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In his book A Union Forever, David Sim seeks to interject Irish nationalism into the larger issue of United States foreign policy in the nineteenth century. He argues that a young group of urban nationalists associated themselves with the United States, looking to America for a “model of nonsectarian self-governance that might be translated for Irish conditions” (P. 4). Sims continues this idea to argue that both Irish-American nationalists and American statesmen both sought to manipulate one another to further their own diplomatic goals. Sim states that Irish-American nationalists “sought to manipulate the foreign policy of the United States for their own ends” (P. 10). This all revolved around the issue of Anglo-American relations and Sim seeks to illustrate how this relationship destabilized relations between The United States and Great Britain. A key example of this can be found in Sim’s discussion regarding U.S. neutrality towards the Fenian raids into Canada under the Johnson administration. By tolerating Fenian “activities,” the United States was able to get Great Britain to mitigate the accusations brought forth for her actions over the Alabama fiasco and the construction of confederate ships in British ports. The Fenians, on the other hand, were able to link the threat of U.S. diplomatic and even possible military power to Irish ends (P. 94). I found this a striking example of how at this particular point in history, just post-American Civil War, these Irish-American nationalists and American statesmen, whether fully conscious of it or not, were playing off of one another’s needs and desires to fulfill what each side sought to achieve.
As David and Andrew have pointed out, Sim’s book has direct ties to Gould’s the Powers of the Earth. The Law of Nations is still having an impact on transnational and transatlantic foreign relations. However, it is the Irish who are seeking the recognition that the United States once sought. In looking at 20perez16’s summary of Gould, one could easily substitute “Ireland” or “the Irish” for the “United States” or “Americans.” In looking at this aspect of Sim’s argument, I found it to also mean that the United States at this time had firmly established itself at the forefront of transatlantic politics. The U.S. is able to match Britain at nearly every turn, and even has the struggling, hopeful Irish using the example of the United States as inspiration and a model to aspire to. This supports Gould’s assertion that the United States had not gained true independence until roughly the 1820’s.
I also found Chapter Four of Sim’s book the most compelling. This chapter focuses on the controversy generated around the validity of naturalized U.S. citizenship. I found it quite interesting that some of the most contentious moments between the United States and Britain occurred because of this issue. When Irish Americans were arrested upon returning to Ireland from America, they were viewed as threats, being “imbued with Yankee notions, thoroughly reckless, and possessed of considerable military experience” (P. 101). However, many of these men had American citizenship as well, and some, such as John Warren, wrote public letters from jail charging the United States as being unable to protect its citizens abroad while the British simultaneously ignored his American citizenship. This chapter was excellent at detailing how these Irish nationalists were able to almost engineer a very real rift between the United States and Britain from inside prison, and had it not been for the actions of militant Irish nationalists outside the prison walls they may have succeeded. This also leads to another point of interest I found with Sim’s work. He lets us know as early as page two that everything he is going to discuss in his book ultimately failed. He states, “No sovereign Irish nation emerged as a consequence of their efforts. In fact, Irish American agency had the paradoxical effect of breeding closer Anglo-American relations over the long term” (P. 2). This sentence resulted in me reading Sim’s book not just as a history of how Irish nationalists impacted American foreign policy, but also how this resulted in the cooling of tensions between the United States and Britain and a move to the amelioration of these relations.