Anarchism, anti‐imperialism and “The Doctrine of Dynamite”

Abstract

During the late Victorian period, British anarchist writers commented on Irish political affairs while the celebrated Irish author Oscar Wilde offered moral and practical support to them. Wilde’s position was especially radical, since anarchism was associated in the popular imagination with the phenomenon of “propaganda by deed” – the subversive political violence that broke out in the United States and Continental Europe throughout the 1880s and 1890s. However, British anarchists regarded colonial violence in Ireland as the pressing issue of the day and explored it in their political journals, pamphlets and novels. Such texts reflected these authors’ preoccupation with the Irish crisis and also warned contemporary readers that the counter‐insurgency methods being applied in Ireland could be put to use on English soil. Drawing on a range of literary and political sources, this essay examines the British anarchists’ interest in the Irish anti‐colonial struggle by focusing on their criticism of British imperial rule, which they regarded as “foreign dictatorship”.