Equal Justice for Irishmen and Other Foreigners

Virtual Citizenship and Revolutionary Transatlantic Republicanism in the Musical Lives of Exiled United Irishmen

“WHITE,” IF “NOT QUITE”: IRISH WHITENESS IN THE NINETEENTHCENTURY IRISH-AMERICAN NOVEL1 CATHERINE M. EAGAN over the past ten years, an increasing number of Americanist historians have suggested that Irish and other European immigrants, in an attempt to secure the prosperity and social position that their white skin had not guaranteed them in Europe, lobbied for white racial status in America. The success of this effort was by no means assured. While American laws concerning who could immigrate, be naturalized, and be enslaved accepted Irish people’s pale skin color and European roots as evidence of their white racial pedigree, the discrimination that Irish immigrants experienced on the job, and the simian caricatures they saw of themselves in the newspapers, suggested that they were “racially” inferior to white AngloAmericans and thus somehow nonwhite, perhaps even “black.”2 Many historians , focusing their attention on the Irish-American working class, have argued that Irish immigrants worked to counter suggestions of their racial affinity with African Americans and thus ensure the recognition of their whiteness through their participation in labor agitation and in popIRISH WHITENESS IN THE 19TH-CENTURY IRISH-AMERICAN NOVEL 66 1 My article title is an adaptation of Homi Bhabha’s well-known description of the “ironic compromise” of the mimicry that happens under colonial systems. Bhabha defines “colonial mimicry” as the “desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (emphasis in original). Homi Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 86. 2 For examples of English and Anglo-American comparisons of Irish and African racial inferiority, see Dale Knobel, Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity and Nationality in Antebellum America (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1986). Whatever the rhetorical strength of Americans’ assertions of Irish and African racial similarities, it should be emphasized that the Irish retained their hold on white entitlement so as not to equate the oppression that they and African Americans experienced. ular cultural forms like blackface minstrelsy.3 Some historians of Irish America, by contrast, have questioned whether Irish Americans actively pursued white racial status, citing desperation for jobs as the chief source of conflict with African Americans and pointing to examples of Irish opposition to antiblack racism.4 Be that as it may, the Irish-American novel, particularly as written by the embattled famine generation of immigrants, makes it clear that “whiteness ” was an identity to which Irish Americans not only felt entitled but actively pursued. Although these novels should not be taken as exact IRISH WHITENESS IN THE 19TH-CENTURY IRISH-AMERICAN NOVEL 67 3 See Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991) and Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Politics , and Working-Class History (London: Verso, 1994). 4 See, for example, David Brundage, “‘Green Over Black’ Revisited: Ireland and IrishAmericans in the New Histories of American Working-Class ‘Whiteness,’” a paper delivered at the conference on “Racializing Class, Classifying Race: Labour and Difference in Africa, the USA, and Britain,” St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, 11–13 July 1997; Graham Hodges, “‘Desirable Companions and Lovers’: Irish and African Americans in the Sixth Ward, 1830–1870,” in Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meagher, eds., The New York Irish (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). Lauren Onkey provides a nice summary of Irish Studies scholars’ reception of Noel Ignatiev’s ideas in particular in her “‘A Melee and a Curtain’: Black-Irish Relations in Ned Harrigan’s The Mulligan Guard Ball,” Jouvert 4 (1999), 31 March 2000, . “Contrasted Faces.” The juxtaposition of these two images starkly illustrates how the Irish were racialized in the mid-nineteenth century. Source: Samuel R. Wells, New Physiognomy: Or Signs of Character, as Manifested Through Temperament and External Forms and Especially in “The Human Face Devine” (New York: Fowler & Wells, 1866). Widener Library, Harvard University. reflections of Irish-American realities or sensibilities, they do reveal some of the modes through which Irish people argued for a white racial identity that they regarded...

