Lecture 7: The New Nationalism, 1890-1916

Gaelic League poster contrasting a proud, independent Ireland with a dejected Ireland under

British control

• 1884: 1 November: Foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association

• 1891: 28 December: Irish Literary Society founded in London by W.B. Yeats and others

• 1892: 16 August: Foundation of the National Literary Society

• 25 November: Douglas Hyde speaks on ‘The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland’

• 1893: 31 July: Formation of the Gaelic League

• 1896: 29 May: Foundation of the Irish Socialist Republican Party

• 1900: 30 September: Foundation of Cumann na nGaedheal by Arthur Griffith

• 1905: 8 March: Formation of the Dungannon Clubs (Belfast)

• 1907: 21 April: Sinn Féin formed from Cumann na nGaedheal and Dungannon Clubs

• 5 September: Sinn Féin formed from the union of the National Council with the Sinn Féin League

The Fall of Parnell

• Left a political vacuum in Ireland

• Traditional view – culture became a surrogate for politics in this period

• ‘We don’t hear much of Parliament now since Parnell died.’

• Parnell’s death was an important but not pre-eminent event in the history of the revival.

• There were other dates of equal significance to 1891 (the year of Parnell’s death)

• Revivalists drew inspiration from a number of precursors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

• After the defeat of the second Home Rule Bill in 1893 - no longer a convincing reason to postpone all other activities – cultural, literary, artistic – until self-government was granted

• Weberian ‘blocked mobility’ thesis

• Other catalysts for the new nationalism include:

The centenary of the 1798 rising

The outbreak of the Boer war

Queen Victoria’s visit to Ireland in 1900, which was accompanied by counter demonstrations.

These events led to a heightened sense of nationalism in Ireland.

The term ‘new nationalism’ came to describe the rise, in the quarter century before 1914, of a more uncompromising nationalist spirit in Ireland.

Game in progress, G.A.A. pitch, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal

between 1930 and1950.

Gaelic Athletic Association (G.A.A.)

• Formed in November 1884 in Thurles, Co. Tipperary by a teacher, Michael Cusack.

• Cusack believed that the spread of English games was undermining Ireland’s national identity.

• Gaelic version of football was codified in 1885. • The GAA attracted substantial support from the

IRB • In 1887 the GAA leadership was annexed by the

IRB. • By 1901 the executive of the GAA numbered

several Fenians among its members.

Tailteann Games opening parade, 1924Men in Irish costume with wolfhounds

Tailteann Games, 1924

Captains of Irish and American hurling teams shake hands

Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League) membership card.

Gaelic League Conradh na Gaeilge

• The Gaelic League was formed in 1893

• Founders: Eoin MacNeill, Douglas Hyde, Fr. Eugene O’Growney

• Hyde delivered key lecture to the National Literary Society in November 1892 entitled ‘The necessity for de-Anglicising Ireland’

• ‘Let us set our faces against this aping of English dress, and encourage our women to spin and our men to wear comfortable free suits of their own.’

• ‘Perhaps the principal point of all is the necessity for encouraging the use of Anglo-Irish literature instead of English books, especially instead of English periodicals. We must set our face sternly against penny dreadfuls, shilling shockers, and still more the garbage of vulgar English weeklies like Bow Bells and the Police Intelligence. Every house should have a copy of Moore and Davis.’

•Hyde, lecture delivered to the National Literary Society November 1892

Only 13% of those born in Ireland between 1861 and 1871 were native Irish speakers.

By 1901 a bare 0.5 % were monolingual Gaelic speakers and 14% could speak it.

Douglas Hyde

Gaelic League Achievements

• By 1908, the Gaelic League had 600 branches nationwide.

• Founded a popular Irish language newspaper called An Claidheamh Soluis

• In 1897 the League was successful in expanding the rights of Irish speakers giving testimony in the law courts.

• In 1905 the League launched a campaign to force the Post Office to accept mail that was addressed only in Irish.

• By 1909 about 3000 of the 9000 primary schools were teaching Irish, compared with fewer than a hundred a decade earlier.

ANGLO-IRISH LITERARY REVIVAL

• The term refers to a group of poets, prose-writers and playwrights who for inspiration looked to Irish myths, folklore and popular culture

• In December 1891 Yeats, with T.W. Rolleston founded the Irish Literary Society of London.

• In August 1892 the National Literary Society began in Dublin, with the assistance of John O’Leary.

National Literary Theatre

• Aimed to build a Celtic and Irish school of dramatic literature which would present to an ‘uncorrupted and imaginative audience’ the ‘deeper thoughts and emotions of Ireland’.

• Such a drama would ignore divisive political questions and would show that Ireland was ‘not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment…but the home of an ancient idealisms’.

The logo of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, which

was at the centre of the literary revival

The Abbey Theatre, Dublin

Battle of Civilisations

• The Gaelic league idea of an Irish Ireland v the Anglo-Irish idea of Celtic literature.

• To many Gaelic Leaguers, Irish literature in the English language was Protestant and anti-national

• Patriotism was Gaelicist and spiritually Catholic.

• D.P. Moran – journalist and editor of the Leader coined the term ‘Irish Ireland’

The IRB

• Weakened and divided in the 1890s following the Parnell divorced scandal.

• At the turn of the century, with a new generation and new organisations such as Sinn Fein the revolutionary tradition revived.

• Reinvigorated by Tom Clarke, who returned to Ireland in 1907.

• Clarke was a committed revolutionary and has spent 15 years in English prisons.

• In 1910 Irish Freedom, a militantly separatist newspaper was launched.

Thomas Clarke, 1857-1916, after a charcoal sketch by Seán O’Sullivan.

Arthur Griffith formed the National Council in 1903 to organise opposition to Edward VII’s visit to Ireland

Continued as an advanced nationalist forum

Griffith first set out the policy that became known as Sinn Féin ‘ourselves’ in November 1905

Cumann na nGaedheal united with the northern and Fenian linked Dungannon Clubs to form the Sinn Féin League in April 1907

Sept 1908 the Sinn Féin League amalgamated with the National Council to form the organisation called Sinn Féin

Inghinidhe na hEireann (‘Daughters of Ireland’) founded by Maud Gonne in 1900

Members of the group had to be of Irish birth or descent and were dedicated to complete independence.

Cumann na mBan was founded in April 1914.

It was a women’s auxiliary to the Irish Volunteers, a combination of nationalism and feminism

Man selling badges and rosettes at stand,

Heuston Station, Dublin, 1969