Irish Nationalism

L Foran, 'Who’s Afraid of the Irish Language? The National-Philosophical Possibilities of a Lost Tongue' in C Fischer and A Mahon  (eds) "Philosophical Perspectives on Contemporary Ireland" (Routledge, 2019) pp.230-245

Ireland is an unusual post-colonial country in that few of its citizens speak its original language as their first tongue. On a daily basis just 1.7 percent of Irish residents speak Irish, whereas 12 % speak a language other than Irish or English.  What does this mean?  It would be crass to suggest that national or cultural identity rests only on the ability to speak one’s language, but it would be equally facile to pretend that the loss of a national language has no impact on one’s identity. Why did the (already small) number of Irish speakers rapidly decline with Irish independence from British rule? Why has a de jure bilingual state produced a de facto monolingual population?  And, more importantly what are the consequences of this situation: what does being Irish without Irish mean? 

Jacques Derrida describes nationalism as a ‘philosopheme’ and one that cannot be separated from questions of linguistic identity.  In this paper I draw on the work of Derrida and Barbara Cassin to describe the connection between nationalism, language and philosophy. I then go on to examine the role of the Irish language in imaginings of Irish identity and nationalism. I argue that Ireland’s strange and disjointed relationship to its own tongue provides hope for the most hospitable kind of nationalism and the most philosophical kind of identity.

LEGISLATIVE RESOLUTION honoring Colonel Thomas J. Kelly posthumously upon the occasion of his designation as recipient of a Liberty Medal, the highest honor bestowed upon an individual by the New York State Senate.

WHEREAS, It is incumbent upon the people of the State of New York to recognize and acknowledge those within our midst who have made significant contributions to the quality of life therein; and
WHEREAS, Members of the Armed Services from the State of New York, who have served so valiantly and honorably in wars in which this country's freedom was at stake, as well as in the preservation of peace in peacetime, deserve a special salute from this Legislative Body; and
WHEREAS, This Legislative Body is justly proud to honor Colonel Thomas J. Kelly posthumously upon the occasion of his designation as recipient of a Liberty Medal, the highest honor bestowed upon an individual by the New York State Senate; and
WHEREAS, The New York State Senate Liberty Medal was established by resolution and is awarded to individuals who have merited special commendation for exceptional, heroic, or humanitarian acts on behalf of their fellow New Yorkers.

This study aims at highlighting the role of the Irish theatre in reviving Irish culture and establishing a dependent Irish identity. It also seeks to prove that theatre is used as means of resistance to English colonialism; it presents W. B. Yeats as an example of the Irish dramatists who played a significant role in the recreation of Irish national identity as an independent distinct identity. Actually, Yeats' efforts in the national employment of literature for national purposes were the fountainhead by which he was able to present the national cause of his country. The study concludes that the Irish theatre played a great national role by presenting nationalism-oriented plays that aroused the sense of national feelings of audiences and created a national identity as well. Irish theatre imposingly for grounded itself powerfully not on the literary level, but also on the national level by its role in identity creation.

In 1980, three Republican women prisoners held in Armagh prison in Northern Ireland joined the hunger strike being conducted by male Republican prisoners in Maze Prison. Overshadowed by the fatal 1981 strike, the 1980 strike involved these women in Armagh, who challenged the traditional nationalist notion of the strong male warrior, while generating sympathy and solidarity across the globe, including with the far left and the women’s liberation movement in Britain. This article will look at how the left and the women’s liberation movement in both Britain and Ireland looked to portray these women within their competing narratives.

Roger Casement made two journeys to Argentina: the first was in 1907 and the second was in 1910. Little is known about either trip beyond a few fragmentary references in letters and some encrypted entries in the contested Black Diaries. Nonetheless, these traces would suggest that Casement was connected into a vibrant Irish-Argentinian network that played a vital role in the independence struggle before and after 1916. Through reconstructing evidence of these visits and locating his friendships within Ireland's broader transnational struggle, this essay excavates a dimension of informal diplomacy that prepared the ground for the emergence of Irish foreign policy after 1919.

http://revistas.fflch.usp.br/abei/index

This paper aims to manifest the ways in which Colm Tóibín deals with Irish nationalism and culture through the memories of his protagonist in 'The Heather Blazing'. Drawing on his own and his father’s childhood memories as well as his first-hand experiences of working as a journalist at the Irish Supreme Court, Tóibín creates a fictional realm which is sharply divided by the conflicting perspectives of the past and present Irish societies. This realm is embodied in the protagonist, Eamon Redmon, a high court judge. As a figure who was raised at the core of nationalist ideology and Catholic conservatism, Redmon is unable to establish an identity which fits the modernized and liberalized Irish community of the late Twentieth century. His mind is replete with the vestiges of Irish nationalist spirit and conservative culture as revealed through the narratives of his memories. Even though he seems to have abandoned his religious and nationalist views, his memory functions as a secure store which he recurrently visits. In his memory, concepts of moral / cultural conservatism and patriotism are personified in his father and Éamon De Valera, the prominent Irish politician after whom Redmon is named. From a broader perspective, Redmon’s personal memory represents the collective memory of the whole Irish nation which has been transformed into an internationalized / liberalized secular country while arguably bound to its traditional identity.

