Constitutional and Revolutionary Nationalism Nationalism in Ireland

Beginning in the nineteenth century, Irish nationalism has been dominated by a merging of the strength of moral righteousness with physical force. Foster states that the traditional view of the period in Ireland from 1848 to the mid-1870s separates the political activity into "constitutional" and "revolutionary" forms. However, Foster rejects this view in favor of inferring a continuous effort on the part of the Irish to reorganize their political expression in a way "that would reflect the new realities of post-Famine Ireland" (373). This paper agrees and concludes that issues of self determination in Irish often involve a combination of both types of force.

After initially appearing in the 1830s, the Tenant Right movement began to dominate Irish politics after 1850. Foster demonstrates in Chapter Nineteen that Ireland's social and political power structure during the 1800s revolved around the fortunes of the landed classes (374). The landlord class monopolized the local government and two-thirds of the Irish Members of Parliament were from landed families. Consequently, it is not surprising that during this time the dominating political issue concerned the issue of land.

Between the late 1840s and the early 1850s, there was an extraordinarily large number of evictions following the Potato Famine. Although the number of evictions declined thereaf

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which helped elect men of farming, trading and journalistic backgrounds to the boards of the Poor Law Guardians and the other boards formerly dominated by the landed classes. The 1916 Rising After Britain's entry into war with Germany in 1914, Irish nationalists saw the opportunity to turn issues of anti-imperialism to their favor. With Germany's aid, the Irish nationalists scheduled a rising for Easter Week, 1916, which was intended to send a message to the British government. The most significant aspect of the 1916 rising for the purposes of this paper is the rhetoric of the nationalists laying down their reasons for the rising. In the years between the decline of Parnellism in the 1890s and the beginning of the European War, cultural autonomy had become inextricably linked with Fenianism. Irish nationalism was now linked with an ethnic pride that Foster labels as uniquely Anglo-phobic and anti-Protestant (459). This "Celtic pride" was largely fostered by the Gaelic League, which incorporated much more than any other organization the language of Irish literature. Ireland, therefore, had begun to link its right to self-determination with a supposedly unique Irish personality. More so than before, Home Rule was less f
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Approximate Word count = 2734
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)