THE object of this book is to show the people of Ireland that in their struggle for independence they had the wholehearted sympathy and support of the vast majority of the great American people. This book was written by an Irish Republican for Irish Republicans. The facts set forth are put down solely to inform Irish Republicans of the blunders we made in the past so that their disastrous repetition may be avoided. A new situation has been created, but in any advance, methods similar to those adopted outside Ireland in the past may have to be adopted again. The new conditions in Ireland, however, require plans, methods, and leadership in accordance with Ireland’s actual status today.—Patrick McCartan
Retraces the steps of an incredible journey of a leader in exile that would resonate through Irish history for the rest of the century ... In June 1919 Eamon de Valera stowed away on a liner bound for New York and walked into the Waldorf-Astoria using the title 'President of Ireland'. He spent eighteen months billeted in the most expensive hotel in the world. From this luxurious base, de Valera criss-crossed America by plane, boat and train throughout 1919 and 1920, publicising his nation's plight and raising more than $5 million for the cause of Irish independence. While the War of Independence raged back home, de Valera was supporting the cause with packed engagements from Madison Square Garden to San Francisco including a total audience of over a million people. Along the way he underwent a harsh and unforgiving political education that better equipped him to dominate Irish politics for decades. Offering a unique take on a familiar figure, and containing fascinating new information and photographs, this book details an intriguing and largely unknown episode in the career of Ireland's most famous politician.
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.
How did Irish and American diplomacy operate in Washington DC and Dublin during the 1930s era of economic depression, rising fascism and Nazism? How did the Anglo–American relationship affect American–Irish diplomatic relations? Why and how did Éamon de Valera and Franklin D. Roosevelt move their countries towards neutrality in 1939? This first comprehensive history of American and Irish diplomacy during the 1930s focuses on formal and informal diplomacy, examining all aspects of diplomatic life to explain the relationship between the two administrations from 1932 to 1939. Bernadette Whelan reveals how diplomats worked on behalf of their governments to implement Franklin D. Roosevelt and Éamon de Valera's foreign policies – particularly when Éamon de Valera believed in the existence of a 'special' transatlantic relationship but Franklin D. Roosevelt increasingly favoured a strong relationship with Britain. Drawing on a wide range of under-used sources, this is a major new contribution to the history of American and Irish diplomacy and revises our understanding of the importance of Ireland to a US administration.
Examines how the Irish American community, the American public, and the American government played a crucial role in the making of a sovereign independent Ireland On Easter Day 1916, more than a thousand Irishmen stormed Dublin city center, seizing the General Post Office building and reading the Proclamation for an independent Irish Republic. The British declared martial law shortly afterward, and the rebellion was violently quashed by the military. In a ten-day period after the event, fourteen leaders of the uprising were executed by firing squad. In New York, news of the uprising spread quickly among the substantial Irish American population. Initially the media blamed German interference, but eventually news of British-propagated atrocities came to light, and Irish Americans were quick to respond. America and the Making of an Independent Ireland centres on the diplomatic relationship between Ireland and the United States at the time of Irish Independence and World War I. Beginning with the Rising of 1916, Francis M. Carroll chronicles how Irish Americans responded to the movement for Irish independence and pressuring the US government to intervene on the side of Ireland. Carroll’s in-depth analysis demonstrates that Irish Americans after World War I raised funds for the Dáil Éireann government and for war relief, while shaping public opinion in favor of an independent nation. The book illustrates how the US government was the first power to extend diplomatic recognition to Ireland and welcome it into the international community. Overall, Carroll argues that the existence of the state of Ireland is owed to considerable effort and intervention by Irish Americans and the American public at large.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887- 1940) led an extraordinary mass movement of black social protest. His Universal Negro Improvement Association and his "back to African" program of racial nationalism introduced many ideas that emerged again during the Black Power years of the 1960s: pride in black roots, pride in black physical features and African culture, and rejection of assimilation into white America. Yet the charismatic black Jamaican who roared his credo before huge audiences on the st reet corners of Harlem remains an enigma. His image as an honest idealist urging blacks to build their own nation has been clouded by accusations that he was a con man who, in the name of black pride, perpetrated one of history's greatest swindles. The Marcus Garvey And Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers clarifies the Garvey phenomenon. This is the first volume in a monumental ten-volume survey of thirty thousand archival documents and original manuscripts from widely separated sources, brought together by editor Robert A. Hill to provide a compelling picture of the evolution, spread, and influence of the UNIA. Letters, pamphlets, vital records, intelligence reports, newspaper articles, speeches, legal records, and diplomatic dispatches are enhanced by Hill's descriptive source notes, explanatory footnotes, and comprehensive introduction. Of the over three hundred items included in Volume I, only very few have ever been published or reprinted before. Volume I begins with the earliest mentions in 1826 of the Garvey family in Jamaica's slave records, and closes with Garvey's triumphant address at Carnegie Hall on August 25, 1919. The information is fascinating and often startling, tracing Garvey's early career in Jamaica, Central America, Europe, and