Irish Rebellion Research Articles

Ad Fontes: The Question of Rebellion and Moral Tradition on the Use of Force

“Stab, smite, slay!” These are not the words of Bashar al-Assad telling his forces how they should deal with the Syrian rebel movement, or indeed those of any other contemporary political leader, but rather the words of Martin Luther exhorting the German nobility to a harsh response to the peasants' rebellion of 1524–1525. His writings show that he sympathized with many of the peasants' grievances so long as these did not issue in rebellion, but when they turned to force of arms, he responded sternly. This was not a peculiarity of Luther. Consider the following from an English courtier, Thomas Churchyard, writing admiringly of the treatment of Irish rebels in 1579 by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, commander of the English army sent to put down the rebellion: He further tooke this order infringeable, that when soever he made any ostyng [military campaign], or inrode, into the enemies Countrey, he killed manne, woman, and child, and spoiled, wasted, and burned, by the grounde all that he might, leavyng nothing of the enemies in saffetie, whiche he could possiblie waste, or consume.

The British State and the Irish Rebellion of 1916: An Intelligence Failure or a Failure of Response?

The teleological narrative that has dominated the handling of intelligence by the British state in the events that led up to the 1916 Irish Rebellion in Dublin has been characterised as a cocktail of incompetence and mendacity. Using new and existing archive material this article argues that both the cabinet in London and key members of the Irish Executive in Dublin were supplied with accurate and timely intelligence by the Admiralty's signals intelligence unit, the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police with respect to this event. Far from being a failure of intelligence here is evidence to show that there occurred a failure of response on behalf of key decision-makers. The warnings that were given by intelligence organisations were filtered through the existing policy preferences and assumptions. As a result of these factors accurate evaluations and sound judgement were not exercised by key officials, such as Sir Matthew Nathan, in Dublin Castle.

Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race

Bruce Nelson's expansive approach to the history of Irish nationalism and race updates older, formulaic attempts to chart the nationalist course by framing the topic within tides of imperial expansion and racial identity constructed between the mid-1800s and the 1920s. His study challenges revisionist ratifications of Irish nationalism as “sectarian and ethnocentric, backward-looking, and stubbornly antimodern” and confirms the internationalist turn of the past decade as an important progression in the writing of Irish nationalist history (p. 49). Nelson begins with British images of Irishness as “the antithesis of Anglo-Saxon virtue,” rooted in the 1100s and contested throughout Ireland's history (p. 17). Modern incarnations of Irish nationalism rising in the aftermath of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and shepherded to the 1850s by Daniel O'Connell generated international awareness of domestic Irish struggles. According to Nelson, O'Connell's solicitation of Irish American support for abolitionism, in association with his signing of the 1841 Address from the People of Ireland to Their Countrymen and Countrywomen in America (the “Irish Address”), revealed liberal, transatlantic currents within the burgeoning nationalist agenda. Recapitulating Angela Murphy's recent arguments, Nelson shows that although O'Connell failed to convince Irish emigrants who were struggling against powerful American cultural and political imperatives, his efforts expanded nationalism's transatlantic base.

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (review)

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (review)

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies, by Alan Taylor.

"The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies, by Alan Taylor.." Canadian Journal of History, 47(1), pp. 203–204

Remember the Raisin!

