Chapter one examines the impacts of Irish nationalism in British centres during the Home Rule crisis, from the Irish Party’s Home Rule campaign to the Irish Volunteers’ preparations for civil war. It profiles the political languages and cultures of the ‘British’ Home Rule movement; examines the influence of extra-parliamentary crises - Ulster unionist, suffragist, trade unionist – on Irish nationalist identity in British centres; and assesses the militancy, and constitutional impacts, of advanced nationalist activism in metropolitan Britain by July 1914. Between 1912 and 1914, this chapter submits, the Irish Parliamentary Party presented ‘two faces’ of Home Rule - towards British political opinion and Irish nationalist opinion in Britain. John Redmond and the I.P.P., critically, were ‘representative’ of ‘British-Ireland’ and were embedded in the mainstream political cultures of Edwardian Britain on the eve of war. Irish activists in British cities, however, were radicalised by the extra-parliamentary representations of late Edwardian politics, straining the ideological coherence of, and popular adherence to, the I.P.P.’s proto-electoral strategy. The proliferation of Irish Volunteer units in British centres threatened to spark an Irish civil war on mainland Britain. The militarisation of Irish nationalism, in conclusion, constituted one of the ‘surface excitements’ of Edwardian Britain.

The conclusion examines the negotiations of the Anglo-Irish Treaty which led to the formation of the Irish Free State, foregrounding the British-Irish political figures brought together at 10 Downing Street who illuminated the events of this book. Far from a sideshow to developments in Ireland, the concluding chapter submits, Irish nationalism in Britain was integral to both Irish and British contemporary assessments of the Irish Revolution. Irish nationalists in Britain, further, mobilised popular political interest, and activism, on an unprecedented scale across this decade of constitutional crisis, war, and revolution. The potential influence of Irish nationalism in British cities, moreover, occupied the minds and minutes of British policy makers, from Winston Churchill to David Lloyd George. How was Irish nationalism re-constructed across Britain between 1912 and 1922? Shaped by the influences of the Irish Revolution, British politics, the Irish diaspora, and the British Empire, Irish nationalism was the cumulative experience of layers of overlapping representations of, and relationships with, ideas of nation. In its modes of political activism, gendered experiences of political life, and representations of public politics, Irish nationalism was impacted by changes, and continuities, across the British polity between the late Edwardian, First World War, and post-war periods.

Chapter four examines the political effects of Irish republican publicity campaigns in Britain on the British-Irish propaganda war between January 1919 and July 1921. It profiles the political languages and cultures of Irish republican-inspired organisations; assesses the publicity campaigns of the I.S.D.L. in British cities; and evaluates the import of Sinn Féin propaganda on British political opinion. In the absence of Sinn Féin representation at Westminster, this chapter submits, the responsibility of cultivating British public opinion rested heavily on Irish nationalist organisations in British centres. The I.S.D.L. and Sinn Féin, however, were fundamentally apolitical movements who failed to acknowledge their responsibility as de facto Irish political parties in Britain. The coordination of mass demonstrations, and cultivation of post-war political discourses, re-cast the I.S.D.L. and Sinn Féin as political associations with which the Irish ethnic group increasingly identified, as the War of Independence intensified. While they failed to establish the same level of ‘social esteem’ as the Irish Party in British political culture, Irish nationalist associations became the target of British state censorship and repression. In the war of words for British public opinion, consequently, the I.S.D.L. and Sinn Féin were recognised by British policy makers at Whitehall as prolific propagandists.

Chapter five evaluates the impacts of Irish republican military campaigns in Britain, from the conclusion of the 1916 Rising to the conclusion of the War of Independence in July 1921. It profiles the political languages and cultures of Irish republican militants in British centres; investigates the I.R.B.’s involvement in the post-war British arms trade with criminal gangs and Communists; and assesses the political, cultural, and social impacts of I.R.A. campaigns in Britain, from provincial Scotland to metropolitan London. ‘British’ I.R.B. sections, under the direction of Michael Collins, were integrated into a specialist, interconnected arms system designed to sustain the republican arsenal in Ireland. Their ‘circulation of weapons’, this chapter establishes, underpinned Collins’ war against the Dublin Metropolitan Police in 1919 and 1920. Between 1920 and 1921, meanwhile, British-based I.R.A. Volunteers carried out attacks in major English urban centres. This research establishes the influence of I.R.A. G.H.Q. over the campaign and the strategic ‘logic’ underpinning I.R.A. attacks in British centres. British political leaders at Downing Street, this chapter submits, judged I.R.A. attacks in Britain as a significant part of the wider republican military campaign in the months leading to the Truce.

