive for in terms of improving the status quo (so they're led to believe anyway) as such has been circumscribed to include the mere interests of their own country - and no-one else's.
Hence you have mall-rats like below singing this kind of a-political fluff; "relax, it's all been done before":- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NPBIwQyPWE
The post-modern, credit card bumping, inane social media using, "whatever" generation X-ers who have essentially 'opted out' of thinking about the big issues.
Free market blanket capitalism the "end of history" a-la Fukuyama?
I don't think so.
As Deng Xiaoping (or one of them) said on being asked by Kissinger what were the effects of the French Revolution? - "It's too early to tell".
I think that still holds good as an approximate analysis.
Cold War at least sharpened minds - too many have gone flabby today.
Dangerous malaise (and illusion) imho.
It took the cannons of Napoleon to inspire Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit - what will next knock on the walls of the West's complacent Jena?
This is probably nit-picking but I would have liked a component on the wider international context; the rise of socialism, labour trade unions, the Bolshevik revolution.
A consideration of Empire generally; inter-colonial rivalry, the conditions in which nationalism evolved in Europe to become the primary force governing politics (nucleus of fascism etc.) - the tendency for monarchy to be discredited; the later fracturing of Austria-Hungary.
The role of America, Wilson's blueprint for self-determination; the League of Nations - all of these questions troubled and were foreseen to some extent by contemporaries.
The Clan na Gael haven't been touched; the diaspora which out-numbered the Irish at home who had multiple links with Indian nationalists themselves split into radical and constitutional elements.
Lloyd George's fait accompli 'comply or die' was thrust down Irish throats to preserve Empire intact; the illusion of it to prevent Indian fissures.
We often assume ordinary people only thought of bread & butter issues; but what of penniless rank & file activists who grasped a bigger & more ennobling picture & sacrificed all they had for their scrap of this ideal in spite of penury?
Well, the years prior to WWI were the 'Golden Age of Socialism';- incremental as opposed to Marxist revolutionary change was advocated by many, including the Fabians, who had many cross-channel ties with Irish revolutionaries.
Lloyd George built his career paying attention to the likes of Keir Hardie and the dismantling of the Lords veto was initiated by rejection of a Labour-oriented budget with industrial unrest peaking in Britain the year before the War.
Socialists and Labour parties were the only ones who paid any attention to "ordinary" working-class people (both 'The Leader' & Arthur Griffith denounced 'Larkinism') so the omission of at least a summary of their views (which always included a critique of imperialism/colonialism) is a little strange.
Socialist/trade union & labour pamphlets & handbills circulating these ideas would be the daily reading material in many Dublin working class tenement areas while the last great electoral reform act (1918) owes its existence to all this agitation - not just the body-bags returning from the front.
So yes, something of an elephant in the room for me - though things of course need to be kept 'simple' & time is of the essence.
That wouldn't surprise .... but he deplored the movement for Irish independence and could never reconcile himself to the fact that Ireland wanted quit of the Empire - the whole period was "the most discreditable in our country's history" according to him. He's an avuncular imperialist who can't wrap his head around a nation's wish for self-determination. His reluctance to contribute to the BMH is simply borne of his refusal to give any credence whatever to the Free State or its mode of formation.
The retrospective accrediting that I'm witnessing in comments here of Cope's quasi-visionary desires for reconciliation between the two countries is misplaced insofar as they assume he's some kind of "progressive", when in actual fact he appears far more to be a sentimentalist old fossil yearning for the return of Empire's halcyon days. You can't re-write Irish history and turn it into a benevolence parade of British magnanimity .. when all the facts, personal narratives and rancour of the day suggest otherwise
That Ireland "has too many histories" is a nonsensical cop-out and wasn't in any case Cope's primary reason for not contributing to the BMH. He didn't give future historians the benefit of a personal memoir as he regarded the whole period as "the most discreditable in Ireland's history" - he simply sounds like a disgruntled imperialist aghast at the Empire crumbling all about him and probably viewed Irish "treason" as the first step in that process.
It reeks of sour grapes and a snubbed, sanctimonious British paternalism.
As to the differing/contradictory accounts all of them should be weighed and assessed according to their merits. The more narratives we have (from all sides) the likelier we are to come to an approximation at least of "the truth" (big exhale) or, at the very minimum, a small localised variant of it.
To say that professional historians or 'disinterested' intelligent researchers are incapable of reaching sound judgement, or at least one (all things considered) that takes the debate on to a higher level, because "given enough facts" we can all support our opinions, is likewise, non-sensically defeatist and tantamount to epistemological nihilism.
I agree there's more to him than meets the eye - just requires a bit of homework to find out what exactly.
But these were 'time-capsuled' commentaries Anthony, written with the express understanding that none of it would be released into the public domain until all participants were long dead and buried - nothing was going to be "stirred up", unless he had the suspicion/conviction (like perhaps Ed Moloney didn't) that "leakages" would inevitably occur.
