Table Of ContentThe
G
Irish Experience
Since 1800
A Concise History
Third Edition
Thomas E. Hachey and Lawrence J. McCaffrey
M.E.Sharpe
Armonk, New York
London, England
Copyright © 2010 by M.E. Sharpe, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without written permission from the publisher, M.E. Sharpe, Inc.,
80 Business Park Drive, Armonk, New York 10504.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hachey, Thomas E.
The Irish experience since 1800 : a concise history / by Thomas E. Hachey and
Lawrence J. McCaffrey. 3rd ed.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: The Irish experience. Rev. ed. 1996.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7656-2510-6 (cloth : alk. paper)— ISBN 978-0-7656-2511-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Ireland—History. I. McCaffrey, Lawrence John, 1925– II. Hachey, Thomas E. Irish
experience. III. Title.
DA910.H33 2010
941.508—dc22 2009037869
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z 39.48-1984.
~
IBT (c) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
EB (p) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To our spouses,
Jane
and
Joan
With Gratitude
Contents
Preface to the Third Edition
Thomas E. Hachey and Lawrence J. McCaffrey ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Part I. From Colony to Nation-State
Lawrence J. McCaffrey 1
1. Ireland Before the Union: England’s Conquest of Ireland 3
The Tudor/Stuart Plantation of Ireland 7
Penal Laws 13
Landlordism 16
The Rise and Fall of the Protestant Nation 18
2. Catholic Emancipation, 1801–1829 28
The Life of Rural Catholic Ireland 28
The Emergence of Daniel O’Connell 32
The Catholic Association and the Beginnings of Modern
Irish Nationalism 36
The Catholic Victory 37
The Consequences of Catholic Emancipation 39
3. Repeal and British Politics, 1830–1845 41
O’Connell in the House of Commons 41
The Whig Alliance 43
Lobbying for Repeal 46
Young Ireland and Cultural Nationalism 47
The Surge of Repeal 51
Combating the Rising Tide 54
The Defeat of Repeal 55
Peel’s Effort to Integrate Ireland into the United Kingdom 57
4. Famine and Fenianism, 1845–1870 61
The Irish Confederation 62
Repeal to Revolution 64
v
vi CONTENTS
Famine 65
The Consolidation of Irish Catholicism 67
Land and Politics 70
The American Dimension 73
Fenianism 76
Gladstone’s Initial Response to the Irish Question 79
5. Home Rule and the Land War, 1870–1882 82
Isaac Butt and Home Rule 82
The Emergence of Charles Stewart Parnell 87
The New Departure 89
The Decline of Butt’s Version of Home Rule 91
The Land War 93
6. Home Rule and British Politics, 1882–1906 97
The Irish Party: Strong and Solid at Last 97
Gladstone’s Pursuit of Home Rule 99
Aspects of the Irish-Liberal Alliance 100
The Fall of Parnell 102
The Ebb and Flow of Home Rule Enthusiasm 106
Trying to Kill Home Rule with Kindness 108
7. Currents and Crises in Irish Nationalism, 1880–1914 111
A Reunified but Aging Irish Party 111
English and Irish “Racism” 112
Irish-Ireland 113
An Alternative to Home Rule 116
Labor Restiveness 117
Reform Under the Liberals 118
The House of Lords Crisis and Home Rule 121
The Brink of Civil War 122
The Union Temporarily Preserved by a Foreign War 126
8. Wars of Liberation, 1914–1921 128
Blood Sacrifice 128
The Anglo-Irish War 134
End of a War, Start of a Nation 136
Part II. From Free State to Republic
Thomas E. Hachey 141
9. The Irish Free State, 1922–1932: A Reluctant Dominion 143
Establishing the New State 143
Irish Economic, Cultural, and Religious Life in the 1920s
and Early 1930s 153
Contents vii
the Irish Constitution: Blueprint for Democracy at Home and
equality Abroad 159
10. The de Valera Era, 1932–1959: Continuity and Change in Irish Life 165
Dismantling the treaty and supplanting the Free state 165
the Anglo-Irish Agreements of 1938 174
social and Political Unrest in the 1930s 177
Irish neutrality and World War II 181
Irish Life and Politics During the emergency 185
the Irish Republic, 1948–1959 188
11. Modern Ireland, 1959–1998: Adjusting to a European Future 194
Abandoning economic self-sufficiency 194
new Challenges and opportunities 196
social and Political Responses to the new Realities 200
Ireland Confronts Modernity 203
the old Boy network of Irish Politics 206
Church-state Relations in the 1990s 207
Irish Catholicism and Irish-Ireland: Cultural Identities in transition 209
12. The Northern Specter, 1920–1998: A Continuing Crisis in
the Conflict of Cultures 214
early Background to the Modern “t roubles” 214
the northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement 218
Attempts at Power-sharing and Devolution 220
the new Ireland Forum and the Anglo-Irish Accord 225
Irish-American Familiarity with the Ulster Issue 228
IRA Propaganda in America and the Problem of Perception for Britain 230
noRAID and the American Connection with Ulster 231
Concern and Constraint in Confronting the Ulster Crisis 232
13. Ireland into the Twenty-First Century 235
the Genesis of the Peace Process 236
Decade of the Celtic tiger 244
old-Age Politics in a new-Age nation 247
Popular Culture in the new Ireland 250
education: Liberating or Limiting? 251
the Celtic tiger and Cultural Change 252
Irish neutrality in the twenty-First Century 254
economic Collapse and the Prospect of an Uncertain Future 255
Recommended Reading 263
Index 273
About the Authors 288
Preface to the Third Edition
George Santayana famously warned that “Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it.” In the case of the Irish, both in Ireland and among
the Diaspora, the tendency was rather to be obsessed with the past, with its injus-
tices and miseries, frustrating realistic, hopeful concentration on the present and
future. These memories motivated James Joyce to write: “History is a nightmare I
am trying to escape.” A distinguished historian of Victorian Britain, G.M. Young,
observed that what “England could never remember, Ireland could never forget.”
Of course, losers have longer memories than winners do. But many recent Irish
historians, frequently labeled revisionists, have complained that much of Irish
historical memory is afflicted with mythology rather than enlightened objectivity,
agreeing with José Ortega y Gasset that “We have need of history in its entirety,
not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
Of course, there were justifications for an Irish persecution complex. Ireland
did experience centuries of colonialism, which denied the Catholic majority basic
civil liberties. In addition, British occupiers stole their property as well as their
political influence. Most of them lived in virtual slavery as well as poverty. The
Great Famine of the 1840s killed over 800,000 and forced at least a million to leave
the country, mostly to North America. During the Great Hunger, British religious
and racial prejudices and heartless economic theory influenced the Westminster
government to inadequately relieve distress in part of the United Kingdom. In the
United States, Irish immigrants suffered from extensive bigotry. Admittedly, these
ignorant often-undisciplined pioneers of urban ghettos were a social blight, but their
Catholicism, more than their conduct, fostered hate. Even after religious morality,
better jobs and higher family incomes, and education lifted them from the lowest
levels of American society, anti-Catholic nativism still restricted or blocked Irish
social and professional advancement. Seldom were Irish Americans visible in the
worlds of banking, big business, and prestigious positions in the professions. That
is why some of their best and brightest sought power and prestige in the church,
politics, and the labor movement. As late as the 1960s, many colleges and uni-
versities refused them academic appointments, even in state institutions of higher
learning they paid taxes to support.
Things have improved for Irish and other Catholic Americans since post–World
War II prosperity; an increasing number of college and university graduates, a result
ix
