Early Twentieth-century Irish Research Articles

‘The mendacious Irish character:’ Molly Maguire, anti-Irish sentiment, and anti-labor propaganda in the American press, 1880–1920

ABSTRACT This paper evaluates the prevalence and impact of nativist and anti-labor narratives built on the claim that the ‘Molly Maguires’, a vague 1860s and 70s militant Irish labor phenomenon of the Pennsylvania anthracite region, was still active between the 1880s and the 1910s. It finds that such narratives were widespread until the late 1890s, and still regionally significant until the late 1900s, finally fading into obscurity in the 1910s. ‘Molly Maguirism’ as a media narrative was primarily directed at organized labor and the (Irish) working class; it is best understood as a form of ethnicized proto-Red Scare tactic, but could incorporate other elements, such as broader nativist ideology and sectarianism. Based on these findings, prevailing models of Irish acculturation, such as Painter’s ‘second enlargement of whiteness’, are obsolete; the paper recommends a thorough revision of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish American working-class history, accounting for the continued and hitherto massively underestimated presence of anti-Irish sentiment.

Andre Godard and Maxime Siroux: Disentangling the Narrative of French Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Iran

AbstractThis paper investigates the impact of two French architects, Andre Godard and Maxime Siroux, in early twentieth-century Iran using postcolonial methodology to challenge the reductive prevailing narrative of these architects as representatives of Western imperial powers. Furthermore, this paper argues for the existence of a distinct local modernism in Iran, highlights the enduring presence of Iranian architectural traditions throughout different historical periods, and argues against the narrative of modern architectural works in Iran as simplistic hybrids of pre-Islamic Iranian architecture and Western modernism. In addition, this research underscores the role of Iranian intellectuals in shaping the cultural and social movements that led to the broader modernization of Iran and modernism in Iranian architecture.

Domesticating the Global Discourse of Nationalism in Early Twentieth-Century Iran: A Sociological Institutionalist Account

This article explores how nationhood was discursively constructed in early twentieth-century Iran. While most studies concentrate on micro-national causes, this study complements this literature by drawing on domestication theory to show how globally diffused nationalist discourse was localized and tailored to the Iranian context at the turn of the twentieth century. It employs the methods of critical discourse analysis and critical metaphor analysis to investigate politics in the construction of nationhood in Iran. The data include all editorials and articles in three highly influential Iranian periodicals: Qanun, Tarbiyat, and Kaveh. By analyzing the shared premises in this data, the study highlights the transnational nature of the discourse to indicate how Iranian nationhood was embedded in world society yet adapted locally. The analysis then identifies three variations of Iranian nationhood, each woven into a particular national narrative at the time. These findings attest to the meso-level approach that addresses the discursive side of diffusion mechanisms and calls attention to the discursive politics in localization processes of nationhood. They point to new directions to understand contemporary Iran, not as an outlier or exception, but rather as discursively connected to world society. Given the discursive opportunities arising from these contentious notions of nationhood, the study calls for further critical investigations of identity-based appeals, often by authoritarian actors, in Iran’s modern politics.

Richard Bourke and Niamh Gallagher (eds), The Political Thought of the Irish Revolution

This book is one of a small number of volumes in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series that is dedicated to a theme or a historical event (broadly understood) rather than a single text or author. It squeezes a Special Subject into one set of soft covers by making available extracts from thirty-one texts, most of which will be familiar to specialist readers. Extracts from book-length studies, notably The Framework of Home Rule (1911) by Erskine Childers, are joined by more occasional pieces, including short essays, speeches, and journalism that testify to the centrality of the popular press and public demonstrations to early twentieth-century Irish politics. Iconic political texts, since given the status of books, were often first read in serial form. Among those included by key nationalist thinkers and leaders are extracts by John Redmond, the leader of the Home Rule Party, Eoin MacNeill, the civic republican and joint progenitor of the Irish Volunteers, and Patrick Pearse, the revolutionary separatist. Most conspicuous are seven extracts from the corpus of the socialist republican James Connolly, a bounty that runs the danger of diminishing returns, though, of all the texts assembled here, they are probably the most influential today. Wherever Green is Red, as Mick Lynch recently reminded us, there is Connolly. The diet might have been varied with selections from P. S. O’Hegarty and Aodh de Blácam, who both wrote about post-1916 nationalism and are subject to excellent recent analyses by, respectively, Frances Flanagan and Sean Donnelly. British and Irish Unionism is represented by extracts from the writings of Leo Amery, Edward Carson, Ronald McNeill and, most importantly, A.V. Dicey. Of the seventeen authors included, four are women, all nationalists, including the historian Alice Stopford Green and the socialist republicans Constance Markievicz (née Gore-Booth), Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, and Louie Bennett. All are supported by good biographical summaries. The absence of language and/or cultural nationalists, the subject of much historical work, is striking. No W. B. Yeats. Given that the History of Political Thought is a relatively new field in Irish history, it would have been helpful if the introduction had explained these choices.