Ok, I read MacEoin's report of the conversation as simply Cope's attempt to cover his ass from the accusation that he exaggerated the abilities of the IRA to defend its own patch and continue the war indefinitely - a question merely of imputed lack of competence. He's not interested in the Boundary and he's even less interested in the on-going CW, what does concern him is the current British election & that the intelligence he related to Lloyd George earlier in 1921 (along with Sturgis) at the time when the Cabinet were considering making approaches to Dev on a truce can be taken as a faithful depiction of the abilities of the IRA to continue prosecuting the war. As we know LG & the Cabinet were much impressed by Cope & co's assessment of the fruitlessness of the British side continuing the aggression and from that point on they were making arrangements to orchestrate a negotiated peace. I don't see any necessary linkage with his refusal to participate in the BMH archival project.
The BMH was 30yrs later and light years removed from the electioneering and reputational concerns which Cope had at the time he was helping MacEoin press paws in Westminster. The flak LG was receiving on his handling of the "Irish situation" was naturally reflecting on himself as one of the prime instigators of policy so his concern is simply to ensure MacEoin played according to the script and didn't bury him in fresh scandal.
What does it reveal about him in his refusal to submit a statement 30yrs later? Not a whole lot; merely to show like all political animals he had a well-honed survival instinct. What else can you possibly read into MacEoin's statement?
Well, I don't know how long he hung around on the Liberal's coat-tails but they were a minority partner in a ten month coalition with McDonald's Labour after that 1923 election he was so anxious MacEoin wouldn't spoil.
After which the Liberals famously disintegrated following Baldwin's five year tenure as Conservative PM in which time Cope disengaged from politics and took up his anthracite concerns.
Muskerry's outburst is an index of propertied Anglo-Irish frustration whose power had been clipped & eclipsed in the transition to democratic national self-governance.
Cope became a ready scapegoat for a wide range of interests who blamed him personally for taking his remit 'seriously' and forging a path for dialogue via, it is alleged, intelligence exchanges with Sinn Féin which compromised "His majesty's forces" in their line of duty.
Muskerry later alleged in the house it was RIC who furnished him the information but when pressurised by the Chancellor finally retracted all comments. Cope emerged reputation intact with ex-Lord Lieutenant Fitzalan citing two instances of attempts made on his life:- http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1924/mar/19/claims-of-irish-loyalists
for all its merits Trinity will likely remain an Oxbridge outreach programme long after the island is united. Our special cross to bear.
For our final primary source engagement we are offered from the thousands of viewpoints available a solitary posthumous lecture from the former British Under-Secretary telling us the years of the IR were the "most discreditable in our history".
Really, whether or not Cope's words were irony-laced or honestly held is incidental to the fact that his carefully selected mawkish reflections on peace not war sum up the thematic red thread adopted throughout this course.
The judgement we are encouraged to condone is faith in IPP HR and a repudiation of Republican violence with only passing regard for the global-wide violence of colonialism whose rivalries carving up the planet hurled a generation to their doom.
This is what Republicanism attempted to detach itself from, completely and irrevocably.
It failed as we know and set at once consuming itself with recriminations..
Despite all this, our greatest hour & our firmest bedrock will remain the men & women of 1916. As such, there is no Ireland without them - at least not one I'd like to belong to.
Remarkable how often defending the rights of democratic "plucky little Belgium" emerges as a reason for enlisting. Irish catholic bishops, broadly in tune with Redmond's stance, would have looked dimly on their continental catholic co-religionists being mauled by the protestant "Hun" and this attitude would have percolated down readily enough to parish level synergising with existent recruitment propaganda. The Schlieffen plan, which was designed to avoid a war on two fronts via the rapid crushing of France, required the German army to cut a path through "neutral" Belgium. The Belgians put up fierce and brave resistance but they were hardly neutral; their borders looking on to Germany had long bristled with forts while on the French side there were none; in addition to which tacit understandings had long being held between Belgian sovereign Albert and the Entente powers. It was a scarcely a democracy either, parliamentary votes were weighted on property criteria and the whole was overseen by a semi-autocratic king, much like the Reichstag was in the hands of the Kaiser. "Truth" they say, is the first casualty in war and the propagandistic war-presses stepped into over-drive
reporting on alleged German atrocities including widespread rape, slicing off women's breasts and chopping off the hands of young Belgian boys. This last charge was ironic given Belgian King Leopold's decimation of the Congo less than a decade earlier reducing the population by over a third & causing directly or indirectly the deaths of some 10 million Congolese tribes-people; an event brought to the world's attention by Irish nationalist and British consul, Roger Casement with the help of WWI pacifist Edmund Morel. The pursuit of rubber in the boom-time era of a burgeoning auto-industry had Leopold's mind warped with avarice, over-seeing a system whereby in order to save the expense of bullets his station captains demanded a severed hand as proof of each discharged round. Whole families were kidnapped while their menfolk scraped rubber from trees; forced slave labour in the name of Christianity which accrued an estimated net profit of £1 billion equiv. for Leopold and the Belgian exchequer. I was astonished to read recently that Lady Gregory in a letter to Yeats on the 1916 executions confessed she had "never heard" of Casement so, if someone as "well-read" as her knew nothing ..
..... about the Congo or its history, what chance an ordinary minimum wage semi-literate tenement dweller enrolling to "bash the Bosch" in the name of Irish freedom at the behest of Redmond asking you to uphold on your bishop's injunction the rights of "poor little catholic Belgium"??
