Ghost Provinces, Mislaid Minorities: the Experience of Southern Ireland and Prussian Poland Compared, 1918–23

Abstract

In the years 1918-23 the Protestant minority in Southern Ireland and the German one in Prussian Poland both underwent a traumatic loss of status. Their conflicts with the majority Irish/Polish nationalisms that engulfed them may be fruitfully compared as belonging to the same species of conflict involving the mass mobilisation of ethnic groups. Nonetheless, the Polish-German conflict was clearly the more extreme. I argue here, firstly, that because of the closer geographical relationship of Prussian Poland to the German state than of Ireland to Great Britain, disturbances there were likely to invoke a stronger response. Ireland's being an island also served to mitigate the conflict there in important ways. Secondly, the collapse of order in Germany itself essentially left German minorities on the frontier to fend for themselves. This volatile situation was at times further exacerbated by Allied involvement. In contrast, Britain was able to isolate Ireland from outside interference. Lastly, for all these similarities, the minorities' subsequent experiences have been radically different. Protestants in Southern Ireland were, in the end, successfully assimilated. German communities in Poland were totally destroyed in the 1940s. This contrast alone highlights the importance of the international context in studying ethnic conflicts. A NOTE ON NOMENCLATURE Since the case studies under scrutiny involve changing sovereignties, the question of what to call places that changed their names overnight becomes potentially problematic. This is most marked in the German-Polish borderlands. Here, in the interests of consistency, I have broken with the convention of closely following contemporary official usage and used the German names throughout, as this seems the simplest way of keeping the non-specialist reader on board. Thus, the city known today as 'Bydgoszcz' is 'Bromberg', and 'Poznan' is 'Posen'. Similarly, the region Author's e-mail: timothy.wilson@ st-peters.oxford.ac.uk Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 13 (2002), 61-86. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.176 on Mon, 20 Jun 2016 05:56:37 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 62 Irish Studies in International Affairs of 'Poznania' is still 'Posen'-the German name could refer to either the province or the capital, as context should make clear-and the Polish region of 'Pomorze', which constituted 66% of the old province of West Prussia, is referred to as 'exGerman West Prussia'. My apologies to any purists who are offended. Needless to say, these are stylistic preferences and not political ones. As a useful shorthand, I refer frequently to 'Prussian Poland'. Strictly speaking, this could mean only the provinces of Posen and West Prussia, but I use it as an umbrella term to include Upper Silesia as well. Hence it refers to all provinces of the German Reich that underwent major territorial losses to the new Polish state after 1919 (see Fig. 1). Similarly, 'Southern Ireland' refers to all 26 counties that became the Free State, including the three Ulster counties of Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal. Finally, all translations from the German are my own unless otherwise acknowledged.