When we understand the ontological, political and legal underpinnings associated with the concept of freedom, liberty and rights, we understand the relationship between rights and laws. Rights can be understood as liberties or as laws. Liberties can be understood as de facto rights or as de jure rights. It is de jure rights that are recognized as laws that provide the basis for the rule of law. It is the rule of law that provides the basis for equal rights and equal justice in an ideal republic. Rights, laws and the rule of law are distinct. Rights are self-evident truths. Laws are imperatives backed by sanctions (John Austin). The rule of law is a principle that purports that the recognition de facto and de jure rights provide the basis for political, social and economic justice. People live by the rights recognized by law. As such, the rule of law advocates two fundamental underpinnings in a republic: (1) the recognition of rights as the basis for equal rights and equal justice, and (2) the recognition of law as the basis for governance. (H.L.A. Hart). However, since the recognition of law is the recognition of rights, the recognition of rights precedes the governance by law principle. What is fundamental to the rule of law is that it recognizes rights, legitimizes political rule and administers equal/blind justice (Meyers, 1213). As such, no branch of government can weaponize laws to terminate recognized individual rights. The maxim of the republic should be – while anyone can be the ruler, everyone lives as free as the ruler. Majority rule and protection of self-evident individual rights is fundamental to an ideal republic. Keywords: law, equal rights, equal justice, impunity, rule of law

This article provides new evidence on the economic assimilation of immigrants from the British Isles in Canada during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using data from the 1901 and 1911 censuses and a pseudo-cohort methodology, we estimate both entry and assimilation effects. We find a non-negligible decline in entry earnings among successive cohorts of British and Irish immigrants, previously overlooked in the literature. Our estimates also reveal that the economic performance for Irish and older British arrival cohorts was better than previously reported. Overall, slow economic assimilation and sparse occupational mobility of immigrants have been a long-standing issue in the Canadian labour market.

This book focuses on the continued impact of British colonial legacy on the rule of law in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. The legal system is intended to protect regular citizens, but within the majority of Africa the rule of law remains infused with Eurocentric cultural and linguistic tropes, which can leave its supposed beneficiaries feeling alienated from the structures intended to protect them. This book traces the impact, effect, opportunities, and challenges that the colonial legacy poses for the rule of law across Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. The book examines the similarities and differences of the colonial legacy on the current legal landscape of each nation and the intersection with the rule of law. This important comparative study will be of interest to scholars of Political Science, International Studies, Law, African Politics, and British Colonial History.

This article analyses the first years of the land order system of immigration that dominated Queensland’s settlement as a colony. Queensland issued land orders worth £30 per adult to fare-paying British and Irish immigrants who were mechanics, agriculturalists and people with modest amounts of capital. This form of immigration was facilitated through the work of an Emigration Commissioner – later an Agent-General – based in the British Isles. Henry Jordan held these positions in the period 1861–6. The article argues that land orders only partly met their intended outcomes, but that Jordan’s activities were essential for the scheme’s limited success.

Democracy first, rule of law second Based on a literature review and secondary analysis of quantitative and qualitative opinion research we explore how Dutch citizens view and appreciate the Dutch constitutional democracy. Our exploration shows that in general the Dutch attach great value to representative democracy and constitutional principles such as freedom, equality and minority rights. However, more context-specific opinion data indicate that support for the democratic rule of law is less consentient and deep-rooted than general indicators suggest at first glance. Firstly, people differ considerably in the significance and meaning they attach to the abstract values of democracy and the rule of law, which produces very different trade-offs if values clash. Secondly, individual support for equal rights, a pillar of the rule of law, is conditional on personal preferences and majority opinion. Lastly, people do not always appreciate the supervising powers in the trias politica as essential guarantees against the abuse of executive power, but as obstructions to the decisive realization of majority wishes. This paper shows that the popular legitimacy of democratic rule of law, by which grace it exists, cannot be considered a matter of course. We pose the question whether this is primarily explained by people’s convictions or by a limited grasp of the reasons behind rule of law principles. There is a need for the societal debate to better address these causes.

The main goal of this paper is to consider white Irish immigrants within the context of immigration of colour in post-war Britain. It considers the similarities in the imperial-historical reasons for the immigration of mostly poor rural workers from the West Indies, South Asia and Ireland. The discussion explores the experiences of both white and non-white immigrants in London and Birmingham up to 1971, comparing all three groups but focusing on Irish immigrants. I aim to append the Irish experience to analyses of post-war immigration, which tend to focus on non-white Commonwealth immigrants from the West Indies and South Asia. By exploring the Irish experience, I question existing scholarship which suggests Irish immigrants assimilated into post-war Britain free of the ethnic tensions and difficult conditions that migrants of colour indisputably endured. I also demonstrate the degree to which British historians have disregarded the experiences of Irish people in Britain.