History and Religious Imagination: Bernard Shaw and the Irish Literary Revival—an Overview

ABSTRACT An overview of Bernard Shaw’s involvement in early twentieth-century Irish history, both political and cultural. Pressure building since the death of Parnell in 1891 would lead to Ireland’s independence from Britain and the establishment of the Irish free State in 1922, with Shaw’s Irish friends Horace Plunkett, Augusta Gregory, George Russell (“Æ”), and especially W. B. Yeats all prime movers in major new national cultural institutions that sprang up around the turn of the century. Through these four as well as his Irish wife, Charlotte Shaw, Shaw became involved in both the affairs of the nation as well as in Irish drama, especially Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. Yeats and his work were particularly important for Shaw’s contributions to the Irish literary revival, in which, whether in satirical, comic, or tragic modes, his Irish plays comprehend Irish mythology, history, imagination, and religious salvation.

Patrick MacGill: A Path to Socialism Shared with Jack London

Until relatively recently the works of the early twentieth-century Irish novelist Patrick MacGill have been neglected by literary commentators. MacGill made his reputation, initially, through his poetry that was centred on the hard lives and conditions of the ‘Navvy’ – the itinerant labourers of the British industrial world. He subsequently published two novels that record the conditions of the Irish migrant agricultural and industrial labourers in Scotland, namely The Children of the Dead End and The Rat-Pit, establishing his reputation as a social commentator of the lower reaches of the working class. Several literary commentators such as Jack Mitchell (1982), Seamus Deane (1985), Owen Dudley Edwards (1986), and Terry Phillips (2010), have considered these early works to have a socialist view while others, Lochlinn McGlynn (1944), and Joe Mulholland (1972) have admired the descriptive skills and the realism in his writings. This article considers their points and places in context MacGill’s education in socialism in Greenock and Glasgow around 1909 and highlights examples where his socialist views are manifestly visible outside his novels. Patrick MacGill and Jack London were writers whose early literary works are formed of their experiences in the lower layers of the working class. In this article, the similarities in the formative years of MacGill and those of Jack London are exposed showing a striking commonality in their experiences that leads them both to socialism and to record those experiences in literature.

Anger, Resentment and the Limits of Historical Narratives in Protest Politics: The Case of Early Twentieth-Century Irish Women’s Intersectional Movements

Abstract This essay analyses the emotions of intersectional protest. It uses the case study of early twentieth-century Irish women who subscribed to a multitude of ideological beliefs – including feminism, nationalism, socialism and pacifism – to attempt to understand the different place of emotions like hope and pride and anger and resentment in sustaining political activism. In doing so, it examines the nexus between emotions, ideology and history. Adopting both an interconnecting and comparative approach, it investigates the relative efficacy of historical narratives in sustaining the emotional and moral dimensions of intersecting and competing ideological movements. The essay concludes by exposing the limits of the emotions–ideology–history nexus, especially when it comes to feminist protest.

Modernity and Its Discontents: Newspapers, Censorship, and the Press Law in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Iran

The ratification of the Press Law in February 1908 marked a significant development in the history of censorship in Iran. However, in the little that has been written on this subject, the Press Law has been explained primarily in terms of constitutional politics, and the pressure that the first majles was put under by royalist forces who had been upset at the critical and anti-royalist tone of constitutional newspapers. This article takes a different approach; it contextualizes the Press Law and evaluates it in light of the attempts at control that had been put into effect by the state in the pre-constitutional years. To this end, this article considers the largely untold story of censorship in Qājār Iran. How did the understanding of what censorship should entail evolve through the years? How was censorship exercised, and what challenges did censorship pose for both the authorities and the subjects in the Nāseri and Mozaffari eras, culminating in the Press Law in February 1908?

