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Revolution and nationalism in Treatyite political thought, 1891–1924

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2023

Seán Donnelly*
Affiliation:
Independent scholar
*
*Seán Donnelly, independent scholar, sean.donnelly092@gmail.com

Abstract

The last fifty years have witnessed the production of a large body of scholarship exploring the political and social history of the Irish Civil War and its aftermath. Debate has focused principally on the administrative abilities and democratic credentials of the Free State government and the extent to which revolutionary ideals were expressed institutionally following the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. However, there has been strikingly little attempt to contextualise, rather than appraise, the lineage of the moral and ideological assumptions embedded in the executive council's public professions of political conviction, or to understand Treatyite policy-making on its own terms. In particular, historians have tended to weigh and measure the performance of the Cumann na nGaedheal government against anachronistic and moralising definitions of what the Irish revolution stood for at the expense of any systematic attempt to reconstruct the manner in which relevant historical actors understood this relationship. Focusing on the heterodox intellectual firmament of the Irish-Ireland movement, this paper demonstrates that the Cumann na nGaedheal government never abandoned the political languages of the revolution; rather, they constructed an ideology to support the new state rooted in their own interpretation of what they considered revolutionary ideals of Irish-Ireland nationalism.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

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References

1 Dáil Éireann deb., ii, no. 18 (17 Jan. 1923).

2 Belloc, Hilaire, Danton: a study by Hilaire Belloc (New York, 1899), p. 1Google Scholar.

3 O'Higgins, Kevin, Three years hard labour: an address delivered to the Irish Society of Oxford University on the 31st of October, 1924 (Dublin, 1924), p. 4Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 5.

5 Ibid., pp 5‒7.

6 Ibid., p. 7.

7 Ibid., p. 16.

8 Dáil Éireann deb., i, no. 25 (25 Oct. 1922).

9 U.C.D.A., Desmond and Mabel FitzGerald papers, P80/318 (4).

10 An Saorstát, 7 Oct. 1922.

11 Quoted in Ferriter, Diarmaid, The transformation of Ireland: 1900‒2000 (London, 2004), p. 297Google Scholar.

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17 For theses that frame 1922 as heralding the onset of a bourgeois counter-revolution, see, for example, Maryann Gialanella Valiulis, Portrait of a revolutionary: General Richard Mulcahy (Dublin, 1992); Mary Kotsonouris, Retreat from revolution: the Dáil courts, 1920‒24 (Dublin, 1994); John M. Regan, The Irish counter-revolution, 1921‒36: Treatyite politics and settlement in independent Ireland (Dublin, 2001); Bill Kissane, The politics of the Irish Civil War (Oxford, 2005); Gavin M. Foster, The Irish Civil War and society: politics, class, and conflict (London, 2015).

18 Regan, The Irish counter-revolution, 341.

19 Marc Mulholland, ‘How revolutionary was the “Irish Revolution”’ in Éire‒Ireland, lvi, no. 1 & 2 (2021), pp 139‒75; see also Joost Augusteijn (ed.), The Irish Revolution, 1913‒23 (London, 2002).

20 On the history of the Free State as ‘the history of a disappointment’, see Anne Dolan, ‘Politics, economy and society in the Irish Free State, 1922–1939’ in Thomas Bartlett (ed.), The Cambridge history of Ireland, vol. iv: 1800 to the present (Cambridge, 2018), pp 323‒4.

21 Aidan Beatty ‘An Irish revolution without a revolution’ in Journal of World-Systems Research, xxii, no. 1 (2016), pp 54‒76; also idem, Masculinity and power in Irish nationalism, 1884‒1938 (London, 2016), pp 3‒4.

22 Aidan Beatty, ‘Counter‒revolutionary masculinities: gender, social control and revising the chronologies of Irish nationalist politics’ in Irish Studies Review, xxix, no. 2 (2021), p. 10.

23 E. P. Thompson, The making of the English working class (New York, 1963), p. 12.

24 Quentin Skinner, Visions of politics: vol. I, regarding method (Cambridge, 2002), p 6.

25 For more on the origins and development of this method, see Gary Browning, A history of modern political thought: the question of interpretation (Oxford, 2016), chapter 4.

26 Prager, Building democracy in Ireland, pp 27‒66; Mike Cronin, ‘Projecting the nation through sport and culture: Ireland, Aonach Tailteann and the Irish Free State, 1924‒32’ in Journal of Contemporary History, xxxviii, no.3 (July 2003), pp 395‒411.