Remember the Raisin! Geoffrey Plank (bio) Jon Latimer . 1812: War with America. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. xv + 637 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $39.95 (cloth); $20.00 (paper). Alan Taylor . The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies. New York: Knopf, 2010. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00. On August 5, 1812, the famous Indian leader Tecumseh, with a large body of warriors, ambushed an American force that was marching toward the Raisin River in the Michigan Territory. The river was the site of an old French settlement, and it was still sparsely populated by French-speakers. The Americans were traveling through the area with the aim of protecting a supply train with provisions for their garrison at Detroit. Tecumseh and his fellow warriors killed seventeen soldiers; and while that may seem like a small number, their action helped precipitate a dramatic American withdrawal from the upper Midwest. Shortly thereafter, the Americans decided to consolidate their supply lines in southern Michigan, and so they abandoned Fort Dearborn, the site of present-day Chicago. They wanted to hold Detroit, but quickly discovered they could not. A few days after the August 5th skirmish, the British seized the town. In January 1813, with the British still in possession of Detroit, American soldiers returned to the Raisin River in an effort to protect the French habitants and secure their continuing loyalty to the United States. They made themselves vulnerable by going there, and, on January 22, they were defeated by a force of over 1,000 Native American, British, and Canadian fighters. In the aftermath of the battle, eighty wounded American prisoners were taken to a habitant settlement called Frenchtown, where, in the night, Indians killed dozens of them. Some of the prisoners were scalped, and some were fed to pigs. These events inspired American calls for revenge. On several subsequent occasions during the War of 1812, American soldiers charged into battle crying "Remember the Raisin!" Indeed, they shouted those words at the engagement later that year when they killed Tecumseh. [End Page 62] Similar battle cries have echoed more loudly through our American history books. We are more familiar with "Remember the Alamo," "Remember Fort Sumter," "Remember the Maine," and "Remember Pearl Harbor." Until recently at least, Americans have not devoted much attention to the War of 1812. This situation, however, is changing. John Latimer's 1812: War with America and Alan Taylor's The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies are early contributions to an imminent outpouring of books, scholarly articles, conferences, and other commemorative events marking the conflict. Much of this work has been timed to coincide with the 2012 bicentennial anniversary, when, it is widely assumed, the war will resonate more powerfully in public memory. I suspect, however, that most amateur history buffs in Britain and the U.S. would be astonished by the attention the War of 1812 is receiving in academic circles. It is attracting more scholarship than the War of the American Revolution. Under these circumstances, the time will soon come when historians will no longer be able to justify their works on the war by asserting that it is understudied. Latimer makes an essential, almost foundational, contribution to the growing literature on the war, but his book already seems to belong to an earlier era. As a pioneer of sorts, he has had to work to recover and reconstruct a lost narrative and draw attention to a conflict that, he suggests, had been too easily forgotten, especially by the British public. The British, he explains, had cared deeply about the war while it was happening, but the conflict faded into relative insignificance for them following the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. Latimer offers a sweeping chronological account of the war "from the British perspective" (p. vii). He starts each of his chapters with a discussion of British politics, citing broadsides and songs as well as state papers, in order to illuminate what the British thought was at stake in their conflict with the United States. He makes a convincing case that the...

Review: Tories Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War, Liberty's Exiles American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World, the Civil War of 1812 American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies

TORIES Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War Thomas B. Alien New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 468pp, $18.99 paper. ISBN 978-0061241802LIBERTY'S EXILES American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World Maya Jasanoff New York: Knopf, 2011. 46opp, $30.00 doth. ISBN 978-1400041688THE CIVIL WAR OF 1812 American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, e[ Indian Allies Alan New York: Knopf, 2010. 62opp, $18.00 paper. ISBN 978-1400042654The adage that everybody loves a winner certainly rings true when one considers the long and mostly one-sided historiography of the American revolution. Since the i8th century the patriots have enjoyed not only the most favourable attention, but most of the attention, period. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that historians have typically depicted the revolution as a mortal struggle between gallant, freedom-loving Americans and sneering, freedom-denying Britons. This distortion has obscured the fundamental truth that it was just as much a civil war, one fought bitterly between American patriots and American loyalists. The losers, the loyalists, have been neglected by historians (except in Canada, to some extent, where they have been recast as winners because of their role in building postwar British North America). Even in Canada, however, the story of the loyalists has hardly been a hot academic topic in recent years.This lack of interest in the loyalists means that many misconceptions remain about who they were, what they stood for, and what their long-term significance was. Fortunately, three new books by American historians, each covering a different chapter of the story, aim to correct the record. Thomas B. Alien's Tones details the extensive civilian and military involvement of loyalists in the revolution itself. Maya JasanofPs Liberty's Exiles traces the divergent paths of the tens of thousands of loyalists who left their homes during and shortly after the revolution and resettled throughout the British empire. Alan Taylor s The Civil War 0/1812 demonstrates that the divided loyalties that characterized the revolutionary era carried over into the next, in a war that helped to define national identities on both sides of the CanadianAmerican border. Each book is well worth reading in its own right. Read collectively, the three works will give even the most knowledgeable reader a refreshing new appreciation of the arduous life stories - and complex, often conflicting views - of the loyalists.It makes sense to read and review the books in chronological order, beginning with Tones. Alien's eclectic body of work spans topics as disparate as The Bonus Army: An American Epic (with Paul Dickson); Possessed, an account of the events that inspired the 19705 book and film The Exorcist; and illustrated works about the natural including The Shark Almanac. His latest effort is, without question, a serious historical study. It is based on archival research, published collections of documents and correspondence, and the immense array of professional and hobbyist websites devoted to the American revolution. Everything has been carefully footnoted and the bibliography is extensive, though he relies perhaps a bit too heavily on the websites.Alien deserves credit for bringing to light the substantial part that the loyalists played in supporting Great Britain during the revolution. This is an important task for two reasons: American authors tend to ignore loyalists, and Canadian authors tend to pick up their story only after their exile to British North America. He tells their story chronologically, starting in 1769 and building dramatic tension as he explains how the political situation deteriorated in the 13 colonies, culminating in the outbreak of hostilities in 1774. Even before the shot heard round the world, Americans were being forced into with-us-or-against-us identities as either patriots or loyalists. Alien clearly sympathizes with the individuals who welcomed political reforms but could not break their ties to the crown, despite threats of violence from their neighbours. …