Reinventing Ruhowzi

Abstract In the last few years, Tehran’s arts culture has seen the re-emergence of a thriving theater scene, including experimentation with various performance practices that were restricted in public forums for several years. In this article, I address a 2017 production called Gonbadgah which is a choreographed regional ethnic dance interwoven with classical music and staged as a story inspired by ruhowzi, the erstwhile cabaret theater of early twentieth-century Iran. Offering a genealogy of ruhowzi that traces its artists from from elite performers with royal patronage to low-brow urban entertainers in Pahlavi-era Iran, in this article I situate Gonbadgah as a production that aims to revisit the art form (one that much of today’s youth culture considers dated), and reframe it, leveraging the canon of ‘high’ classical music. As such, the production aims to cut across established musical hierarchies to offer a more egalitarian view of traditional arts for contemporary audiences.

Disability, Identity, and Early Twentieth-Century Irish Drama

This essay assesses the role of physical disability in early twentieth-century Irish dramatic literature. In particular, by focusing on such plays as W.B. Yeats's On Baile's Strand (1903) and the character of Johnny Boyle in Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock (1924), it critiques the tradition of identifying characters with disabilities solely by their physical impairment and exploiting disability as metaphor; physical disability has been historically employed as a synecdoche for a thwarted morality, or blindness as an allegory for prophecy. However, scholarly criticisms of the Social Model of Disability have demonstrated how disability can be reappropriated to reconceptualize notions of bodily normalcy. Furthermore, this essay suggests that the convention of “cripping up”, an industry term describing the practice of an able-bodied actor playing a character with a physical disability, contributes to the marginalization of those with physical disability in Irish culture. The result is the potential degradation of the disabled body, a stylized performance evoking vaudevillian conventions; performance thus engenders belief in stereotype.

"Smelly" Kelly and His Super Senses: How James Kelly's Nose Saved the New York City Subway by Beth Anderson

Reviewed by: "Smelly" Kelly and His Super Senses: How James Kelly's Nose Saved the New York City Subway by Beth Anderson Elizabeth Bush Anderson, Beth "Smelly" Kelly and His Super Senses: How James Kelly's Nose Saved the New York City Subway; illus. by Jenn Harney. Calkins Creek, 2020 [40p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781684373994 $18.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R 5-9 yrs "James Kelly smelled everything. Rats in the shed. Circus elephants a mile away. Tomorrow's rain." If this olfactory gift seemed a pretty risible superpower for an early twentieth century Irish immigrant facing a new life in New York City, it was [End Page 70] going to serve him and his city well, and even win him a share of acclaim. Working for the New York subway system, Kelly sniffed out water leaks before they led to collapsed ceilings and gas leaks before they led to explosions. When his nose wasn't up to a job, Kelly relied on his well-trained hearing to detect drips and hisses, often amplified by his toolkit of chemicals and gizmos that exposed and amplified culprits; he even trained other workers in his methods. His everyday heroism went largely unsung, but his courage and speed rather than his nose finally caught the city's attention when he saved a passenger who had fallen under a subway car from being crushed or being electrocuted by the deadly third rail. Anderson's zesty stick-to-the-facts narration (only a brief passage about Kelly's childhood is speculative) in this picture book biography will be a winner in class units on community helpers, and Harney's digital illustrations, in which the ginger-haired, newsboy-capped Kelly glows with good-natured determination in the shadowy blues of the urban underbelly, crackle with energy. An author's note on Kelly's early life and career includes a photograph; a note on his toolkit, some NYC underground statistics, a note on research, a bibliography, and a short but strong list of related children's materials are also appended. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

On Contradictions: The Architecture of Women’s Resistance and Emancipation in Early twentieth-Century Iran