Tales of German atrocities in Belgium were of course exaggerated out of all proportion. The Bryce Report most notably (compiled in 1915) is now regarded as being "contaminated" by war-time hysteria; witness statements were all taken from Belgian refugees based in England and reported anonymously, none from occupied Belgium itself. Darrow, a US lawyer, became so exasperated with the apparent disconnect between truth and fiction, he offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who could find victims of German mutilations; no-one ever came forward. Cartoons from the period repeated ad infinitum in the British and Irish press often showed slavering "Huns" bent lasciviously over the semi-naked body of Belgian women ... in turn, German soldiers, their honour impugned, rallied even stronger to the Kaiser.
He also seems to have met or crossed swords with multiple well known personalities and usually has a telling anecdote or two to spare for most of them. As a runner for Pearse and Connolly during Easter week conveying messages hither and thither he once had to report to a startled GPO that the Helga was in the Liffey "bombarding Liberty Hall", to which an unfazed Connolly, evidently seeing a chance to break a bit of tension replied; "It can't be, I sent six men down to stop it!"
he 1918 Reform Act tripled the UK electorate (of which Ireland was a part of course at this time) abolishing at last all property criteria (for men) but the bulk of these new voters were not working class (though there numbers were substantial) but women, admitted to the franchise for the first time.
They now comprised just over 40% of the electorate and their proportion would have been far higher (given the millions of men who had been slaughtered in the trenches) had there still not been exclusions such as a 30 year voting age and the retention of certain petty property qualifications.
Perhaps, in fact, in light of this franchise revolution we should refer to the 1918 SF victory as the "Oestrogen Rising" ??
there seems little justification for the inclusion of Fermanagh and Tyrone which, according to the Census of 1911 had a 56.2% and 55.4% Catholic majority respectively. Antrim (79.5%) and Down (68.4%) were the strongest Protestant enclaves with Armagh (54.7%) and Derry/Londonderry/Stroke City at 54.2%.
Just for the record, and while I have them beside me, the comparable Catholic proportions for the rest of Ulster were Donegal (78.9%), Monaghan (74.7%) and Cavan (81.5%).
So, Catholics had a majority in five of the nine Ulster counties in 1911 (with an overwhelming majority in three), while Protestants had the majority in four (with an overwhelming majority in two).
The original partition template advanced by some Unionists included the whole of Ulster but this was quickly down-sized to six, then four, then back up to six again - the juggling pivoting on how much territory it was feasible to expropriate and how manageable the Catholic nationalist population summarily incorporated would likely to be.
we're all kind of over-looking the IPP leaflet here. What I found interesting too is that in their warnings to the Irish electorate that a SF vote would leave the Ascendency in Westminster there seems to be an assumption that SF are BLUFFING when they say they will not take their seats if elected
Apart from his writing, Lecky had an interesting career as a Conservative back-bencher pushing Balfour's programme of 'killing HR with kindness' during the 1890's and beyond. As an historian, and in context of the propaganda you mention, he thought it imperative that Britain face up to the injustices and misrepresentations it had meted out in the past, all the better, that is, to reconcile the Irish to the necessity of maintaining the Union in the present, as the Desmond passage you quote perfectly illustrates.
His "History of Ireland in the 18th C", largely a response to the perversely one-sided "history" of J. A. Froude who had extolled Ascendency and the "Glorious Revolution" contains one of the most sympathetic treatments of the difficult penal-era rural conditions of the Irish catholic tenant farmer you are likely to find anywhere - even in the pages of Mitchel (who had himself taken Froude to task for his confabulation of 1641 "massacre" figures in "Crusade of the Period".)
Home Rule was a desultory terminus to over a century's direct campaigning which, despite IPP bluster, still left us in an English straightjacket. Makes me wonder if anyone's actually read the Home Rule Bills? On the templates given, we had about as much independence as Carolina has from the US Federal Government. Any Dublin Parliament erected under such a model would have been cleaved at the onset by more radical separatists - possibly with an armed fringe as satellite pressure group. Much like we got anyway in fact - but minus the important caveat; the Dáil wasn't procured through fawning, beggar-bowl ignominy.
I'd just add that the inherited skewered and imbalanced land distribution (so many unviable holdings of 15 acres or less) was a structural factor that any new government would find hard to remedy - thus the continued "flight from the land". It was from the smaller farms in particular where much of the haemorrhaging from the land was occurring filling up the urban tenement slums and abroad via emigration. Prior to the famine these small plots would have been subdivided equally among kin but the horrors of that visitation convinced the majority of smallholders that it were best to switch to primogeniture whereby the first born inherits the lot leading to the effective disinheritance of younger siblings. Poor and unskilled with no future on the land before them they made up much of the army of surplus labour & the disaffected ranks of urban unemployed. For the middling farmer (who was also loathe to subdivide) he could afford to school his children to secondary level for non-farming clerical or civil service careers but barriers yet remained for Catholics taking top posts creating further separatist fissures.
"The comments on the pension brings back memories of the many arguments my mother (RIP) used to have with my grand uncle over his refusal to apply for an IRA pension - he had been an IV officer, a flying column member and had been on the run for most of the war so there was no doubt that he was entitled to a full pension. It always ended with him stating "All I did was my duty and I never expected a penny for it - that's an end to it now!"