“In the Beginning Was the Word”Evangelical Christian Women, the Equal Rights Amendment, and Competing Definitions of Womanhood Chelsea Griffis (bio) During the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) ratification period from 1972 to 1982, evangelical Christian women’s organizations played an important role in the debate and discussion over the amendment. Though these organizations were all grouped under the same title of evangelical, they did not all argue for the same side of the ERA debate. Evangelical Christian female leaders and women’s organizations supported or rejected the Equal Rights Amendment based on how they defined womanhood. While they all used the Bible as the main source of evidence in their arguments about proper roles for women, and therefore whether to support the Equal Rights Amendment, they came to very different conclusions. Concerned Women for America and its leader Beverly LaHaye used what they perceived as a literal interpretation of the Bible to support their view that God made the two sexes different, and therefore inherently politically unequal, though not inferior or socially unequal. In their view men were made to rule, and subsequently the ERA had no place within the United States’ rule of law. The Evangelical Women’s Caucus argued that the Equal Rights Amendment was necessary as God wished for the sexes to be equal in all ways, including politically. In their view human fallibility led to biblical interpretation, deemed by some as literal, which supported female oppression and did not resonate with the word of God. In this way differing biblical interpretations led evangelical Christian women’s organizations to opposite definitions of womanhood, though all of them held that their biblical interpretations were literal. Their definitions of womanhood in turn informed their varying opinions on the Equal Rights Amendment and complicated the idea that all evangelical women held the same religious and political beliefs. Due to this historical context of discussion about proper gender roles for evangelical communities, the ERA ratification campaign fanned the flames of a growing separation among evangelical women, between those who supported [End Page 148] new liberalized definitions of womanhood and those who wanted to stick to old, traditional standards. Historical analysis of evangelical women’s roles throughout the twentieth century is riddled with attempts at psychological explanation, especially when it was connected to perceived fundamental or literal biblical interpretation. As American Studies scholar Axel R. Schafer has pointed out, “rather than being understood on its own terms, orthodox religion was defined as a reaction against, a deviation from, or an adjustment to the given modern setting.” Scholars continue to describe traditionally religious people, particularly evangelical Christians, in this light. Historian Randall Balmer claims fundamentalist Christians and those who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible “have felt beleaguered and besieged by forces beyond their control” during much of the twentieth century and sees their insistence on voicing their beliefs as “a desperate attempt to reclaim” a culture that has abandoned them. Religious scholar Karen McCarthy Brown emphasized this point and states that “fundamentalism, in my view, is the religion of the stressed and the disoriented, of those for whom the world is overwhelming.” Her belief is that they were not rational actors but, instead, psychologically disturbed and unwilling or unable to participate fully in the modern world. Evangelical Christian women receive the same treatment, sometimes even more harshly than that given to their male peers. Betty DeBerg, religious studies scholar, argues that “any hint of androgyny—a world without gender limits—seemed very frightening.” Linda Kintz supports this point by arguing that antifeminism offered a “solace to women who feel exhausted and desperate because they cannot keep up with the competitive world supposedly introduced by feminism, a world in which women who have felt humiliated by the more general historical contempt for women now feel even less secure because they are unable to keep up.”1 This essay seeks to add nuance to this historiography through discussion and analysis of evangelical Christian women’s theological and political ideologies, as well as their definitions of womanhood, and how these ideologies helped inform their stances on the ERA. Before this discussion can begin, though, it is important to define evangelical Christianity. As with...

The present study was aimed at studying the development of religious preference and prejudice in Catholic Christian Children by taking a longitudinal design. The subjects for this study consisted of 20 children of 5 ½ years of age who were selected on a random basis from Ranchi city of Jharkhand. These children were studied through a pictorial test of religious preference-prejudice at an interval of every six months till they attained the age of 08 years. Analysis of results showed that Catholic Christian children were highly ethnocentric and that ethnocentrism developed faster than prejudice in them. By the age of 7 ½ years prejudice became stable and Muslims were their target of prejudice.