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels & Indian Allies by Alan Taylor (review)

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels & Indian Allies by Alan Taylor (review)

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies by Alan Taylor

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies by Alan Taylor

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (review)

The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies. By Alan Taylor. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. Pp. 620. Cloth, $35.00.)Reviewed by Donald R. HickeyThe narrative framework for histories of War of 1812 has been pretty well set for last half century. They start by charting causes of war, then chronicle military and naval campaigns (the heart of study), and then conclude with final battles, Hartford Convention, and restoration of peace. The great strength of these works is that they present a clear chronology anchored by battles and campaigns. The great weakness is that they usually slight domestic or diplomatic events and treat war as a self-contained event detached from past and future. This framework, which was forged by military historians, has met with some criticism. At SHEAR meeting in Buffalo in 2000, John Stagg, author of a fine study of domestic history of war, suggested that we needed to find a way to break standard campaign mold and offer a new synthesis, one that linked wartime themes of American unity and expansion to nation's postwar history. Alan Taylor's new book may be kind of study that Stagg called for.Taylor's treatment of causes and conclusion of war, as well as military and naval campaigns, is perfunctory. He focuses instead on people, soldiers and civilians alike, who were on frontier between Detroit and Montreal. In keeping with modern conventions, he discounts importance of international boundary and treats region as a contested borderland where individuals interacted and cultures clashed. Because most people living there shared a common language and a similar culture, border was porous and loyalties flexible. Those who were unhappy with their options on one side of border could simply relocate to other side and seek a new life.Taylor contends that war was really a multifaceted civil war, one in which fought brother in a borderland of mixed peoples (7). It was not simply a war that pitted Britain's former colonists south of border against her current subjects to north. Most Federalists in United States opposed war and were sympathetic to British, and many Late Loyalists (Americans who had moved to Canada after 1792 to take advantage of free land and low taxes) remained loyal to their native land. In addition, large numbers on both sides just wanted to be left alone. Indians were also part of mix. Most natives sided with British, and their warfare could be ferocious. Kentuckians, who were a breed apart from other Americans, responded in kind. The Irish played a central role as well. As British subjects, they were impressed into Royal warships and enlisted in British army. But large numbers also immigrated to United States and Canada, and many harbored a bitter hatred toward Great Britain.Taylor argues that few people on either side thought that and republic could long coexist on continent. Like revolution, he tells us, the War of 1812 was a civil war between competing visions of America: one still loyal to and other defined by its republican revolution against that empire (12). The British expected republic to collapse, while Americans were sure that Canada would become part of United States. But if some Americans actively sought annexation of Canada, few British were interested in recolonizing America. John Graves Simcoe, an early governor of Upper Canada, had visions of leading an army into American heartland, but it is hard to find any other British subject who shared his fantasy. Taylor suggests that dispatch of a British spy to New England in 1808 constituted a revival of Simcoe's dream, but this is a stretch (130). By contrast, Taylor is certainly right to suggest that burning, looting, and atrocities served to drive people apart, so that by time war ended, both sides had a better sense of who they were and frontier was now much more of a true boundary. …

Late Disturbances: Maria Edgeworth's An Essay on Irish Bulls (1802)

This article examines Maria Edgeworth's parodic essay on the ‘Irish bull’ (a form of blunder or linguistic absurdity associated with the Irish), as a form of counter-Whig history. It argues that Edgeworth satirically refunctions the genre of the Irish bull by interrogating its presumptive status as an essentially Irish form of speech and exposing it instead as an English imperial genre. Engaging the Essay against the contexts of the 1798 United Irish rebellion and the 1801 Act of Union, the article argues that Edgeworth's Essay offers a counter-history of the Union by illuminating how rhetorical or symbolic violence underwrites the material violence of empire. ‘Ma'am, it will wear for ever, and make you a petticoat afterwards.’ (Maria Edgeworth, An Essay on Irish Bulls)1 There seems to be no limit to what tropes can get away with. (Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading)2