In response to a paper I delivered at the "Institutions and Ireland: Medicine, Health, and Welfare" conference at Trinity College, Dublin in January 2016, I was generously invited to contribute to the "Perceptions of Pregnancy" blog. In this post I offer an account of the political and aesthetic ends to which references to Ireland’s Lock hospitals and the discourses of sexual hygiene with which they were enmeshed are deployed in the writings of James Joyce and Oliver St John Gogarty.

"Perceptions of Pregnancy" is an interdisciplinary and international network for researchers working on fertility, pregnancy and childbirth, which grew out of the "Perceptions of Pregnancy: From the Medieval to the Modern" conference, held at the University of Hertfordshire from 16-18 July 2014. The network and associated blog are run by Dr Jennifer Evans and Dr Ciara Meehan of the School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire.

The "Perceptions of Pregnancy" site is an extremely valuable and ever-evolving resource for scholars and general readers alike and is well worth a visit.

On 18 April 2019, by-stander Lyra McKee was killed while a group of teenagers and young men rioted against the PSNI in the Northern Irish city of Derry. During these riots, two masked gunmen of the “New IRA” fired up to ten shots at three PSNI Land Rovers. The recruitment of teenagers into the ranks of dissident Irish republicans has raised concern that a new generation of young adults born after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement is prepared to continue acts of political violence in Ireland. This article will examine the motivations and ideology of teenagers and young adults in dissident Irish republican organisations. It is based on a series of in-depth interviews with members of the dissident republican youth organisation Na Fianna Éireann in the Dublin region. The interview data show four broad motivational factors for teenagers and young adults to join the republican youth organisation, Na Fianna Éireann, in the Republic of Ireland. These four are: First, working-class background, with its related deprivation and social problems (such as criminality and drug addiction); second, the importance of family links and social networks; third, social media as an introduction to republicanism; and, fourth, fascination with Irish history.

This book chapter examines Herbert Remmel’s childhood experience which juxtaposed Hitler’s Germany and de Valera’s neutral Ireland. Born in 1936 in Cologne he experienced the war from the perspective of a child. As a fortunate nine year old, he escaped the bombed out Rhineland by taking advantage of a humanitarian operation involving the Irish Red Cross and the Save the German Children Society (SGCS). He landed off the mail-boat from Liverpool at Dun Laoghaire in Dublin on 27 July 1946 as a member of the first group of approximately 80 German children arriving under the scheme. Herbert’s experiences with his two Irish foster families instilled in the young German boy a deep and intimate appreciation of Ireland, its society, the Irish sense of place, the people’s traditions, the Irish rural way of life and Irish nationalism. Though only in Ireland for just under three years, the interlude was indelibly imprinted on his being and identity. His experience granted him rare insights into both his native fatherland, Germany, and his fostering motherland, Ireland.

The War of Independence (1919-21) and Civil War (1922-23) form a defining period
in Irish history.  During these turbulent years the foundations of the Irish Republic
were laid by a guerrilla warfare which at first united the majority of the Irish people
against British forces but later split them apart in a bitter civil war.  This chapter
forms part of an on-going project in which I am attempting to understand various
aspects of women’s participation and experiences in the campaign for Irish self
determination.

Part elegy to a mythical idea of Ireland and part critical condemnation of a political idealism that is no longer viable in a modern Ireland, Edna O’Brien’s Country Girls Trilogy can be read as an anti-aisling simultaneously marking an end and a new beginning in Irish literature. Operating from the premise that O’Brien naming her protagonist Caithleen is more than coincidental, this paper argues that she is a contemporary variation of Cathleen Ní Houlihan, the female personification of Ireland and symbol of patriotic sacrifice. Alluding to the aisling tradition and sovereignty myths, Caithleen’s story is O’Brien’s way of “killing” the cult of Cathleen and demythologizing the restrictive and patriarchal nationalist narratives. The story of Caithleen Brady reverses and subverts the fantasy of Cathleen Ní Houlihan by bringing her to life in 1950s Ireland and offering her tragic story as a literary sacrifice to clear the way for Irish women writers.