- James Dooley, Reclaiming the Cost, 4.13.
Also worth noting that anti-Treaty republican IRA regarded the term "Irregulars" as a derogatory slur. This description, wherever it manifested, was soon used ubiquitously by the Pro-Treaty press to further discredit them. Firebrands like Seamus Robinson would likely deck you at the time for using the word.
I've a strong memory of emerging from secondary school with a very negative impression of Protestantism principally by the way the Reformation was taught. Henry VIII too, being associated with the new Tudor drive to 'tame Ireland' via 'surrender and re-grant' did nothing to upset this impression. Conversely, I find in reading general histories of the British Empire by British authors there is a distinct lack of interest to incorporate Ireland into the narrative and often wonder whether this has its roots in the English history syllabus itself. I did a stint recently teaching Irish history in an adult community context and was surprised by the number of older learners who told me they were never taught anything about the Famine, the United Irishmen, even the War of Independence and Civil War ... the latter was simply "too raw" and the memories too fresh to be put on the syllabus. By the end of it all, I was asking myself ... what exactly was being taught as history in this country? It all seemed very superficial.
It's like anything else in Irish history; if you want to get to the bottom of it you have to sieve out the "real facts" (lol!) by consulting multiple 'reputable' sources or else roll up the sleeves and dig them out for yourself. Same thing for War of Independence casualty figures - those who wish to convey a "horror of it all/it was SO un-necessary" impression will exploit ambiguity between "civilian" and "IRA" deaths in favour of the former whereas those wishing to paint a more heroic narrative will ramp up the tolls of the latter. The extremes of both in action can cause such mind-boggling variations as to make you wonder whether they are depicting the same conflict at all - which of course they're NOT as its the biased filters scanning, rejecting & approving all this varied documentation for "analysis" and eventual publication.
well the last couple of genetics books I got (Oppenheimer etc.) tells me the Gaels themselves are blow-ins with 90% of the contemp. pop. having DNA markers that pre-date "Celtic" incursions by thousands of years.
Seems there was no large displacement c.350.bce- 100ce and the Celtic speakers diffused culturally rather than physically just like in England where the Anglo-Saxon "wipe-out" hypothesis (a-la Gildas) of the Britonnic Celts now seems disproven.
Anthony, whoever brought the Celtic language and wherever they came from (La Tene/Hallstadt looks shaky now) their impact registered a 5-10% ripple on the island's DNA "stock" so it was a slow diffusion engrafting a numerically small elite just like the Normans over a 1,000 yrs later.
......... You even go back 400 years at 4 generations a century and the average person will have over a 100,000 separate blood-lines assuming there's no 'crossed cousins'. All Adams has inherited is the "name" from one of those ancestors i.e father's father father .. etc ... 95% of the rest of them could be O's or Mac's. Same with Terence O' Neill.
How you "self-identify" is the important thing is it not?
a typical Irish tree for 16 g/g/g/parents might have 4 O's, 4 Mac's (i.e. Gaelic/Scots Gaelic), 3 Norman, 1 Norse, 2 English, 1 Welsh, 1 Anglo-Scots ... or whatever, just in terms of surnames .. is that mongrel??
I guess it is ... but its very hard not to identify with one or other of these groups as your reading history.
As you get older I suppose you recognise all the subtle inter-penetrations but generally speaking most people "take sides".
they're both centre-right neo-liberal free marketers who toady first and foremost to bankers, developers & foreign investors. The idea that FG possessed an especial foresight that rendered them immune to the smorgasbord of lies and evasions that characterised Anglo's attempt to extricate itself from its over-leveraged insanity simply isn't tenable.
The property over-heat went under everyone's radar bar one or two economists who were depicted as wailing Cassandra's but it was Lenihan's decision to accept the terms of the bank bailout as a fait accompli which drowned us in a multi-generational black hole debt cesspit.
I've no doubt FG/Labour, or whomever, would've collapsed under like pressure from advice from PriceWaterHouse/Brussels/Central Bank and even the US who had just voted a $1.5 trillion bailout for their own banks.
This was simply the done thing - and as Lenihan said at the time "in line with the best financial advice available".
They can't think for themselves is my greatest objection - letting Anglo fly to the wall; "represented a systemic threat to the entire economy" - rubbish, it was a corporate/property developer concern and nothing more.
We're just incorrigible gabblers anyhow but when you throw such flammables on to the barbie your going to get a flame of Olympian proportions.
The HSE is rapidly replacing Cromwell as the Irish equivalent of Godwin's Law so may be a while to go yet.
Keeps the hands warm anyhow b'gad :-)
Anyhow, Ireland for good or ill was part of the Union and soldier recruits throughout the isles came from the lower socio-economic groups (I'm with the cannon fodder thesis - see 1860's Crimean War supply scandal); so naturally Ireland gave a disproportionate share.
An estimated third of the British army in the 19th .c were Irish and Irish regiments were to the fore carving out Empire in India, Afghanistan, Burma, Ceylon etc
Press-ganging was still a problem in the early 19th .c but many were glad of the regular pay & the thrill of adventure.