The introduction sets out the theoretical, methodological, and empirical basis for this study. This research explores the evolution of Irish nationalism in Britain through four thematic lenses: the Irish Revolution, British politics, the Irish diaspora, the British Empire. Read collectively, these analytical frameworks can sharpen historical perspectives on the ideological development, communal function, and individual expression of Irish nationalism. To explore the history of the Irish in Britain between 1912 and 1922 is to interrogate a ‘crisis of (national) identity’ in terms of both ‘self’ and ‘other’. Original conceptual frameworks are supported by ‘new’ methodological approaches. Following the linguistic turn of the ‘new’ political history, this study explores representations of Irish nationalism in Britain in the ‘cultural’ spaces between ‘high politics’ and ‘history from below’: political platforms, texts, and languages. This study investigates the Irish Home Rule and republican movements using underutilised archival sources. The T.P. O’Connor papers, Art Ó Briain papers, and Catholic Herald newspaper series collectively establish a robust archival foundation by which to evaluate the significance of Irish nationalism in Britain during the Irish Revolution. The book is divided into five chapters which chronologically, and thematically, examine Irish nationalism in Britain between 1912 and 1922.

Chapter three measures the political influences of ‘new’ and ‘old’ Irish nationalisms in Britain from the aftermath of the 1916 Rising to the aftermath of the 1918 general election. It profiles the political languages and cultures of ‘Irish-Ireland’ nationalism in British centres: Gaelic League-Sinn Féin-I.S.D.L.; charts the decline of the Irish Parliamentary Party’s British political influence; and evaluates the impact of the 1918 Representation of the People Act on Irish political representation in Britain. While advanced Irish nationalist associations were central to the organisation of relief campaigns for interned rebels in British centres, the 1916 Rising, this chapter submits, did not fundamentally change Irish nationalist politics in Britain. Conflicted over Redmond’s earlier refusal to join the British Cabinet, the Irish Party was instead debilitated by the absence of political leadership, and a post-war political manifesto, in Britain. While the Irish Party in Ireland was decisively defeated by Sinn Féin at the 1918 general election, the Irish Party in Britain was effectively displaced by the Labour Party. The ‘victory’ of Sinn Féin in Britain was predicated less on the democratic legitimacy of Dáil Éireann and more on its recognisable post-war mandate: an Irish Self-Determination League.

Chapter two examines the conflicting nationalist politics mobilising Irish volunteers in wartime Britain. It profiles the political languages and cultures of Irish volunteers in British centres, from the 150,000 recruits in the British armed forces to the eighty-seven rebels in the armed forces of the Irish Republic; interrogates the correspondence, and separation, of Irish nationalist identities between home/front; and charts the rise, and estranged demise, of Irish Party support in wartime Britain. The Irish Party, this chapter submits, successfully maintained its ‘two face’ political position in Britain, in anticipation of a short war and a bitterly contested general election on the Home Rule issue, a political strategy termed ‘home front nationalism’. Redmond’s rejection of a British Cabinet position in May 1915, and the I.P.P.’s rejection of conscription in January 1916, however, fatally undermined the Irish Party’s policy. The participation of British-based Irish Volunteers in the 1916 Rising was a rebellion against the wartime politics of ‘home front nationalism’ and British citizenship. An examination of the ‘British connection’ to the Rising, from the Edinburgh-born James Connolly to the London-based Michael Collins, supports the thesis that military strategy was not the primary focus of the 1916 leaders.

This essay examines interpretations of contemporary and historical Ireland through the eyes of Irish seminary students resident at the Irish College in Paris, c.1870–1900. It interrogates the extensive print holdings of the Old Library, in addition to select items in the Irish College archives, to illuminate student perceptions of Ireland's past and present. This study locates the experience of ‘reading’ Ireland in the Irish College, Paris, at the intersection of seminal political changes in Ireland and France, the epicentre of European debate between religion and secularism and along the frontier of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The period 1870–1900 was denoted by compelling political, religious and social tensions in both Ireland and France. These years witnessed the emergence of mass politico-cultural mobilisation in Ireland through the Home Rule, Land League and Gaelic League movements. The Irish Catholic Church both embraced and eschewed these campaigns. These decades also marked the consolidation of the French Third Republic. France developed a constitutional democracy which emphasised republican secularism over religion, to the diminution of Catholic influence in public life. Moreover, this period also prompted rich debate over the role of the Church in the modern era. The First Vatican Council was established to situate the Catholic Church more definitively within a European society increasingly influenced by the ideas of rationalism, liberalism and materialism. Meanwhile, the period under review also offers an opportunity to weigh the impact of the Cullenite revolution, the Irish Church's instrumental, institutional conformity to Roman Catholic practices, devotions and doctrines, on an Irish religious community at the heart of an increasingly secular France. This study investigates the impact of these layered influences on interpretations of Ireland at the Irish College in Paris between its centenary and the end of century.

Scope and Content

The Old Library at the Irish College in Paris is an invaluable repository from which to elicit the nuances of Irish student perspectives of Ireland. The loss of its original collections during the French revolution necessitated the assembly and arrangement of new titles for the student population. What items were acquired in this re-collection process?