The public spaces in Iran’s built environment were gendered sites of domination and subordination, yet also terrains of resistance and emancipation. Tracing the massive western-oriented project of modernization of public spaces issued by the Shah of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi (1925-1941), this article contextualizes the gendered language used to advance modernization, and examines examples of women’s experiences in major cities including Tehran, Shiraz, Qazvin, Rasht, and Bushehr. During this period, modern architecture and planning movements in Iran mainly followed the discourse instigated by ciam [International Congresses of Modern Architecture]. Urban street plans with an orthogonal network of roads, streets, and wide boulevards were favored over the vernacular system of narrow, twisting, partly-roofed alleys, based on pedestrian movements. The modern movement also attempted to desegregate and “democratize” public spaces through gender desegregation, arguing that streets needed to be aesthetically-pleasing spaces where both men and women could walk and socialize in mixed-sex gatherings, a phenomenon that was not common in public spaces in the history of Iran. It should be noted that in 1936, Reza Shah promulgated a ban on the use of the chador (the traditional Iranian veil) in public places, in favor of Western women’s fashion, i.e., European hats, coats, and gloves. Due to this ban, some women, particularly those from conservative, religious, lower-class backgrounds, resisted using public spaces and streets. In older neighborhoods, where houses were attached to each other, these women used the rooftops as gathering spaces and as a form of pedestrian pathway. Others, mainly elite, urban, upper-class women, accepted and appreciated the desegregated spatial practices, using them to free themselves from social and cultural taboos. Building on postcolonial and transnational feminist theories, including those of Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1984) and Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan (1994), which critique modernity and modernization and emphasize the diversity of women’s experiences and the importance of contextualizing them, this article addresses how, in a political climate of enormous contradictions, architectures were (re)configured and (re)appropriated as physical tools of resistance against the coloniality of modernization of the built environment and state power for one group of women, yet simultaneously, were (re)envisioned as an apparatus of confrontation with cultural traditionalism and patriarchal ideologies for another group of women.

Book Review

Book Review

Illuminated addresses, national identity and Irish sport, 1880–1901

ABSTRACTThis essay examines the cultural significance of illuminated sporting addresses in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century. Illuminated addresses were used in civic society as a means of commemoration, celebrating retirement and relocation for instance, and they were also physical expressions of public sporting events in Ireland. Illuminated addressees are documents which provide an insight into the cultural histories of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish sport. This essay pays particular attention to illuminated addresses sponsored by members of the Gaelic Athletic Association and also considers the significance of a late 1890s example which was funded by supporters of the Irish horse-racing which sheds light on the sub-culture of the Irish turf. Illuminated addresses are meaningful documents and this essay recovers, for the first time, some of their hidden history.

Capturing the Trenches of Language: World War One, the Irish Language and the Gaelic League

While the dominant narrative of Irish nationalism occludes Irish-speakers’ participation in the First World War, the war is a key component of the story of the Irish language in the early twentieth century and is the critical element in understanding Conradh na Gaeilge/the Gaelic League's politicization, radicalization and ultimate demise as one of the most powerful forces in Irish cultural politics. Controversies concerning recruitment and conscription played critical roles in shaping public attitudes within Irish-language discourse. The war not only created the conditions for the League's radicalization but also triggered Douglas Hyde's departure as president in 1915. The Great War politicized the Gaelic League and the British reaction to the Rising helped to establish the relationship between physical force nationalism and the Irish language that has become a familiar feature of the cultural memory of the revolutionary era in early twentieth-century Irish history.

Victorian Literary Cultures: Studies in Textual Subversion

Victorian Literary Cultures: Studies in Textual Subversion

Irish Lexicography in Borrowed Time: The Recording of Anglo-Irish Borrowings in Early Twentieth-Century Irish Dictionaries (1904-1927)

Irish Lexicography in Borrowed Time: The Recording of Anglo-Irish Borrowings in Early Twentieth-Century Irish Dictionaries (1904-1927)

Reverse Currents: Irish Feminist and Nationalist Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and U.S. Anti-imperialism, 1916–24