At this time too (1805) there was an equivalent 3,000 strong force of Irish in Napoleon's Irish Legion formed (as one contemporary put it); "from the almost endless stream of enthusiastic Irishmen that appeared whenever there was an Englishman to be shot” - and this despite the greater difficulties in language, travel etc.
All of these figures pale however beside the estimated 100,000 strong sworn United Irishmen and Defenders whose rebellion was brutally cut down by Pitt in 1798 - not all of them rose, but that was the number factored in by Castle authorities.
For land issues -
Jim Donnelly, (ed.) Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest 1780-1914
Land and the People of Nineteenth Century Cork
Captain Rock: the Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821-1824
Phillip Bull, Land, Politics and Nationalism (great for an overview of 19th .c land question)
Séan Donnacha, Land, Popular Politics and Agrarian Violence in Ireland (Kerry 1872-1886) - (ex. recent local study surveys much of what's out there).
Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles (land ownership & social structure, full of insights)
Peter Gray, Famine, Land and Politics (1st half v. good, Dev Comm etc. 1820-1840 Br. policy on land)
Robert James Scally, End of Hidden Ireland: Rebellion, Famine and Emigration (v.important study I think; rundales, case study Ballykilcline, Roscommon)
Kevin Kenny, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires - (1st 40 pgs g. insights agrarian secret societies)
David P. Nally, Human Encumbrances (robust critical analysis land conditions prior to famine)
Peter Duffy: Killing of Major Mahon (v.g. journo's tale + g. b/ground info on land dispute + its Co. Rosc).
Social side -
James H. Murphy, Ireland: A social, cultural and literary history, 1791-1891 (great sources, biblio etc).
Carla King (ed.), Famine, Land and Culture (dozen essays 1840-1900 mainly, some v.useful)
Peter Gray (ed.) Poverty and Welfare in Ireland, 1838-1948 (poor law unions, labourers etc)
Estyn Evans, Personality of Ireland (blends archae. anthrop. folk customs etc.)
Kevin Whelan, Tree of Liberty (1750-1840 focus, land & social mores, original insights)
Patrick O' Donnell, The Irish Faction Fighters of the 19th .c (not best f/noted but int. material)
Travel Writers? - Asenath Nicholson, Harriet Martineau, Thackeray, Carlyle, Beaumont etc..
Novelists of course - Carleton, Banim. Griffin, Edgeworth
Paul H. Davis, Castle Rackrent to Castle Dracula: Anglo-Irish Agrarian Fiction in 19th c. (v.good study)
Niall O Cosain, Print and Popular Culture in Ireland, 1750-1850 (as it says on the tin, great for sources)
Antonia McManus, The Irish Hedge School and its Books, 1695-1831 (much new here, g. tracking & comp.)
Rossa's Recollections quite good too for this purpose
Some good tips there too Nuala, much obliged. Yes, Betterworld is always my first port of call, by far the best value. Norton I've been tempted but have only seen pricy copies as yet. Riotous Assemblies I've passed over several times in the local Chapters but will probably get eventually - I love Rudé's stuff on the crowd in the FR and his 'Wilkes and Liberty' & 'Capt. Swing'. (Am also interested in English working class at this time - Cobbett, Great Reform Act, ACLA, Chartists etc. All integrated in my mind). "Marx and Engels on Ireland" publ. by Lawrence & Wishart is v.gd on land too.
Foster & Hoppen are peas in a pod, the latter once called the Act of Union ''a defeat for almost everyone and a victory for almost nobody at all' Yeesh!! - revisionist gank of the worst variety. O Tauthaigh is light but well written and not a bad survey & I have O' Connor (but have yet to read) & Corkery (a must read). I thought Kinneally's "This Great Calamity" was exc. on Poor Law Unions + Hansard debates part. Smith O' Briens contributions on PLU.
https://openlibrary.org/ is a gd. site to add with the archive & google bks. DIPPAM, NLI & PRONI mais oui! Tks for LDS, will check.
the Provisionals can trace their descent directly to the Volunteers of our revolutionary period but they're the rump of a rump of a rump via the anti-Treaty split, the founding of Fianna Fáil (1926), and the split with the Officials (1969), all of which centred on the question of abstentionism and the need to recognise the Republic of the Proclamation, or "First Dáil principles" and the election mandate of 1918. The "true" abstentionist lineage following on from this process rests today with Republican Sinn Féin who split from Sinn Féin & the Provisionals in 1986. Each of these splits occurred in vastly different circumstances & under wildly differing levels of public support - the latest manifestation having least of all. The Officials, who were Marxist in orientation, thanks to Cathal Goulding, who decided to "go red" after the disaster of Operation Harvest, which garnered insufficient levels of public support & therefore required an intensification of community-based activism, called a ceasefire in 1972. From this group came the Worker's Party & Democratic Left until they merged in coalition with Labour c. 98 or 99.
Cuthbert Lucas yes, Cork No.2 brigade under Liam Lynch I think held him for a couple of months in the summer of 1920, as you say, in an attempted hostage exchange. Wasn't executed though, far from it. They treated him well, supplied him with whiskey and allowed him exercise (& even play tennis) but it was a drain on much needed manpower & resources. More hassle than it was worth taking care of him, especially since it was known Churchill had given the case top priority. In the end, when he made his escape, according to Michael Brennan, they made little effort to track him down.