For the last three years I have been working on my current book project, which is titled Ireland, the Irish, and the Rise of Biofiction. I am nearly finished with a full draft, and I just completed my introduction. If any of you have time to read it, and it is short, here is what I would like to know. One, is the introduction clear? In other words, based on the introduction, do you get a clear sense of what I intend to argue in the book? Second, does it make you want to read the book? Put differently, does it sound like the book would be worth reading? I will be immensely grateful for any feedback.

Analyse the causes of the land war. Why did it occur when it did, and how well do current explanations account for it?' When studying Ireland in the 19 th and 20 th centuries, the two main questions or difficulties that arise during these periods are the land question and the question of nationalism. With both feeding into the other it is no surprise that these two large topics are

This book was written by Leslie Blau (Blau László). It is a translation of the English "Bonyhad: A Destroyed Community" printed by Blau in 1994 (New York, New York). This translation into Hebrew was edited by Reuven Chaim Klein in 2010. It has yet to be published.ג

The Revolution Papers is a weekly newspaper that tells the story of the Irish revolution from 1916 to 1923 by reproducing newspapers covering key events in the period. As editor, I write a review of the newspapers in each issue. This review is from our first issue which was published on 28 December 2015. For further details, please visit http://therevolutionpapers.ie/

This paper focuses on the difficulties Kathleen O'Brennan faced as a political radical and foreigner operating as an Irish republican activist in the United States. In 1920, O'Brennan constructed for herself and the American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America's War Aims an American identity rooted in popular conceptions of the American Revolution. This let her work more effectively at the same time that it allowed feminists, radicals, and leftists to campaign for U.S. recognition of the Irish Republic in the face of opposition from the conservative Friends of Irish Freedom and American nativists. Yet once Irish republican politicians established the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic, thus shaping their own acceptable American identity, they made it difficult for the radical O'Brennan to act as an Irish nationalist in the United States. In defiance, O'Brennan and Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly formed American auxiliaries of the Irish White Cross. Irish politicians and their American organization, however, foiled O'Brennan's efforts by branding her un-American, and, therefore, un-Irish. O'Brennan's activities show that displays of American patriotism and American character served as political tools in the transatlantic Irish republican cause, but the movement ultimately depended on who could best use American identities for their own ends.

This article provides guidelines for understanding Irish socialist playwright Sean O'Casey as a disabled author, through analysis of the first volume of his autobiography, _I Knock at the Door_ (1939). The narrative describes the author’s experience as a poor child with a painful disease of the eyes, likely trachoma. Like O’Casey’s other works, the book strongly criticizes the inequalities brought about by capitalism. It also describes how ableist medical, religious, and educational authorities further contributed to his sense of alienation.

The article is a chapter in _Disability Experiences_, edited by G. Thomas Couser and Susannah B. Mintz. The collection provides overviews, historical and cultural contexts, and themes of hundreds of first-person disability memoirs, autobiographies, and other personal narratives.

Review of Robin Bury, 'Buried Lives, the Protestants of Southern Ireland, History Press of Ireland, 2017.

This survey of 20th Century southern Protestant experience notes that it began badly for Protestant landlords. Their huge estates were sub-divided for purchase by unappreciative mainly Romanist tenants.
    Then things went further downhill.
    Bury’s narrative asserts that IRA attacks on individual Protestants during the 1919-23 War of Independence and Civil War were sectarian. Southern Protestant testimony rejecting this perception is ignored, alongside other contrary evidence...... (the rest in PDF)

This article reexamines the offer of resignation by British cavalry officers at the main British Army base in Ireland rather than engage in 'active operations' against anti Home-Rule citizens in Ulster. While no orders had been issued the outcome of the event was to hamstring Liberal Party efforts to impose its authority. Often presented as a minor event perpetrated by mostly Anglo-Irish officers the article shows that this is not, in fact, correct. While the simplest resolution would have been to accept the resignations, analysis of the mutineers' backgrounds shows why this course of action would have been impossible. The article also shows that Easter Rebellion in 1916 was a logical consequence of the mutiny and that Casement's analysis of the crisis at the Curragh impelled him into action. The article also suggests that the crisis also influenced German calculations on the likelihood of Britain being able or willing to take action in the event of an attack on and quick defeat of France in any European war in July 1914. "The officers stationed at the Curragh are of the unanimous opinion that further information is essential before being called upon at short notice to take any decision regarding 'active operations' in Ulster. If, 'duty as ordered' involves active military operations against Ulster, then the following 65 officers here stationed would respectfully, and under protest, prefer to be dismissed."1 Officers stationed at Curragh Camp 21 March 1914 'The cause is not far to seek. A constitution to be maintained intact must be the achievement and pride of the people themselves; must rest on their own free will and on their own determination to sustain it, instead of being something resident in another land whose chief representative is an armed force-armed not to protect the population, but to hold it down. We had seen the working of the Irish constitution in the refusal of the army of occupation at the Curragh to obey the orders of the crown'.

