The rise of ethnic politics

Abstract

By the mid-nineteenth century a system of road, rail and sea communications brought the various communities of the British Isles more closely together than had ever been the case hitherto. To the network of roads built by Telford in the years after 1815 were added regular services of steam packets linking Britain and Ireland and a well-developed railway system. Road and rail routes from London to Dublin via Holyhead across the Menai Straits became a matter of routine. Ireland, Wales and Scotland were now open more than ever to English influences. Ireland in particular became more anglicised than either Wales or Scotland and the number of ‘native’ Gaelic-speakers declined drastically in the second half of the nineteenth century. The culture of southern England seemed destined to reach a position of total dominance throughout the British Isles. In fact, however, this period (c. 1860–1914) witnessed a remarkable growth of ‘ethnic’ consciousness throughout the British Isles. During the first half of the nineteenth century ‘class’ issues had predominated in such movements as Chartism in England, Ribbonism and the Tithe War in Ireland, the Rebecca Riots in Wales and the Highland Clearances in Scotland. From mid-century, however, it was the dominance of England, particularly that of the south-east, which came to seem objectionable to influential groups in Ireland, Wales and Scotland. In Ireland, the catastrophic death toll of the Famine, accompanied as it was by massive emigration, was blamed, by and large, on the failure of the English government to provide adequate relief.