.
For the gargle's dimmed me brain,
I remember Dublin city
In the rare auld times."
Pubs were the beating heart of the revolution especially for the wink and a nod type subversion by-passing the Castle radar that characterised the War of Independence. No better co-conspirator than a life-times boozing buddy and no easier place to spot a spy on his rounds.
Regulars only.
Also useful, tho I'm sure your aware:
Although it could be part of the plan of a destructive Creator? All qualities ascribed to "God" being in any case anthropomorphisms which probably pre-date writing, its really difficult to know, assuming there is a "God" what "His/Her/Its" intentionality really is towards finite, time-bound, seeming inconsequentials such as ourselves. I am quite drawn to the idea of a quasi-malevolent omniscient entity (for evolutionary purposes far beyond our ken) hurling all sections of the globe into conflict with one another just to shake up the gene pool a little bit and incidentally provide himself with a little diverting drama. I mean we are talking about a dude here who explodes stars just to filch a bit of carbon for organic life .. not to mention wiping about millions of species to provide an evolutionary foil for the successful adaption of a relative few which he appears (momentarily anyhow) to be "happy" with. With that type of awe-inspiring destruction on his resumé it would be logical to assume that God quite enjoys the spectacle of human beings idiotically tearing themselves apart all over some prismatic reduction ...
http://downsurvey.tcd.ie/
http://www.landedestates.ie/
http://titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie/search/tab/home.jsp
Forgot to mention Terence Dooley "Decline of the Big House in Ireland" - much here u won't find elsewhere but usually v. pricy.
Whelan you'll enjoy, Ferr & Don all gd, Bell long the classic intro. since superseded by avalanche of new titles. See also Thomas Moore 'Memoirs of Capt. Rock' for infl. contemp. acc.
Any other online resources for land?? What have you on the schools (hedge & national) btw, s/thing I want to look more into, part. pre-famine.
http://www.questia.com/ I find v. useful at times, sub. site but cheap and lots of titles. I don't have JSTOR so its next best thing.
Why Catholicism in particular?
Blood sacrifice is the bedrock of all Christianity, the hinge on which the whole edifice turns.
"Christ the Redeemer" who died to take away the sins of the world. The "Resurrection".
But sacrifice, both human and animal, to revivify the land & fructify the spring-time fields is actually a practice and motif with a long pre-history almost universally observed among ancient indigenous cultures; e.g. the Lamb of God as pagan relic.
See the abundance of Corn-gods. Or Frazer's Golden Bough, the most exhaustive study, or Campbell's Masks of God. The legend of Arthur and the Holy Grail where the health of the land is tied to the virility of the king.
Almost qualifies as a Jungian archetype, so the "Easter Rising" is tapping into a deep and powerful reservoir whose affects will operate for the most part in an unconscious manner.
See Ekstein's "Rites of Spring" - trench warfare on all sides was implicated in Stravinsky's "dance". Kitchener's posters demanded it.
Russian dissidents brought the hunger strike to all Europe's attention in the 1880's and the English suffragettes were the first to practice it before the War; the Irish simply adopted a winning formula.
For Pearse's well known views on this see -
http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E900007-002/
Robert Emmett was the lodestar and for the effect his speech and execution had on the Irish mind generally I'd recommend Marianne Elliott's study. His popularity was astonishing; assorted memorabilia being ubiquitous in Irish mud-cabins.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vy2dd
Well so long as I got that across - Foxe's Book of Martyrs was one of the most influential books ever written in the English language and 'dulce et decorum pro patria mori' flung half of Europe into the trenches.
Aside from this, there was a catholic martyrology borne of a specific Irish context in relation to the Penal Code era which easily dove-tailed with the sacrifices of the independence struggle e.g. the Manchester Martyrs & the suffering of Fenian prisoners in English jails.
When you add fresh folk memories of 'black 47' (an t-ochras/Gorta Mór) the hunger striker is compounding and refracting a triple resonance. The brutal death by force-feeding of Thomas Ashe had as heavy a reverberation on public opinion as any of the '16 executions.
Hunger strikes by English suffragettes became a useful tactic to adopt as the authorities wound up releasing them for fear of negative political fallout as they did scores of Volunteers after Ashe's death.
Thatcher, by denying political status and being oblivious to these histories, found herself in retirement staring at a significant portion of the UK being governed by a de-militarised PIRA.
Dulce et ...
I note when Pearse was translating one of the many Irish folk songs of Gráinne he left the Mhaol part in Gaelic - no doubt 'bald Grany' hadn't quite the same epic ring to it!
A nice twist to the tale - as a visiting chieftain she's normally entitled to Gaelic customs of hospitality but St. Lawrence (Lord Howth) being in the Pale disobliged.
As his g/son was the natural heir he set off at once to the O' Malley stronghold in Mayo with bags of silver and gold but she scorned all such inducements - only asking for the 'old traditions' to be honoured.
Struck at once by her unmercenary attitude he had a ring cut there and then to honour the pledge!