The book opens with the author's vivid description of her life in a traditional family in Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s, her studies at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Kovno, and the dramatic turn in Gitta’s life as a result of the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940. Only a few days before the first gruesome massacres of the Lithuanian Jews, Gitta and her family are expelled from their home by the Soviets. Although they escape the claws of the murderous Nazis and Lithuanians, their destiny takes them to the terrifying banks of the Arctic Ocean.

Gitta’s account of life in Siberia is an extraordinary description of her confrontation with the brutal climate and the flinty Soviet authorities -- but also of an establishment of a Jewish community which, with enormous effort, attempted to reconstruct the spiritual-communal life it had known in Lithuania. The kingpins of this new Jewish community were Gitta’s father and the mother of her future husband, who taught the youth Hebrew, organized daily prayers, constructed Jewish calendars and initiated other activities.

Sixteen years later, following the long-awaited release from Siberian exile, the author and her husband (my father) in Vilna attempt to gain permission to immigrate to Israel. When their struggle runs into a brick wall, they express their longing for the Jewish homeland by naming their children with Jewish names and teaching them the Hebrew language openly. After thirteen years of tedious efforts, their stubborn struggle succeeds in triumph. The book ends with their landing in the Promised Land.

As the editor of this work, I have added to the memoirs a research wrapping of relevant footnotes and a professional article at the appendix dealing with the deportation of the Lithuanian Jews, based on NKVD documents that I uncovered at the special archives in Vilna. This extensive research material complements the author's memoirs from a scientific perspective and reveals for readers and researchers quite a fascinating piece of Jewish history that has disappeared until now into the shadow of Holocaust stories.

The Easter Rising marked the beginning of a new era of Irish nationalism. During that rebellion a small number of mainly young people rose up against the English government. Their purpose was to establish an Irish Republic. However, this revolt was doomed from the start. The rebellion had little impact outside Dublin except for a few counties, one of which was Co. Galway. Even here it was a small rebellion. Irish people observed this revolt as a youth act of defiance. Most important was the view of the rebellion as a German plot. They believed that German planned the Rising as first step of a German invasion of the island. The next pages we will discuss the Rising in Galway in reference to the Dublin, although of the people towards the rebellion impact the Rising. Also, the impact of the Rising on the Irish Party will be addressed. The origins of the Easter Rising The aim of the men who participated in the Eastern Rising not only was to proclaim an Irish Republic. According to Michael Laffan the majority of the conspirators were young people planning for a successful revolt. Nevertheless, their main concern was to make a heroic and principal gesture, to rescue the remnants of Ireland's tarnished honour, to end the country's passivity and its submissive acceptance of British rule. 1

This very brief research note examines the authorship of The Record of the Rebellion in Ireland 1920-21 which was a British Army attempt to understand why their counter insurgency efforts during the Irish War of Independence failed. Surprisingly many of the lessons that Strickland learned failed to be taken on board by the establishment and the mistakes of Ireland were repeated in Palestine, Kenya, and later Northern Ireland but that is not considered here. The authorship  of the document has always remained uncertain but previously overlooked documents in the archive of General Sir Peter Strickland KCB KBE CMG DSO show that he was the author.

Unlike many other publications on Nazi culture, this book is not primarily about what has been called "the Nazification of the arts," based upon state-supported use of the arts  for propaganda, a curtailment of freedom in art criticism, and the political and legal Gleichschaltung, "the forcing into conformity" under a hierarchical, dictatorial leadership (Führerprinzip) of all aspects of the various branches of national and local government, the civil service, education, public finance, business, the professions, and the arts.  To complement earlier studies of Gleichschaltung, the essays in this anthology explore the underlying beliefs of the Nazi racist state as they were developed and propagated in various fields of artistic activity.

The second half of the 20 th century has seen many facets of republicanism in Ireland and Northern Ireland. It started with armed activism, which reached its violence peak in 1969-72, and then the decline of this approach and a heightened importance of political means. At all times, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was at the center of the struggle.