We explore cultural assimilation of European immigrants during the US during the Age of Mass Migration. First generation immigrants exhibit a strong tendency toward in-group marriage, which weakens by the second generation. At the same time, there is sizeable variation in the endogamy rate across countries of origin, with the strongest by Italians and the weakest by the Scots. On average, immigrant parents chose less foreign-sounding names for sons as they spend more time in the US (proxied by birth order); this pattern is muted for daughters, sons born abroad or sons of native-born parents. By this metric, German, Russian, and Scandinavian immigrants exhibit near-complete naming convergence with natives, while other groups - particularly Italian and Irish immigrants - retain distinctive naming patterns. Men given foreign names earned less than comparable sons of immigrant parents in 1940.

ACCESS TO JUSTICE

For centuries before the European colonization of North America, sectarian, ethnic, and racial discrimination were interrelated. The proscription of certain groups based on their biological or other apparently ingrained characteristics, which is one definition of racism, in fact describes much religious prejudice in Western history—even as the modern term “racism” was not used until the 20th century. An early example of the similarities between religious and racial prejudice can be seen in the case of anti-Semitism, where merely possessing “Jewish blood” made one inherently unassimilable in many parts of Europe for nearly a thousand years before the initial European conquest of the New World. Throughout Western history, religious values have been mobilized to dehumanize other non-Christian groups such as Muslims, and starting in the 16th century, religious justifications of conquest played an indispensable role in the European takeover of the Americas. In the culture of the 17th- and 18th-century British colonies, still another example of religious and racial hatred existed in the anti-Catholicism of the original Protestant settlers, and this prejudice was particularly evident with the arrival of Irish immigrants in the 19th century. In contemporary language, the Irish belonged to the Celtic “race” and one of the many markers of this race’s inherent inferiority was Catholicism—a religious system that was alternatively defined as non-Western, pagan, or irrational by many Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who similarly saw themselves as a different, superior race. In addition to the Irish, many other racial groups—most notably Native Americans—were defined as inferior based on their religious beliefs. Throughout much of early American history, the normative religious culture of Anglo-Protestantism treated groups ranging from African slaves to Asian or Middle Eastern immigrants as alternatively unequal, corrupt, subversive, or civically immature by virtue of their religious identity. Historians can see many examples of the supposedly dangerous religious attributes of foreigners—such as those of the Chinese in the late 19th century—as a basis for restricting immigration. Evangelical Protestant ideas of divine chosen-ness also influenced imperial projects launched on behalf of the United States. The ideology of Manifest Destiny demonstrates how religious differences could be mobilized to excuse the conquest and monitoring of foreign subjects in places such as Mexico or the Philippines. Anglo-Protestant cultural chauvinism held sway for much of American history, though since the mid-1900s, it can be said to have lost some of its power. Throughout its history, many racial or ethnic groups—such as Hispanic Americans, African-Americans, or Asian Americans in the United States have struggled to counter the dominant ethnic or racial prejudice of the Anglo-Protestant majority by recovering alternative religious visions of nationhood or cultural solidarity. For groups such as the 20th-century Native American Church, or the African American Nation of Islam, religious expression formed an important vehicle to contest white supremacy.

Cet article se penche sur la migration irlandaise au port de Quebec et sur l'installation des Irlandais dans la ville de Quebec au cours de la premiere moitie du XIX e siecle. S'appuyant sur les rapports annuelset la correspondance des agents principaux d'emigration en poste a Quebec entre I83I et I854 ainsi que sur les recensements manuscrits de la ville (I842, I852 et 186I), il traite des points suivants concernant la migration irlandaise a Quebec: regions d'origine en Irlande, affiliations religieuses et statut social des immigrants. L'article evalue egalement le role de l'envoi de fonds dans le financement de cette migration. Contrairement a bien des conclusions que l'on trouve dans l'historiographie des Irlandais au Canada (a savoir, une colonisation de petits fermiers protestants precedant la grande famine), dans le cas de Quebec, on note que la population irlandaise comprenait une nette majorite de catholiques de la classe ouvriere, et ce, avant comme apres la grande famine de I845-I849. La ville a de plus connu un faible exode des Irlandais protestants durant cette periode.

Mary Garvey, an Irish immigrant, was the servant of Rescarrick Moore Smith, a Hightstown businessman and New Jersey State Treasurer. This letter was dictated to and transcribed by Smith's daughter, Mary Elizabeth. In this letter to her mother in Ireland, Garvey asks after various family members and friends. She asks her mother many time to consider leaving the "poor state of Ireland" to emigrate to America. She also discusses her work duties, wages, and social life.