27 Jason Knirck, Afterimage of the revolution: Cumann na nGaedheal and Irish politics, 1922–1932 (Madison, WI, 2014), pp 54‒104.

28 Arthur Griffith, The resurrection of Hungary: a parallel for Ireland (Dublin, 1918), pp 68‒9.

29 Ciara Meehan, The Cosgrave party: a history of Cumann na nGaedheal, 1923–33 (Dublin, 2010), pp 44–7; Mel Farrell, Party politics in a new democracy: the Irish Free State, 1922‒37 (New York, 2017), pp 109‒14.

30 Seamus Deane, Strange country: modernity and nationhood in Irish writing since 1790 (Oxford, 1997), pp 50‒51.

31 Erskine Childers, The framework of home rule (London, 1911), pp 150‒51.

32 Douglas Hyde, ‘The necessity for de-anglicising Ireland’ in Charles Gavan Duffy (ed.), The revival of Irish literature: addresses by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, K.C.M.G, Dr. George Sigerson, and Dr. Douglas Hyde (London, 1894), pp 115‒61.

33 R. Vincent Comerford, ‘Nation, nationalism and the Irish language’ in T. Hachey and L. J. McCaffrey (eds), Perspectives on Irish nationalism (Lexington, 1989), p. 29.

34 D. P. Moran, The philosophy of Irish-Ireland (Dublin, 1905), pp 69‒70.

35 Patrick Pearse, ‘The coming revolution’ in Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse: political writings and speeches, vol. 5 (Dublin, 1922), p. 95.

36 William B. Yeats, ‘The Irish dramatic movement’ (Nobel Lecture, 15 Dec. 1923) in idem, Dramatis personae: autobiographies (London, 1936), p. 177.

37 Brian Ó Conchubhair, ‘The culture war: the Gaelic League and Irish Ireland’ in Bartlett (ed.), Cambridge history of Ireland, iv, p. 196.

38 Aodh de Blácam, ‘The Gaelic League yesterday and today’ in Irish Monthly, xlvi, no. 546 (1918), pp 680, 682.

39 Aodh de Blácam, What Sinn Fein stands for: the Irish republican movement; its history, aims and ideals, examined as to their significance to the world (Dublin, 1921), p. 45.

40 De Blácam, What Sinn Fein stands for, p. 61.

41 John Daniel Logan, The making of the new Ireland (Toronto, 1909), pp 9‒10.

42 Patrick Pearse, ‘Murder machine’ in Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse, p. 20.

43 Report of commission on the Gaeltacht, 1925 (U.C.D.A., Ernest Blythe papers, P24/529).

44 For more on how late Victorian theories of primitivism, degeneration and racial decline shaped Irish nationalist thought, see Sinéad Garrigan Mattar, Primitivism, science, and the Irish revival (Oxford, 2004); Brian Ó Conchubhair, Fin de siècle na Gaeilge: Darwin, an athbheochan agus smaointeoireacht na hEorpa (Galway, 2009).

45 Richard Bourke, ‘Revolution and political ideas in Ireland, 1890–1922’ in Richard Bourke and Niamh Gallagher (eds), The political thought of the Irish revolution (Cambridge, 2022), p. xvii.

46 Moran, The philosophy of Irish-Ireland, pp 38, 46, 74.

47 Ibid., p. 80.

48 Ibid., pp 68‒9.

49 Ibid., pp 6‒7.

50 See, for example, Patrick Lynch, ‘The social revolution that never was’ in Desmond Williams (ed.), The Irish struggle 1916–1926 (London, 1966), pp 41‒54; Bill Kissane, ‘The not-so-amazing case of Irish democracy’ in Irish Political Studies, x (1995), pp 43‒68.

51 See, for example, James Connolly, Labour, nationality and religion (Dublin, 1910).

52 Moran, The philosophy of Irish-Ireland, p. 84.

53 Douglas Hyde, The Irish language movement and the Gaelic League (Dublin, 1912), p. 9.

54 Hyde, ‘The necessity for de-anglicising Ireland’, p. 122.

55 Michael Collins, The path to freedom (Dublin, 1922), p. 28.

56 Ibid., p. 144.

57 Ibid.., p. 62.

58 Nationality, 24 July 1915. ‘A. Newman’ was the adopted pseudonym of Herbert Moore Pim.

59 Alice Stopford Green, The making of Ireland and its undoing, 1200‒1600 (London, 1909), p. ix.

60 Alice Stopford Green, Irish nationality (New York, 1911), p. 13.

61 Eóin MacNeill, Phases of Irish history (Dublin, 1920), p. 240; see also P. S. O'Hegarty, The indestructible nation; a survey of Irish history from the invasion. The first phase: the overthrow of the clans (Dublin, 1918), p. xii.