Thomas Davis made an impact upon the stage of Irish nationalism out of all proportion to the amount of time actually spent on that stage.  While his work, especially his efforts as one of the part owners, editors, and writers for The Nation, of necessity moved across a broad range of topics, this paper will examine Davis’ observations on the appropriate role of Irish music in service of the nationalist cause and the changes which would need, in his opinion, to occur for contemporary music to fulfill that role.  Specifically, we will examine his essay titled “The Songs of Ireland,” written in either 1844 or 1845 and published posthumously in a collection of essays in 1846.

This article offers a new interpretation of the demise of Irish Home Rule support in the United States, making the case that the cause did not so much disappear as it morphed into the preparedness, and later, pro-war movements. The importance of prior military service to male Irish Home Rulers in New York City first surfaced in 1914 as Irish nationalists wrestled with the possibility of Irish Home Rule with Ulster exclusion. As women in the movement realized that they could no longer remain committed to home rule if it meant sacrificing Ulster, they ceded what was left of the cause to men who viewed staying steadfast to Irish Home Rule through the lens of their status as veterans. The women, led by Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly, went on to found the Irish Women's Council, American Auxiliary No. 1 (Cumann na mBan). The men held out hope than an Allied victory would result in Irish Home Rule, possibly with Ulster. As war preparedness gained momentum in the United States, Mayor John Purroy Mitchel unofficially bolstered support for Irish Home Rule in New York, an increasingly minority position in the face of the growing Irish republican cause, by lending it the defense of the New York City Police Department as it clamped down on anti-war activists, including Irish republicans. This relationship came to a head in the summer of 1917, when police force previously employed to shield Irish Home Rulers from the criticism of republicans took a very violent turn in Manhattan. On the surface, it looked as though police assaulted Irish republicans merely as radical anti-war activists, but the same city officials who just months earlier had enlisted the police to defend Irish Home Rule meetings from republican hecklers were the same individuals who orchestrated police attacks on Irish republicans in the summer of 1917 in the name of pro-war patriotism and unquestioning support for the United States and the Allies. The abilities of Irish Home Rulers to blend into the preparedness and pro-war movements obscured their continued presence as functioning Irish nationalists at the same time that Irish republicanism became the dominant form of Irish nationalism in the United States. Published in New Hibernia Review (Summer 2016): 59-79.

After further research mainly in the Military service Pensions Collection of the Military Archives of Ireland I have added a further fifty (or so) names to bring the total to 760. There has been a small number of deletions. All additional material is on red.

"Criminal Law in the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia

This article deals with the material criminal law in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. In the branch of the criminal law during the period of the Nazi-Occupation, the most changes (compared to other branches of law during this period) were implemented. The criminal law valid on the area of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was considerably complicated and unclear. There were some reasons for it. One of them was the fact, that the rules of the criminal law were not codified in any single legal enactment. The second reason was the exist-ence of two legal orders, which were valid simultaneously in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the substitution of the territoriality principle by the personality principle. Over the years, the use of the taken over Czechoslovakian rules of criminal law had been increasingly reduced for the benefit of the German criminal law and of the hearing of torts and delicts before the German courts in the Protectorate."

While Irish involvement on both sides of the Spanish Civil War has been comprehensively accounted for by historians, there remains the issue of the Irish government’s non-intervention in the conflict, even by way of moral support, for the democratic mandate of the Spanish Republic, including the recently established Basque autonomous government. Utilising several previously unexploited Basque primary sources, this article traces and highlights Basque nationalist hopes and expectations around possible Irish government interventions, and how Basque nationalists ultimately felt let down by their ostensible Irish allies. Despite this disappointment, the prevailing pre-civil war perception among Basque nationalists of Ireland as a beacon of national liberation and a spiritual ally of sorts to the Basques was to endure. In exploring Basque-Irish contacts and relations around the Spanish Civil War, the article touches on several interrelated themes, such as misunderstood solidarity, the fate of small stateless nations, the realpolitik of international relations, and historical memory.

Follow link for https://www.academia.edu/10809952/Shooting_Incidents_War_of_Independence_Cork_Ireland_1917-1921_Version_2_Updated_15_February_2015 updated version: This is a companion file for Civilians Shot Cork 1919-1924 War of Independence and Civil War and lists with notes each shooting incident covered by the Irish newspapers during this period. By their nature neither file is complete and will be added to as further information becomes available. British military casualties are not included unless they are specifically mentioned in the newspapers as they are already available on Cairo Gang http://www.cairogang.com/soldiers-killed/REGIMENTS/regiments.html