The civil war of 1812: American citizens, British subjects, Irish rebels & Indian allies

The civil war of 1812: American citizens, British subjects, Irish rebels & Indian allies

Ambushes and armour: the Irish rebellion, 1919–1921. By W. H. Kautt. Pp xviii, 300. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. 2010. €60 hardback; €22.95 paperback. - A beleaguered station: the memoir of Head Constable John Mckenna, 1891–1921. Edited by John McKenna. Pp xxvii, 109. Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation. 2009. £9.99.

Ambushes and armour: the Irish rebellion, 1919–1921. By W. H. Kautt. Pp xviii, 300. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. 2010. €60 hardback; €22.95 paperback. - A beleaguered station: the memoir of Head Constable John Mckenna, 1891–1921. Edited by John McKenna. Pp xxvii, 109. Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation. 2009. £9.99. - Volume 37 Issue 146

England and the 1641 Irish Rebellion

This short book packs quite a punch. Once we exclude the bibliography and index, there are only 164 pages of text, twenty of which are taken up with an unnecessarily general discussion of the ‘New British History’. But the rest is at once pithy and resonant. It has two stories to tell, both of which are striking and startling. The first, based mainly but not exclusively on a very close and attentive reading of some of the thousands of depositions made by survivors of the rebellion and massacres that spread outwards from west and mid-Ulster on and after the night of 22–23 October 1641, reveals the survival strategies of those who lost all their possessions, and often their men-folk, and who were driven naked out into the bitter winter cold. It is probable that for every British Protestant killed by an act of violence, there were two or more who died of exposure. But how did so many survive? Cope demonstrates that many Protestants could turn not only to fellow-settlers in strongholds for at least temporary shelter; but a significant number could turn to Catholic relatives or neigbours. Even some Old English Catholics, notably the 9th Lord Dunsany, used their social power and their sense of long-term political realism, to grant safe passage and protection to fleeing settlers. There are some extraordinary vignettes, including a rewriting of the infamous incident when Protestants were thrown off a bridge at Belturbat in Cavan.

Irish Rebellion: Protestant Polemic, 1798-1900. Stuart Andrews.Memoirs of Captain Rock. Thomas Moore. Edited by Emer Nolan and Seamus Deane.

<i>Irish Rebellion: Protestant Polemic, 1798-1900</i>. Stuart Andrews.<i>Memoirs of Captain Rock</i>. Thomas Moore. Edited by Emer Nolan and Seamus Deane.