According to records kept by the St. Lawrence family, who still reside in Howth Castle, this ring was kept in the O' Malley family until 1795, when an Elizabeth O' Malley married a John Irwin from Roscommon & one of their sons brought the ring with him to America.
This Irwin's grandson, named John Vesberg, a New York solicitor, then apparently had the ring mounted on a brooch, in which form (we can assume) it remains to this day ....!!
(tho records seem unclear alas).
Wud be nice to know tho .. ?
read a deplorable article recently in the Independent (either from Myers or Harris) that imputed Pearse was deliriously insensitive at the prospect of forthcoming violence sparked by the 1916 Rising & executions as when he left his mother for the last time he had, according to this commentator; "a perverse grin on his face".
Even if this was true (which it probably was, though not about its "perversity" which is an entirely subjective matter) its also on record that his mother supported him and all his actions 100% down the line and the article in any case completely misunderstood the nature of Pearse's "humour": -
"Laughter is the one gift that God has given to men but denied to brutes and angels. Laughter is the crowning grace of heroes. The epic tells how the dying Cúchulainn noticed that a raven which had stooped to drink his blood, becoming tangled in the clotted gore, was ludicrously upset. 'Then Cúchulainn, knowing that it was his last laugh, laughed aloud.' I think that Emmet, I am quite sure that Tone, would have laughed in similar circumstances"
Pádraig Pearse, in From a Hermitage (August 1913).
Its consistent with the epic warrior-age ethos he was steeped in though Angela, don't you think? We are much more precious nowadays about children and what they should and shouldn't be doing at 14 years of age - I'd say few in the GPO thought much of it at the time. All hands to the pump etc.. What became of them though have you any idea?
In any case, I think it took someone half-steeped in a semi-mythic barbarous age of 'gods and heroes' to fashion the needs of the present & provide a locus of earnest intent. It concentrates minds when you know someone is half-mad up for it; his speeches and writings were practically begging for an army to coalesce around him.
I've nothing but respect (tinged with a little wonder and awe) for that type of clinically obsessive propheteering which winds up yielding the goods; to moan about the "legacy" is to ignore the beggar bowl ignominy of constitutionalism. British rule deserved a thrashing not sub-committees, Bills and blather
there's a "cause deficit syndrome".
Earnest well-meaning youth have seldom had so little to strive for in terms of improving the status quo (so they're led to believe anyway) as such has been circumscribed to include the mere interests of their own country - and no-one else's.
Hence you have mall-rats like below singing this kind of a-political fluff; "relax, it's all been done before":-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NPBIwQyPWE
The post-modern, credit card bumping, inane social media using, "whatever" generation X-ers who have essentially 'opted out' of thinking about the big issues.
Free market blanket capitalism the "end of history" a-la Fukuyama?
I don't think so.
As Deng Xiaoping (or one of them) said on being asked by Kissinger what were the effects of the French Revolution? - "It's too early to tell".
I think that still holds good as an approximate analysis.
Cold War at least sharpened minds - too many have gone flabby today.
Dangerous malaise (and illusion) imho.
It took the cannons of Napoleon to inspire Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit - what will next knock on the walls of the West's complacent Jena?
This is probably nit-picking but I would have liked a component on the wider international context; the rise of socialism, labour trade unions, the Bolshevik revolution.
A consideration of Empire generally; inter-colonial rivalry, the conditions in which nationalism evolved in Europe to become the primary force governing politics (nucleus of fascism etc.) - the tendency for monarchy to be discredited; the later fracturing of Austria-Hungary.
The role of America, Wilson's blueprint for self-determination; the League of Nations - all of these questions troubled and were foreseen to some extent by contemporaries.
The Clan na Gael haven't been touched; the diaspora which out-numbered the Irish at home who had multiple links with Indian nationalists themselves split into radical and constitutional elements.
Lloyd George's fait accompli 'comply or die' was thrust down Irish throats to preserve Empire intact; the illusion of it to prevent Indian fissures.
We often assume ordinary people only thought of bread & butter issues; but what of penniless rank & file activists who grasped a bigger & more ennobling picture & sacrificed all they had for their scrap of this ideal in spite of penury?
Well, the years prior to WWI were the 'Golden Age of Socialism';- incremental as opposed to Marxist revolutionary change was advocated by many, including the Fabians, who had many cross-channel ties with Irish revolutionaries.
Lloyd George built his career paying attention to the likes of Keir Hardie and the dismantling of the Lords veto was initiated by rejection of a Labour-oriented budget with industrial unrest peaking in Britain the year before the War.
Socialists and Labour parties were the only ones who paid any attention to "ordinary" working-class people (both 'The Leader' & Arthur Griffith denounced 'Larkinism') so the omission of at least a summary of their views (which always included a critique of imperialism/colonialism) is a little strange.
Socialist/trade union & labour pamphlets & handbills circulating these ideas would be the daily reading material in many Dublin working class tenement areas while the last great electoral reform act (1918) owes its existence to all this agitation - not just the body-bags returning from the front.
So yes, something of an elephant in the room for me - though things of course need to be kept 'simple' & time is of the essence.
