Nationalism and Unionism in Ireland: Economic Perspectives (original) (raw)
Ireland´s political and constitutional dilemma is that two competing nationalisms emerged in the nineteenth century on the one small island. One was Irish nationalism which harked back to an ancient Gaelic civilization and was infused with Catholic culture and sometimes Anglophobic sentiment. The other was a regional dialect of British nationalism which took on a distinctly confessional character in Ulster. The aim of this paper is to identify the role of economic forces and the experience of economic change - a rather more subjective notion - in the development of nationalist and unionist movements in recent centuries. A fundamental part of the story, it is argued, lies with deep economic structures as well as temporally-bound and changing economic forces. The economic mattered but not only the economic.
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2008
Cet article repose sur le postulat selon lequel les principales ideologies politiques propres a l’Irlande que sont le nationalisme et l’unionisme, constituent deux formes antinomiques de nationalisme : le premier se caracterisant par sa nature « autochtone », le second par sa dimension supranationale, sur le modele britannique du nationalisme imperial. Si leurs origines profondes remontent indubitablement aux annees 1790, leur rivalite n’apparut sur le devant de la scene politique irlandaise que vers la fin du XIXe siecle. Des lors, le nationalisme « autochtone » et l’unionisme devaient faconner l’histoire de l’Irlande, au moins jusqu’au milieu des annees 2000, en fonction d’un antagonisme politique et ideologique, unique en Europe occidentale.
Irish Nationalism and Unionism Between State, Region and Nation
Region and State in Nineteenth-Century Europe, 2012
Within the debate on the origins of modern nationalism the Irish could be put forward as an ironclad case by the proponents of the primordialist camp, which argues that nations were essentially already present in the middle ages. Ireland has after all a long history of separateness, both politically as well as culturally. Although never really united in one state before the English kings extended their control over Ireland, it had its own parliament from the late middle ages until 1800 and shared a common language and culture distinct from the English, Scots or Welsh well before and right into the nineteenth century. For movements trying to prove the existence of an Irish nation, there were therefore sufficient common and distinct features to tap into even apart from the mere existence of a separate geographical entity. Although as was the case for many other European peoples the existence of a cultural distinctiveness was largely mythical by the nineteenth century, the argument for the creation of a separate Ireland could nevertheless easily be supported in perceived fact and indeed occasionally found resonance with large sections of the population when combined with other concerns.
Irish Nationalism, Labour and the Unionist Working Class
The history of the labour movement in Ireland has been documented by a number of academics. However, it is a relatively neglected subject when one considers the plethora of books and articles on general Irish history, particularly those covering the conflict of nationality and religion. In addition, most of the published work on the labour movement has been written from an Irish nationalistic perspective. Consequently, these historians have tended to undermine Ulster’s unionist working class. This book aims to redress the balance by writing about the major currents of Irish history that shaped Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism, and caused so many difficulties for labour. In writing from a working-class unionist perspective, my principal aim is to dispel some myths and portray a much-maligned (and consequently bitter) community in a more favourable light.
Divided Loyalties: A Reassessment of ex-Unionists in the early politics of the Irish Free State
Whilst those who explicitly identified as “Unionists” in what is now the Republic of Ireland may have represented a numerically small minority by 1922, they were nevertheless an influential faction within Irish society with a strongly visible presence in the media, the world of business and amongst the professional classes. With this in mind, the experience of those who chose to remain in the Irish Free State and participate in its public life despite the clear Catholic and nationalist influence on the policies adopted by the early governments of the new state provide a fascinating example of an identity and culture in transition, as well as an insight into the formative years of politics in the modern Irish state. The members and institutions of the Southern minority who stayed in Ireland underwent a transition from “Unionists” to “ex-Unionists”, in the process redefining themselves as a political community despite the absence of any electorally significant political parties identifying as “ex-Unionist” or “Protestant”. Ex-Unionist politicians and institutions adapted sufficiently through participating in Irish public life in the early years of the Free State to influence the politics and culture of the new Free State throughout the decade of constitutional and social changes Ireland experienced under the Cumman na nGaedhal governments led by William Cosgrave, in the process demonstrating the necessity of an inclusive idea of Irish citizenship and the accommodation of minority concerns in government policy. The ex-Unionist faction in Irish public life, despite their eventual decline into a tiny and electorally insignificant minority, are of great importance to understanding the emergence and development of a political movement rooted in civic nationalism and a broadly conservative outlook on social and economic questions in Irish public life from the disparate pro-Treaty supporters, most famously represented by the foundation of Fine Gael after the rise to power of Fianna Fáil. In this study, I intend to understand and explain the significance of ex-Unionists and institutions which had previously publicly identified as Unionist, such as The Irish Times and the Church of Ireland, to the predominantly conservative social and economic policies that characterised the early years of the Irish Free State as well as the character of the political parties that went on to dominate Irish politics.
The persistence of nationalist and anti-state sentiment in Ulster, 1848-67
Between 1848 and 1867 in Ulster there existed numerous modes of political and social collective action which had their antecedents in pre-Famine developments and which Catholics continued to engage in. In these could be discerned nationalist and anti-state sentiment. Some of these forms were social rather than political in character. A curious mixture of associational Ribbonism and agrarianism had grown out of pre-Famine agrarian secret societies and Defenderism. This form of collective action reared its head in the south Armagh region of Ulster in the early part of the post-Famine years. Meanwhile, the popular anti-Orange action which Catholics had practiced during the times of the Armagh Troubles of the 1780s also persisted, especially in the Mourne region of south Down. The Ribbon societies were most prevalent on the province’s peripheries and in Belfast. Ribbonism lay somewhere between political network and social club. The Ribbonmen were vaguely nationalist, but certainly anti-state in outlook. They had adopted the mantle of Catholic defence and associational practice from the Defenders as early as 1811 and were still functioning in that role by the 1850s and 60s. Other modes of organisation were clearly political. The remnants of the Young Ireland movement, by 1847 known as the Irish Confederation, stood in the non-sectarian republican tradition of the United Irishmen. Though an entirely new phenomenon in many ways, the IRB and the Fenian movement from the early 1860s persisted in propagating the advanced nationalist ideology of the Young Irelanders who had come before them. Scholars such as W. E. Vaughan and R. V. Comerford have portrayed the post-Famine years as ones of Catholic political contentment with the Union and social contentment with the land system and Protestant hegemony. This proposed paper will argue to the contrary; that the continued survival of certain social modes of collective action and political traditions, though often a minority practice, restricted the legitimacy of British rule in Ireland and maintained foundations on which the more explicitly anti-imperial mass movements of Parnellism, Hibernianism and Republicanism could be built in subsequent years.
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