62 Roger Casement, The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it (New York, 1914), p. 16.

63 Thomas Kettle, The open secret of Ireland (London, 1912), p. xiii.

64 P. J. Daly, The Irish vindicator both of race and language: an appeal to the Irish race to save the Irish language (Boston, 1911), pp 4, 8, 16.

65 Pearse, ‘Murder machine’ in Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse, p. 41.

66 Arthur Griffith, How Ireland has “prospered” under English rule and the slave mind (New York, n.d. [c.1914–15]), p. 15. References to the First World War suggest this work was published in 1914 or 1915.

67 Griffith, How Ireland has “prospered”, p. 16.

68 Sir Horace Plunkett, Ireland in the new century (London, 1904), p. 11.

69 Plunkett, Ireland in the new century, p. 291.

70 Childers, The framework of home rule, p. 164 (emphasis in original).

71 See, for example, Timothy G. McMahon, Grand opportunity: the Gaelic revival and Irish society, 1893‒1910 (Syracuse, NY, 2008); P. J. Matthews, Revival: the Abbey Theatre, Sinn Féin, the Gaelic League, and the Co-operative Movement (Cork, 2003).

72 Gaelic League, The Irish language movement and the Gaelic League (Dublin, 1912), p. 11.

73 Sydney Brooks, The new Ireland (Dublin, 1907), p. 2.

74 Bulmer Hobson, The creed of the republic (Belfast, 1907), pp 9‒10.

75 Griffith, How Ireland has “prospered”, p. 24.

76 Arthur Griffith, ‘Preface’ in John Mitchel, Jail journal (new ed., Dublin, 1913), p. xiv. Mitchel, as is well known, was an impassioned defender of the institution of slavery in the southern United States.

77 Patrick McGilligan, Dáil Éireann deb., ix, no. 6 (30 Oct. 1924).

78 See, for example, Mel Cousins, The birth of social welfare in Ireland 1922–1952 (Dublin, 2003), p. 55.

79 Kissane, Irish Civil War, p. 151.

80 Lindsey Earner-Byrne, Letters of the Catholic poor: poverty in independent Ireland, 1920–1940 (Cambridge, 2017), pp 20‒58.

81 Regan, The Irish counter-revolution, pp 137‒8.

82 Dáil Éireann deb., iii, no. 35 (2 July 1923).

83 Hilaire Belloc, whom O'Higgins cited in his 1924 address at Oxford, was the most influential populariser of distributist principles in the anglophone world during the interwar period: see Jay P. Corrin, Catholic intellectuals and the challenge of democracy (South Bend, IN, 2002), p. 15.

84 W. T. Cosgrave, Policy of the Cumann na nGaedheal party (Dublin, 1927), p. 6.

85 Dáil Éireann deb., v, no. 10 (2 Nov. 1923). For examples of pre-Treaty assertions about taxation, see, for example, Darrell Figgis, The economic case for Irish independence (Dublin, 1920); Arthur Griffith, How Ireland is taxed (Dublin, 1907); Eóin MacNeill, ‘How Ireland is plundered’, Nationality, 7 August 1915.

86 J. J. Walsh, quoted in Cumann na nGaedheal: annual convention; May 13 & 14, 1925; Mansion House, Dublin (Athlone, 1925), p. 3.

87 Griffith, The resurrection of Hungary, p 144. On the importance of whiteness in shaping Irish nationalism, see Bruce Nelson, Irish nationalists and the making of the Irish race (Princeton, NJ, 2012).

88 Griffith, The resurrection of Hungary, pp xvii, 162.

89 Dáil Éireann deb., T, no. 2 (14 Dec. 1921). George Nicolls echoed this point in Dáil Éireann deb., T, no. 10 (3 Jan. 1922).