That wouldn't surprise .... but he deplored the movement for Irish independence and could never reconcile himself to the fact that Ireland wanted quit of the Empire - the whole period was "the most discreditable in our country's history" according to him. He's an avuncular imperialist who can't wrap his head around a nation's wish for self-determination. His reluctance to contribute to the BMH is simply borne of his refusal to give any credence whatever to the Free State or its mode of formation.
The retrospective accrediting that I'm witnessing in comments here of Cope's quasi-visionary desires for reconciliation between the two countries is misplaced insofar as they assume he's some kind of "progressive", when in actual fact he appears far more to be a sentimentalist old fossil yearning for the return of Empire's halcyon days. You can't re-write Irish history and turn it into a benevolence parade of British magnanimity .. when all the facts, personal narratives and rancour of the day suggest otherwise
That Ireland "has too many histories" is a nonsensical cop-out and wasn't in any case Cope's primary reason for not contributing to the BMH. He didn't give future historians the benefit of a personal memoir as he regarded the whole period as "the most discreditable in Ireland's history" - he simply sounds like a disgruntled imperialist aghast at the Empire crumbling all about him and probably viewed Irish "treason" as the first step in that process.
It reeks of sour grapes and a snubbed, sanctimonious British paternalism.
As to the differing/contradictory accounts all of them should be weighed and assessed according to their merits. The more narratives we have (from all sides) the likelier we are to come to an approximation at least of "the truth" (big exhale) or, at the very minimum, a small localised variant of it.
To say that professional historians or 'disinterested' intelligent researchers are incapable of reaching sound judgement, or at least one (all things considered) that takes the debate on to a higher level, because "given enough facts" we can all support our opinions, is likewise, non-sensically defeatist and tantamount to epistemological nihilism.
I agree there's more to him than meets the eye - just requires a bit of homework to find out what exactly.
But these were 'time-capsuled' commentaries Anthony, written with the express understanding that none of it would be released into the public domain until all participants were long dead and buried - nothing was going to be "stirred up", unless he had the suspicion/conviction (like perhaps Ed Moloney didn't) that "leakages" would inevitably occur.
Ok, I read MacEoin's report of the conversation as simply Cope's attempt to cover his ass from the accusation that he exaggerated the abilities of the IRA to defend its own patch and continue the war indefinitely - a question merely of imputed lack of competence. He's not interested in the Boundary and he's even less interested in the on-going CW, what does concern him is the current British election & that the intelligence he related to Lloyd George earlier in 1921 (along with Sturgis) at the time when the Cabinet were considering making approaches to Dev on a truce can be taken as a faithful depiction of the abilities of the IRA to continue prosecuting the war. As we know LG & the Cabinet were much impressed by Cope & co's assessment of the fruitlessness of the British side continuing the aggression and from that point on they were making arrangements to orchestrate a negotiated peace. I don't see any necessary linkage with his refusal to participate in the BMH archival project.
The BMH was 30yrs later and light years removed from the electioneering and reputational concerns which Cope had at the time he was helping MacEoin press paws in Westminster. The flak LG was receiving on his handling of the "Irish situation" was naturally reflecting on himself as one of the prime instigators of policy so his concern is simply to ensure MacEoin played according to the script and didn't bury him in fresh scandal.
What does it reveal about him in his refusal to submit a statement 30yrs later? Not a whole lot; merely to show like all political animals he had a well-honed survival instinct. What else can you possibly read into MacEoin's statement?
Well, I don't know how long he hung around on the Liberal's coat-tails but they were a minority partner in a ten month coalition with McDonald's Labour after that 1923 election he was so anxious MacEoin wouldn't spoil.
After which the Liberals famously disintegrated following Baldwin's five year tenure as Conservative PM in which time Cope disengaged from politics and took up his anthracite concerns.
Muskerry's outburst is an index of propertied Anglo-Irish frustration whose power had been clipped & eclipsed in the transition to democratic national self-governance.
Cope became a ready scapegoat for a wide range of interests who blamed him personally for taking his remit 'seriously' and forging a path for dialogue via, it is alleged, intelligence exchanges with Sinn Féin which compromised "His majesty's forces" in their line of duty.
Muskerry later alleged in the house it was RIC who furnished him the information but when pressurised by the Chancellor finally retracted all comments. Cope emerged reputation intact with ex-Lord Lieutenant Fitzalan citing two instances of attempts made on his life:-
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1924/mar/19/claims-of-irish-loyalists
for all its merits Trinity will likely remain an Oxbridge outreach programme long after the island is united. Our special cross to bear.
For our final primary source engagement we are offered from the thousands of viewpoints available a solitary posthumous lecture from the former British Under-Secretary telling us the years of the IR were the "most discreditable in our history".
Really, whether or not Cope's words were irony-laced or honestly held is incidental to the fact that his carefully selected mawkish reflections on peace not war sum up the thematic red thread adopted throughout this course.
The judgement we are encouraged to condone is faith in IPP HR and a repudiation of Republican violence with only passing regard for the global-wide violence of colonialism whose rivalries carving up the planet hurled a generation to their doom.
This is what Republicanism attempted to detach itself from, completely and irrevocably.
It failed as we know and set at once consuming itself with recriminations..
Despite all this, our greatest hour & our firmest bedrock will remain the men & women of 1916. As such, there is no Ireland without them - at least not one I'd like to belong to.