The International Irish Revolution<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Alvin Jackson, a research professor at the University of Edinburgh, \u201cpolitical violence in Ireland, particularly militant resistance to the Union, it no neglected theme\u201d and yet, in his own analysis of the field he proposes that novel arguments regarding the Irish revolution in the nineteenth century are emerging (Jackson 95). \u00a0Moreover, these works were not manifesting in an isolated manner but as a collective turn towards something new. Jackson\u2019s 2011 article, \u201cWidening the Fight for Ireland\u2019s Freedom: Revolutionary Nationalism in Its Global Contexts,\u201d argued that a clear trend in this scholarship is materializing departing from a traditional discourse on the topic. Beginning in 2009, Irish historians approached the topic of revolution from a fresh perspective. Jackson analyzed four major texts to reveal the change in approach. Jackson\u2019s article demonstrated how each author adds to the debate concerning Irish militancy. Overall, they painted a much more radical picture of the Irish rebels, such as the Irish Republican Brotherhood or the \u201cFenian\u201d movement. <\/span><\/p>\n

However, Jackson also argued that there existed another theme running through these interpretations with more modern roots. Jackson declared that these books were composed with certain \u201cseismic political events\u201d in the backdrop. The major global events, such as the terrorist attacks of 9\/11 in New York and 7\/7 in London, the Good Friday and St. Andrews Agreements in Northern Ireland, and the one-hundred and fifty year anniversary of the IRB, shape the way historians advanced their chosen field (95). \u00a0For example, authors, such as Jonathan Gantt, drew parallels between the militancy of the Irish and twenty-first century terrorism. <\/span><\/p>\n

Jackson utilized the major works as sources themselves, analyzing how each contributed to the global understanding of Irish revolutionary efforts, but also how they reflect the current political climate. He contended that recent events in the world led to \u201ca set of relatively new thematic, geographical, and historical concepts\u201d used to address nineteenth century Irish rebellion (97). While written in 2013 and therefore outside the scope of Jackson\u2019s analysis, David Sim\u2019s book, <\/span>A Union Forever: The Irish Question and U.S. Foreign Relations in the Victorian Age<\/span><\/i>, brings in the larger Atlantic world and utilizes a transnational approach as a foundation for discussing the Irish nationalism in the United States, proving Jackson\u2019s thesis to be quite valid. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first text considered by Jackson is called <\/span>Irish Terrorism in the Atlantic Community, 1865-1922<\/span><\/i>, written by Jonathan Gantt. This work explored the way previous scholars downplayed the Fenian violence and that the \u201cterrorist features\u201dof the IRB have not been elucidated enough (97). His scholarship aimed to contextualize the violence undertaken by the Irish in a transatlantic setting. In his text, he reviewed American journalists\u2019 response to Fenian violence, analyzing the vocabulary that discussed the force in terms of terrorism. He claimed that it was American officials, stationed abroad, that framed Irish action as acts of terror, even if they were against \u201can oppressive undemocratic social system\u201d perpetuated by England (99). Jackson presented this text not as one universally accepted, but as a position that other historians challenged. His argument presented problems as it downplays prior scholarship and tries to situate Irish response in too modern of a setting. However, his text highlighted the need for a broader context of rebellion, as it did not occur in isolation. <\/span><\/p>\n

In a similar strain, Christine Kinealy, in her book <\/span>Repeal and Revolution: 1848 in Ireland<\/span><\/i>, showed the international context of the transition from Old to Young Ireland and placing this rebellion in a pattern that surfaced across Europe (103). Kinealy\u2019s text demonstrated \u201cthe significance of the British, French and transatlantic connections with Irish nationalism in 1848\u201d (103). While she ignores some earlier biographical accounts and failed to concreting outline how 1848 is an exceptional year, she effectively shows the international relationship between Ireland and continental Europe such as a critical visit of the Irish Confederates to Alphonse de Lamartine in Paris and showed evidence of American support of Irish independence in 1848 (103).<\/span><\/p>\n

Internationalism also appeared in <\/span>The Black Hand of Republicanism: Fenianism in Modern Ireland<\/span><\/i> edited by Fearghal McGarry and James McConnel. This text, based on the anniversary of the IRB, analyzed the legacy of Fenianism between 1858 and 1922 (105). Even the title, as Jackson pointed out, drew parallels to the secret Serbian society highlighting the transnational ties of this association (105). One of the essays, written by Martin O Cathain, also discussed Irish terrorism but as problematic, as it would \u201censhrine rather than challenge the mythologizing of Irish history\u201d (106). \u00a0In spite of some discord, Jackson shows that these historians are all participants in furthering this global discourse by creating a conversation. The compilation, as Jackson surmised, shows that while the IRB played a critical role in the Irish revolution, they were quite small in comparison to a larger Fenian international culture (108). Finally, Jackson examined <\/span>Michael Davitt: New Perspectives<\/span><\/i>, edited by Fintan Lane and Andrew Newby. This text focused on Michael Davitt, who was a Fenian but renounced this movement due to the overt force exterted, although he never fully abandoned using violence methods in order to accomplish independence (108). Yet, since he was part of the Irish diaspora, his commentary on Irish nationalism was essentially internationalist, as it was based in \u201can English rather than an Irish pool of thought\u201d (108).<\/span><\/p>\n

