British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

BA PDF Symposium 2006

26 April 2006

Abstracts

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Dr Matthew Kelly

Irish nationalists and the ‘Indian National Revolution’ of 1857

In recent years the question ‘Was Ireland a colony?’ has become pressing. For some, the answer is so obviously yes they assume an ideological agenda must lie behind any denial. Their opponents are often equally dogmatic and scornful. Others acknowledge that Ireland’s material condition, system of government, political status, and cultural influences did bear some resemblance to the experience of other colonised peoples. But they are reluctant to use the language of colonialism and imperialism to account for Ireland’s nineteenth and twentieth century experience because its use is so often polemical and transparently motivated by present-day political agendas, and, thus, insensitive to the historical complexity of past. This dilemma, in part, is provoked by the fact that using or not using this language has become a badge of belonging in the tribal world of Irish historiography and literary criticism.

Stated very simply, one of the ways historians argue that it is not helpful to analyse Ireland as a colonised society is because at the time the Irish did not see themselves in these terms. Their aspirations and actions were shaped by different causes and political discourses. This approach, of course, reflects a highly developed historiographical tradition that has long been challenged by similarly sophisticated arguments derived, at least in part, from Marx. The current disputes in Irish studies and historiography use new critical insights to address what is effectively the same problem. These arguments are unsatisfactory because very little research has been done on mainstream Irish attitudes to imperialism, which is especially evident when contrasted with the efforts expended on exposing colonial attitudes in Irish literature. Consequently, historians have shown a tendency to make judgements on the basis of a body of research that has not been particularly sensitive to colonial issues. This paper, therefore, aims to do something fairly straight-forward. It seeks to establish in what terms Irish nationalists understood the most serious and politically significant imperial crisis faced by the British government in the nineteenth century and whether they thought this had any significance for Ireland. It delineates something of the complexity of their response and attempts to situate this in wider Irish and British political debates, asking what was distinctive about the Irish response. It will be shown that among a particular nationalist milieu, there was a tendency to identify the Irish with colonised people but reasons will be offered as to why this offers only a limited basis on which to generalise more broadly about Irish attitudes towards empire during the period of the Union.

Dr Matthew Kelly studied Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1997. He stayed on at Balliol to do a Masters and DPhil, completing his thesis, 'Irish Separatism, 1882-1914' , in 2002. He was Lecturer in Modern History at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford for the academic year 2002-3, before being awarded the BA PDF for 2003-6. He is hosted by Hertford College, Oxford. He has published five articles and his first book, The Fenian Ideal and Irish Nationalism, 1882-1916, will shortly be published by Boydell and Brewer.