90 Ibid., T, no. 6 (19 Dec. 1921).

91 Ibid.

92 Seán Hales in ibid., T, no. 5 (17 Dec. 1921).

93 The Treaty was the first official document in which the phrase ‘British Commonwealth of Nations’ was used: see Jason Knirck, Imagining Ireland's independence: the debates over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 (Plymouth, 2006), p 183. For additional context, see Matthew Kelly, ‘Irish nationalist opinion and the British Empire in the 1850s and 1860s’ in Past & Present, no. 204 (2009), pp 127‒54; Paul Townend, The road to home rule: anti-imperialism and the Irish national movement (Madison, WI, 2016).

94 Foster, The Irish Civil War, p. 37.

95 Brian Hanley, ‘“Merely tuppence half-penny looking down on tuppence”? Class, the second Dáil and Irish Republicanism’ in Mícheál Ó Fathartaigh and Liam Weeks (eds), The Treaty: debating and establishing Irish independence (Dublin, 2018), pp 90‒112.

96 Griffith, The resurrection of Hungary, p. 143.

97 Dáil Éireann deb., ii, no. 18 (17 Jan. 1923).

98 Ibid., T, no. 16 (9 Jan. 1922). On invocations of Mexican politics, see Mary Harris, ‘Irish images of religious conflict in Mexico in the 1920s’ in Mary N. Harris (ed.), Sights and insights: interactive images of Europe and the wider world (Pisa, 2007), pp 205‒26.

99 The anti-Treatyites responded in kind: Kenneth L. Shonk, Ireland's new traditionalists: Fianna Fáil, republicanism and gender, 1926‒1938 (Cork, 2021), pp 156‒79.

100 Dáil Éireann deb., xvii, no. 9 (15 Dec. 1926).

101 Leinster Leader, 17 Feb. 1923.

102 Quoted in Sinéad McCoole, No ordinary women: Irish female activists in the revolutionary years, 1900‒1923 (Dublin, 2004), p. 130.

103 Freeman's Journal, 1 Jan. 1923.

104 P. S. O'Hegarty, The victory of Sinn Féin: how it won it and how it used it (Dublin, 1924), p. 58.

105 Seán Donnelly, ‘Republicanism and civic virtue in Treatyite political thought, 1921–1923’ in Historical Journal, lxiii, no. 5 (2020), pp 1257‒80.

106 Foster, The Irish Civil War, pp 108‒13.

107 Prager, Building democracy in Ireland, p. 192.

108 Lee, J. J., Ireland, 1912‒1985: politics and society (Cambridge, 1989), p. 173Google Scholar.

109 McGarry, Fearghal, Eoin O'Duffy: a self-made hero (Oxford, 2005), pp 15‒18Google Scholar; Heffernan, Conor, The history of physical culture in Ireland (London, 2020), pp 17‒52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Villis, Tom, Reaction and the avant-garde: the revolt against liberal democracy in early twentieth-century Britain (London, 2006), pp 139‒45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

110 MacWhite to FitzGerald, 7 Nov. 1923 (N.A.I., DFA 26/102).

111 Griffith, How Ireland has “prospered”, p. 13.

112 With the president in America: the authorised record of the American tour (Dublin, 1928), p. 77.

113 With the president in America, p. 8.

114 MacNeill, Eóin, ‘Ten years of the Irish Free State’ in Foreign Affairs, x (1932), pp 248‒9Google Scholar.

115 Speech delivered at a St Patrick's Day banquet in Liverpool, 1931 (U.C.D.A., John Marcus O'Sullivan papers, LA60/154).

116 O'Higgins, Three years hard labour, p. 12.

117 Valiulis, Portrait of a revolutionary, p. 173.

118 Kissane, Irish Civil War, p. 151; Regan, The Irish counter-revolution, p. 89.

119 Garvin, 1922, p. 145.

120 Prager, Building democracy in Ireland, pp 16‒17.

121 O'Higgins, Kevin, The Catholic layman in public life: an address to the Catholic Truth Society (Dublin, 1923), p. 13Google Scholar; see similarly, W. T. Cosgrave, ‘Speech on Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins’, 1923 (U.C.D.A., W.T. Cosgrave papers, P285/311).

122 Kissane, Irish Civil War, p. 23; Meehan, The Cosgrave party, p. xvi.

123 Dáil Éireann deb., iii, no. 35 (2 July 1923).

124 Speech at the inauguration of Irish language classes, n.d. (U.C.D.A., Kevin O'Higgins papers, P197/140).

125 I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers of my submission for Irish Historical Studies for their assistance in refining this article for publication. I wish also to express my gratitude to Dr Roisín Higgins, Dr Ultán Gillen and Professor Richard Bourke for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this article.