Jackson commented that all four texts focus upon tradition themes of Fenianism and separatist insurgency. \u00a0Yet, they works are motivated, at least in part, by national anniversaries and major world events that transformed attitudes towards militant actions and revolutionary history (111). \u00a0Furthermore, there existed something else to tie in these seemingly \u201cdisparate works\u201d together (111). These texts were all \u201cinternational in their ambition\u201d and contribute to our understanding of this era in Irish history (111). He stated that Gantt used global Fenianism to show the international roots of terrorism, Kinealy used the \u201ccabbage patch\u201d revolution to show how the British reacted to the uprising, McGarry and McConnel dedicated a whole section to the Fenian diaspora, and finally, Lane and Newby constructed a hero of the Irish movement as being internationalist (111). All participating in the same framework, Jackson argued that these works are more than just a reaction to \u201ca narrow and relatively constricted national historiography\u201d but instead illustrates a \u201ctheme of internationalization\u201d used with different means to different ends (112). He remarked even more interesting and compelling it the broader circumstances they were written in, referencing the various political events of the twenty-first century. Yet, he concluded by stating that this scholarship \u201ctranscended some of its local intellectual antagonisms, only to find them replaced with a much more bracing set of international challenges\u201d (112). As he discussed with individual authors, the entire global framework comes with its own series of challenges. <\/span><\/p>\n

This article identified the trajectory of Irish Revolutionary scholarship and projected that it would become increasingly contextualized in a global setting. Sim\u2019s book appears to conform to this thesis, as it explored how Irish immigrants tried to use the United States and their international relations to help further their cause for freedom (Sim 2). The Irish hoped that American sympathies would be used against England to force them to grant Irish sovereignty. Yet, it had the paradoxical effect of creating even closer ties between Americans and the British. In fact, he argued that Irish nationalism in the political and diplomatic arenas illustrated Americans\u2019 reluctance to support the United States\u2019 model of revolution. In his work, he used a bottom-up approach to show the historical foundation of Irish American relations that began with England\u2019s end to slavery and then transferred into their imperialistic endeavors. For example, in Chapter 4, Sim used Irish prisoners belonging to the Brotherhood to show that the failure of the Fenians stilled shaped the legal definitions of citizenship, as they claimed part to multiple countries (Sim 125). He demonstrated how the United States\u2019 response to Irish immigrants was largely shaped by their relationship to England, by transatlantic thinkers, and statesmen (Sim 151).<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, Jackson and Gantt appeared in Sims text. In the bibliography, Sim cited Jackson\u2019s 1999 work, <\/span>Ireland 1798-1998: Politics and War<\/span><\/i> and Gantt\u2019s featured text written in 2010 as well as his 2006 article, \u201cIrish-American Terrorism and Anglo-American Relations.\u201d It is clear, then, that David Sim understood this global framework proposed by Jackson and utilized it in his own analysis. Specifically, Gantt pointed out that historians have been slow to \u201ctrace the resonances of Irish insurgency and British response within the United States\u201d (Jackson 98). Sim\u2019s work clearly fills this void and established a pattern that continued the themes proposed in the 2009 to 2010 scholarship. Sim\u2019s work acts as an additional piece to the puzzle that Jackson attempted to put together and one that contributes to the understanding of the Irish national movement as part of a larger, more broad, global context. As a final note, this parallels to other course texts, such as <\/span>Among the Powers of the Earth<\/span><\/i> and some essays in <\/span>Slavery\u2019s Capitalism<\/span><\/i> that address global themes. It appears that there is a general trend in varying historical fields to address international issues and that, as Jackson has observed, is making its way into many areas of focus.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/span><\/p>\n

Jackson, Alvin. \u201cWidening the Fight for Ireland\u2019s Freedom: Revolutionary Nationalism in Its Global Contexts.\u201d <\/span>Victorian Studies<\/span><\/i> 54, no. 1 (2011): 95-112.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sim, David.<\/span> A Union Forever: The Irish Question and U.S. Foreign Relations in the Victorian Age<\/span><\/i>. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2013. <\/span><\/p>\n

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The International Irish Revolution According to Alvin Jackson, a research professor at the University of Edinburgh, \u201cpolitical violence in Ireland, particularly militant resistance to the Union, it no neglected theme\u201d and yet, in his own analysis of the field he proposes that novel arguments regarding the Irish revolution in the nineteenth century are emerging (Jackson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions\/302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}