Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race
This is a book about Irish nationalism and how Irish nationalists developed their own conception of the Irish race. Bruce Nelson begins with an exploration of the discourse of race—from the nineteenth—century belief that "race is everything" to the more recent argument that there are no races. He focuses on how English observers constructed the "native" and Catholic Irish as uncivilized and savage, and on the racialization of the Irish in the nineteenth century, especially in Britain and the United States, where Irish immigrants were often portrayed in terms that had been applied mainly to enslaved Africans and their descendants.


Most of the book focuses on how the Irish created their own identity—in the context of slavery and abolition, empire, and revolution. Since the Irish were a dispersed people, this process unfolded not only in Ireland, but in the United States, Britain, Australia, South Africa, and other countries. Many nationalists were determined to repudiate anything that could interfere with the goal of building a united movement aimed at achieving full independence for Ireland. But others, including men and women who are at the heart of this study, believed that the Irish struggle must create a more inclusive sense of Irish nationhood and stand for freedom everywhere. Nelson pays close attention to this argument within Irish nationalism, and to the ways it resonated with nationalists worldwide, from India to the Caribbean.

1107166390
Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race
This is a book about Irish nationalism and how Irish nationalists developed their own conception of the Irish race. Bruce Nelson begins with an exploration of the discourse of race—from the nineteenth—century belief that "race is everything" to the more recent argument that there are no races. He focuses on how English observers constructed the "native" and Catholic Irish as uncivilized and savage, and on the racialization of the Irish in the nineteenth century, especially in Britain and the United States, where Irish immigrants were often portrayed in terms that had been applied mainly to enslaved Africans and their descendants.


Most of the book focuses on how the Irish created their own identity—in the context of slavery and abolition, empire, and revolution. Since the Irish were a dispersed people, this process unfolded not only in Ireland, but in the United States, Britain, Australia, South Africa, and other countries. Many nationalists were determined to repudiate anything that could interfere with the goal of building a united movement aimed at achieving full independence for Ireland. But others, including men and women who are at the heart of this study, believed that the Irish struggle must create a more inclusive sense of Irish nationhood and stand for freedom everywhere. Nelson pays close attention to this argument within Irish nationalism, and to the ways it resonated with nationalists worldwide, from India to the Caribbean.

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Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race

Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race

by Bruce Nelson
Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race

Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race

by Bruce Nelson

Hardcover(New Edition)

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Overview

This is a book about Irish nationalism and how Irish nationalists developed their own conception of the Irish race. Bruce Nelson begins with an exploration of the discourse of race—from the nineteenth—century belief that "race is everything" to the more recent argument that there are no races. He focuses on how English observers constructed the "native" and Catholic Irish as uncivilized and savage, and on the racialization of the Irish in the nineteenth century, especially in Britain and the United States, where Irish immigrants were often portrayed in terms that had been applied mainly to enslaved Africans and their descendants.


Most of the book focuses on how the Irish created their own identity—in the context of slavery and abolition, empire, and revolution. Since the Irish were a dispersed people, this process unfolded not only in Ireland, but in the United States, Britain, Australia, South Africa, and other countries. Many nationalists were determined to repudiate anything that could interfere with the goal of building a united movement aimed at achieving full independence for Ireland. But others, including men and women who are at the heart of this study, believed that the Irish struggle must create a more inclusive sense of Irish nationhood and stand for freedom everywhere. Nelson pays close attention to this argument within Irish nationalism, and to the ways it resonated with nationalists worldwide, from India to the Caribbean.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780691153124
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 05/13/2012
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 352
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Bruce Nelson is professor emeritus of history at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality (Princeton) and Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi

Part 1. The Making of the Irish Race
Prologue: Arguing about (the Irish) Race 3
Chapter 1. "The blood of an Irishman": The English Construction of the Irish Race, 1534–1801 17
Chapter 2. Celts, Hottentots, and "white chimpanzees": The Racialization of the Irish in the Nineteenth Century 30

Part 2. Ireland, Slavery, and Abolition
Chapter 3. "Come out of such a land, you Irishmen": Daniel O’Connell, American Slavery, and the Making of the Irish Race 57
Chapter 4. "The Black O’Connell of the United States": Frederick Douglass and Ireland 86

Part 3. Ireland and Empire
Chapter 5. "From the Cabins of Connemara to the Kraals of Kaffirland": Irish Nationalists, the British Empire, and the "Boer Fight for Freedom" 121
Chapter 6. "Because we are white men": Erskine Childers, Jan Christian Smuts, and the Irish Quest for Self-Government, 1899-1922 148

Part 4. Ireland and Revolution
Chapter 7. Negro Sinn Féiners and Black Fenians: "Heroic Ireland" and the Black Nationalist Imagination 181
Chapter 8. "The Irish are for freedom everywhere": Eamon de Valera, the Irish Patriotic Strike, and the"“last white nation . . . deprived of its liberty" 212

Epilogue: The Ordeal of the Irish Republic 242
Notes 259
Index 323

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This is a brilliant history of British imperial white racism and Irish resistance to it—and cooperation with it—in Ireland and the United States. From Frederick Douglass and Daniel O'Connell in the nineteenth century to Marcus Garvey and Liam Mellows in the twentieth, we are given here a pathbreaking account of a still unfinished struggle."—Seamus Deane, Keough Emeritus Professor of Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame

"This fine work of scholarship makes a valuable contribution to the literature on Irish nationalism and the history of nationalism generally. Nelson offers a cogent critique of those Irish nationalists who were so caught up in their own narrow nationalistic grievances that any sympathetic engagement with other reform movements was ruled out."—Cormac Ó Gráda, author of Famine: A Short History

"This fine and learned study is based on prodigious reading, presented in a compelling manner, and overall is a most impressive performance. I have immense admiration for it."—J. Joseph Lee, New York University

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