Return of the Repressed?: "Haunted Castles" in Seventeenth-Century Munster

Return of the Repressed?"Haunted Castles" in Seventeenth-Century Munster Andrew Tierney (bio) The ragged silhouette of the haunted castle has formed the iconic backdrop to the Gothic novel for well over two centuries and retains an enduring presence within the horror genre to the present day. 1 The literature propagating this imagery during the eighteenth century has its roots in the religious and political turmoil that established the Protestant ascendancy. Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto, perhaps the first recognizable Gothic novel, imagines an archaic and superstitious Catholic world—one that Protestantism had supposedly rejected. Its themes of violence, usurpation, and repression resonate with the religious conflict and mass dispossessions of seventeenth-century Ireland in particular, and its dramatic castle setting was inspirational to later novelists dealing directly with Irish history. 2 For this reason Ireland has been seen as uniquely attuned to the Gothic, with its volatile history feeding the insecurities of the ruling class and [End Page 7] prompting complex literary excursions into the past. 3 Theorists have argued that a perpetual fear of Catholic retribution permeates the Anglo-Irish novel, and recently Jarlath Killeen has posited The Irish Rebellion (1646) by Sir John Temple as the foundational text in the formation of the Protestant literary tradition in Ireland. 4 Despite these claims, little attention has been given to accounts of "haunted castles" in the period preceding the eighteenth century, narratives of which can be found in pamphlets, letters, and memoirs. This article examines three separate accounts of hauntings in Irish castles during the mid-seventeenth century and proposes that they present meaningful precursors to the political and religious discourse found in the literary gothic a century later. In broad terms the aesthetic origins of the haunted castle can be traced to the seventeenth century when castles were being decommissioned as military tools. As these structures became increasingly unfashionable in domestic style, Renaissance advocates of classicism quickly labeled them with the denigratory term "Gothick." The various religious wars of the century—their last military engagements—finally consigned castles to ruination across Ireland; they joined the monasteries in providing the theme of memento mori for poets, painters, and novelists of the following century. Dark and emotive associations between the old religion and the old architecture came to underpin the revival of the "Castle Style" in both Britain and Ireland in the eighteenth century. 5 The exuberant architectural fantasies of revivalist pioneers such as Walpole and, later, William Beckford fetishized Catholicism as part of an aesthetic ensemble of horror; what emerged was a distinctly Protestant gaze upon the vestiges of an older religion. Amid the political and religious turmoil of early seventeenth-century Ireland, castles remained powerful symbols of long-established lineages and bastions of Catholic power. But explicit expressions of religious affiliation became increasingly internalized in the years of [End Page 8] Protestant supremacy following the "Flight of the Earls" in 1607; only discreet resistance to new Protestant power could be expressed, such as the carved Counter-Reformation motifs that appear in the Munster territories of the dispossessed Catholic Earls of Desmond. 6 Most notable during the mid-seventeenth century was the use of the Jesus monogram "I. H. S." associated with the Jesuits, leaders of the Counter-Reformation. 7 Expanding on the work of James Delle, Colm Donnelly has discussed the surviving example at Gortnatubbrid, Co. Limerick, in the context of the aftermath of the Desmond plantation. 8 That motif also appears at Ronayn's Court, Co. Cork, in 1624, a building commissioned by Morris Ronayn and his wife Margaret Gould, 9 and in the same year—outside Munster—at the castle of Teig Ó Daly at Killimor, Co. Galway. In the latter example the monogram accompanies various symbols of the passion of Christ, making visual the core Catholic belief in redemption through sacrifice and penance. Since no full survey of these inscriptions has been carried out, it is as yet difficult to determine how widespread they may have been. Donnelly, however, has pointed to parallels in the northeast of Scotland, where similar inscriptions occur during the same period in the context of new building by Catholic families. 10 Such covert religious iconography hints at the quiet spiritual...

British spies and Irish rebels: British intelligence and Ireland, 1916–1945. By Paul McMahon. Pp 516, illus. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. 2008. €60. - Decoding the IRA. By Tom Mahon and James J. Gillogly. Pp 348. Cork: Mercier Press. 2008. €16.99.

British spies and Irish rebels: British intelligence and Ireland, 1916–1945. By Paul McMahon. Pp 516, illus. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. 2008. €60. - Decoding the IRA. By Tom Mahon and James J. Gillogly. Pp 348. Cork: Mercier Press. 2008. €16.99. - Volume 37 Issue 145

Esther Bell-Robinson, the Irish rebel and the Hendrik van Loon letters

Esther Bell-Robinson (1871-1953) was a formidable Irish lady who made a profound contribution to the upliftment and restoration of the Boer women and children for almost fi fty years in the rural Orange Free State town of Koppies. Bell-Robinson was part of the Milner scheme to implement the English school system in the Free State after the Anglo-Boer War. However, she was an ‘Irish Rebel’ who opposed and obstructed any efforts that stood in the way of the social upliftment of the women and children. Bell-Robinson kept a correspondence with one of her former pupils, Hendrik van Loon, who became a historian of note and an international literacy celebrity in the United States during the early twentieth century. The article provides a rare glimpse into the correspondence between Van Loon and Bell-Robinson. The letters, which were not made public before, provide a unique insight into the lives of two important role players on two different continents in the twentieth century.Key words: Esther Bell-Robinson, Hendrik van Loon, cultural contribution,Netherlands, social and economic upliftment, South African, teaching, UnitedStates

Ned Kelly

Myths associated with outlaws or ‘social bandits’ are important elements of national identity in many countries. Long after his death the outlaw Ned Kelly lives on in Australian culture through various media, ensuring his enduring symbolic importance for national identity. National survey data indicates Kelly’s salience for a majority of Australians, although attitudes regarding his status as hero or villain vary considerably. Younger, left-leaning, working-class Australians and consumers of popular culture view Kelly as important, while tertiary-educated, political conservatives tend to downplay his significance. Perceptions of Kelly’s character also influence attitudes regarding his national significance. The lack of foundation heroes in a nation built not only by free settlers but also by English convicts and Irish rebels goes some way to explaining why a 19th-century outlaw is one of the few historical figures recognized by a majority of Australians.