the United States, and detailing the first stirrings of what was to become an international mass movement. Hill presents complete documentation of the first official surveillance of the UNIA, which prepared the way for the beginning of the criminal and civil litigation that engulfed Garvey and his movement, as American and European governments reacted to the perceived threat with repressive policies. The documents also record the internal structure and political splits during the early years of the UNIA, and provide the financial history of Garvey's controversial Black Star Line steamship venture, one of the schemes that ultimately led to the financial collapse of his movement. The first volume and the following five focus on America, the seventh and eighth on Mrica, and the last two on the Caribbean. The information Hill has compiled goes far beyond preoccupation with a single intriguing historical figure to document the growth and demise of a mass social phenomenon, an Mro-American protest movement with strong links to African and Caribbean nationalism in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Eamon de Valera – 'The Long Fellow' – remains a towering presence whose shadow still falls over Irish life. The history of Ireland for much of the twentieth century is the history of de Valera. From the 1916 Rising, the troubled Treaty negotiations and the Civil War, right through to his retirement after a longer period in power than any other 20th-century leader, Eamon de Valera has both defined and divided Ireland. He was directly responsible for the Irish Constitution, Fianna Fail (the largest Irish political party) and the Irish Press Group. He helped create a political church-state monolith with continuing implications for Northern Ireland, the social role of women, the Irish language and the whole concept of an Irish nation. Many of the challenges he confronted are still troubling the peace of Ireland and of Britain, and some of the problems are his legacy. Tim Pat Coogan's comprehensive study of this political giant is a major addition to the history of Irish-British relationships.
From the Revolutionary War forward, Irish immigrants have contributed significantly to the construction of the American Republic. Scholars have documented their experiences and explored their social, political, and cultural lives in countless books. Offering a fresh perspective, this volume traces the rich history of the Irish American diaspora press, uncovering the ways in which a lively print culture forged significant cultural, political, and even economic bonds between the Irish living in America and the Irish living in Ireland. As the only mass medium prior to the advent of radio, newspapers served to foster a sense of identity and a means of acculturation for those seeking to establish themselves in the land of opportunity. Irish American newspapers provided information about what was happening back home in Ireland as well as news about the events that were occurring within the local migrant community. They framed national events through Irish American eyes and explained the significance of what was happening to newly arrived immigrants who were unfamiliar with American history or culture. They also played a central role in the social life of Irish migrants and provided the comfort that came from knowing that, though they may have been far from home, they were not alone. Taking a long view through the prism of individual newspapers, editors, and journalists, the authors in this volume examine the emergence of the Irish American diaspora press and its profound contribution to the lives of Irish Americans over the course of the last two centuries.
There is a widely held notion that, except for the elections of 1928 and 1960, the Irish have primarily influenced only state and local government. The Irish and the American Presidency reveals that the Irish have had a consistent and noteworthy impact on presidential careers, policies, and elections throughout American history. Using US party systems as an organizational framework, this book examines the various ways that Scots-Irish and Catholic Irish Americans, as well as the Irish who remained in eire, have shaped, altered, and sometimes driven such presidential political factors as party nominations, campaign strategies, elections, and White House policymaking.The Irish seem to be inextricably interwoven into important moments of presidential political history. Yanoso discusses the Scots-Irish participation in the American Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, and the War of 1812. She describes President Bill Clinton's successful Good Friday Agreement that brought peace and hope to Northern Ireland. And finally, she assesses the now-common presidential visits to Ireland as a strategy for garnering Irish-American support back home.No previous work has explored the impact of Irish and Irish-American affairs on US presidential politics throughout the entire scope of American history. Readers interested in presidential politics, American history, and/or Irish/Irish-American history are certain to find The Irish and the American Presidency enjoyable, informative, and impactful.
"Africa for the Africans" was the name given in Africa to the extraordinary black social protest movement led by Jamaican Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940). Volumes I-VII of the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers chronicled the Garvey movement that flourished in the United States during the 1920s. Now, the long-awaited African volumes of this edition (Volumes VIII and IX and a forthcoming Volume X) demonstrate clearly the central role Africans played in the development of the Garvey phenomenon. The African volumes provide the first authoritative account of how Africans transformed Garveyism from an external stimulus into an African social movement. They also represent the most extensive collection of documents ever gathered on the early African nationalism of the inter-war period. Here is a detailed chronicle of the spread of Garvey's call for African redemption throughout Africa and the repressive colonial responses it engendered. Volume VIII begins in 1917 with the little-known story of the Pan-African commercial schemes that preceded Garveyism and charts the early African reactions to the UNIA. Volume IX continues the story, documenting the establishment of UNIA chapters throughout Africa and presenting new evidence linking Garveyism and nascent Namibian nationalism.
