Life on the Fringe? Ireland and Europe, 1800-1922

Description

Scholars of modern Ireland have all too often been too immersed in the intricacies of Anglo-Irish relations to cast a wider glance toward the European continent. Was Ireland really on the fringe of Europe during the 19th century, trapped into an Anglo-Irish Neverland by the Act of Union, oblivious to the progress of European events?

This volume challenges such notions and explores the general theme of ‘Ireland and Europe’ from different and fascinating perspectives. This thematic survey places a number of major themes of Irish history in their European context from 1800 to 1922.

The Irish-European connections during the 19th century span the entire continent from France to Russia, and from Finland to Spain. This book takes Irish history as an organic component of European developments, breaking the Western Europe bias of much of the existing scholarship.

The book demonstrates that Ireland under the Union lived on the fringe only in a geographical sense, and that the European tide of change was clearly felt upon its shores.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Contributors
Foreword by R. V. Comerford
Introduction: Ireland and Europe – Brian Heffernan, Marta Ramón, Pierre Ranger and Zsuzsanna Zarka

Nationalism in Ireland and Europe
1. The origins of Irish nationalism in a European context – Joost Augusteijn
2. Imagining the nation in Irish and Finnish popular culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – Kati Nurmi
3. Cultural nationalism and religion in Ireland: with glances east to Prussian Poland – Annina Cavelti
4. Irish nationalist images of Lajos Kossuth and Hungary in the aftermath of the 1848-49 revolution – Zsuzsanna Zarka

Irish nationalists and the dialectics of imperialism
5. Shifting alliances: James J. O’Kelly and the Spanish government – Marta Ramón
6. The 1898 centenary celebrations from Ballina to Fashoda – Pierre Ranger
7. ‘…In a humble way, a supporter of Russia’: Michael Davitt in Russia, 1903, 1904 and 1905 – Carla King

Transfer of ideas between Ireland and Europe
8. ‘A conflict within’: Catholicism, liberalism and exile in Ireland and Spain, 1808-39 – José-Shane Brownrigg-Gleeson Martínez
9. Catholic elites and the Irish university question, 1860-80: European solutions for an Irish dilemma – Aidan Enright
10. Imitating the continent: European microfinance institutions in Ireland – Eoin McLaughlin
11. A light that failed: the 1922 constitution in a European context – Bill Kissane

Epilogue: Nationality on the fringe: modern Ireland from dependence to interdependence – R. V. Comerford

Index

About the Author

Brian Heffernan is a Postdoctoral researcher affiliated to the Ruusbroec Institute, University of Antwerp. He is also a project researcher for the Dutch Province of the Augustinian Order.