Reverse Currents:Irish Feminist and Nationalist Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and U.S. Anti-imperialism, 1916–24 Elizabeth McKillen (bio) During the easter rising of 1916, British troops arrested pacifist and suffragist Francis Sheehy Skeffington while he was out trying to prevent looting on Dublin streets, executed him without trial, and covered up their actions by burying him without notifying the family. They had apparently not counted on the indefatigable detective skills of Francis's wife Hanna, who soon used social networks and political skills cultivated during her career as a suffragist to uncover what happened to her husband. With the assistance of Sir Francis Vane, a sympathetic British officer, Hanna soon forced the arrest and court martial of Captain John Bowen-Colthurst, who had issued the command to execute Francis.1 She also traveled to Britain and convinced Prime Minister H. H. Asquith to launch a broader inquiry into the incident. Yet Sheehy Skeffington proved dissatisfied with the results of both the court martial and the inquiry, and she soon "made up [her] mind … to go to America and to tell [the] story of British militarism to every audience in the States that I could reach."2 Over the course of the next eight years, Sheehy Skeffington spent extensive time in the United States on lecture and fundraising tours on behalf of Irish independence; she also published widely in the [End Page 148] American and Irish American press. Sheehy Skeffington's roles in shaping the Irish nationalist and suffrage movements during this period have received significant scholarly attention, but this article seeks to shed new light on her activism by exploring the ways that she contributed to intellectual currents within both Irish America and the American left on questions of imperialism and U.S. foreign policy.3 Erez Manela in his classic book The Wilsonian Moment emphasized the importance of a transnational flow of Wilsonian ideas about national self-determination in inspiring anticolonial rebellions in such diverse countries as China, Egypt, India, and Korea during the World War I era. Yet, as subaltern theorists have recently insisted, the intellectual flow of ideas was often a two-way street, and marginalized actors from colonial areas sometimes exercised surprising influence over larger and more powerful nations by using their institutions, media, and diaspora networks to disseminate their own ideas.4 For no group was this more true than the early twentieth-century Irish, who enjoyed the benefits of a sprawling and politically influential Irish immigrant community in the United States. An older literature on Irish America detailed the efforts of its leaders and politicians to shape U.S. foreign policy formulation with respect to Ireland and explored some of the disagreements that developed between Irish American nationalist leaders and visiting Irish male rebels such as Eamon de Valera.5 The role of Irish women lecturers [End Page 149] who came to the United States in the aftermath of the Easter Rebellion, however, has only recently received attention. To date, most studies of women lecturers have focused on their success in raising funds for the Irish rebellion and in publicizing the Irish nationalist struggle. Some have also detailed the ways in which these women interacted with Irish American women and encouraged an expansion of female organizational activities within Irish America. Catherine Burns has explored the ways in which both Irish and Irish American women used American patriotic rhetoric to justify their Irish nationalist work. The contributions of Irish women lecturers to ongoing debates about key U.S. foreign policies, however, remain largely neglected.6 Yet many Irish female lecturers, Sheehy Skeffington included, remained in the United States for long periods of time [End Page 150] and proved to be quite popular speakers and political strategists. Although both Irish and Irish American women nationalists emphasized their loyalty to the United States, U.S. intelligence agents engaged in extensive surveillance of their activities because they feared their subversive influence in undermining U.S. foreign policies.7 Sheehy Skeffington's aim during her first lecture tour in 1917–18 was primarily to expose British brutality and raise funds for Irish independence, but her lectures intersected and clashed with President Wilson's policies during World War...

“Sheer Madness” or “Railway Politics” Iranian Style? – The Controversy over Railway Development Priorities Within the Persian Government in 1919–1920 and British Railway Imperialism

ABSTRACTUsing Iranian and British primary sources, this essay studies the heated dispute over Iran’s immediate priorities in railway building that erupted within the Iranian government in the autumn of 1919, at which moment in time making a serious start with the development of Iran’s so far virtually non-existent rail infrastructure involving, first and foremost, though not necessarily exclusively, Britain, appeared to be imminent due to the related stipulations of the Anglo-Persian treaty that had been signed in August of that year. Seeking conceptual inspiration from Ronald E. Robinson’s thought on Railway Imperialism and drawing on seminal work on the issue of railway building ambitions in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iran by Paul Luft, this analysis seeks to contribute to two separate areas of inquiry. One the one hand, it represents an intriguing case study for a (yet to be written) history of how Iranians made foreign policy during the early constitutional period (as opposed to histories of Iran’s place in the foreign policies of the Great Powers during that time). On the other hand, it aims at contributing to the study of the impact of European Imperialism on the Middle East in the immediate aftermath of the First World War.

City streets and the city edition: newsboys and newspapers in early twentieth-century Ireland

This article examines the newsboy as both an important figure of early twentieth-century Irish streets and also a vital final link in the chain of media production and distribution at the time. Despite the advent of industrial communications and manufacturing processes in print culture well before the end of the nineteenth century, newspapers in particular were ultimately dependent upon boys as young as eleven years old to sell copies, especially in urban areas. Newsboys were very visible and audible figures on Irish city streets, and presumably because of this were themselves the subject of frequent newspaper stories. This article explores the way in which newsboys were both part of the newspaper industry while simultaneously being represented in the press as exemplars of the urban working classes for middle-class readers.