Lecture 3: Fenianism

The altered social balance in the countryside

The development of expatriate nationalism

The modernisation of Ulster’s economy & politics

The emergence of a disciplined nationalist parliamentary party

Themes that dominated Irish life and politics 1848 –

c. mid 1870s

‘A whole variety of parties and groups emerged, some

campaigning on the issue of the land, and especially tenant right; some concerned to

promote the interests of their particular social or religious

constituency.’

Boyce, Nineteenth Century Ireland, p136.

Politics in post-Famine Ireland

1. Tenant League

2. Catholic Defence Association

3. Protestant Conservatism

Irish Tenant League

Formed in Dublin in 1850

Campaigned for a redress of agrarian grieveances

Operated on an all island basis

Formed the Indepdendent Irish Party

with the ‘Irish Brigade’

National Association

Formally instituted in Dublin in December 1864

Facilitated co-operation between Irish Catholics and English radicals

Promoted disestablishment

Fenianism – origins

Developed in the absence of a viable constitutional movement

Offered rhetoric, recreation, status and the prospect of patriotic glory

Denis Dowling Mulcahy, Thomas Clarke Luby and John O’Leary

Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa (1831-1915)

The I.R.B.

Dedicated to secrecy

A conspiratorial pledge bound society

Establishment of a democratic Irish republic

Committed to insurrection

Organised Fenianism was patchy

Strongest in Munster and Leinster

1864: 54,000 recruits

Appealed mainly to artisans, shop assistants, travelling salesmen, farmers’ sons

Fenian prisoner, Hugh McGriskin, 31 May 1865

Fenianism: The social aspect

A young men’s movement – 87% of Fenians in HCSA files were under 36 years of age

Fenianism in mid 1860s was converted to a social purpose

Provided young men with a forum for fraternal association & communal self-expression

‘However strongly they may have repudiated allegiance to

the queen in their initiation oath, the Fenians we have been looking at here were from the point of view of social history easily recognisable and fairly

typical mid-Victorians.’

Comerford, R.V., ‘Patriotism as Pastime’, p250.

‘Ireland’s opportunity will come when England is engaged in a desperate struggle with some

great European power or European combination, or when the flame of insurrection has spread through

her Indian Empire, and her strength and resources are

strained.’

John Devoy, Irish American Fenian

The Fenians in 1865

Stephens – 1865 would be a year of decision, a year in which, with American assistance, he would probably lead a rising in Ireland

John O’Mahoney sent large sums of money to Ireland from America

Irish-American veterans of the Civil War were sent to Ireland to take charge of the rebel army

6,000 firearms and an estimated 50,000 men willing to participate

By 1866 the IRB was on the defensive

September 1865: Offices of the Irish People raided

February 1866: Habeas Corpus suspended in Ireland

December 1866: Stephens stands down

February 11 1867: 1,000 Fenians turn out to raid the arsenal at Chester

February 1867: Minor uprising in Co. Kerry

February 10 1867: Executive committee transforms itself into a Provisional Government of Ireland

Illustration entitled ‘The Irish Fenian Executive’

Fenian bond for twenty dollars, signed by John O’Mahony, 1866

A skirmish between troops and Fenians in Co. Tipperary, March 1867

The Battle of Tallaght, 5 March 1867

‘The aftermath of the 1867 rising had in some ways a much more fundamental political impact than the military episodes of February and March: the immediate fall-out from the ’67 certainly stimulated a much more intense and sympathetic popular interest than the botched manoeuvres of the rebels.’

Jackson, A, Ireland: 1798-1998, pp102-3.

Fenian attack on a prison van in Manchester, September 1867

The ‘Manchester Martyrs’

Tipperary election address, 1869

Cartoon published by Punch in 1867 after the Clerkenwell explosion

Proclamation offering one thousand pounds for the capture of James Stephens, January 1866

Courtroom scene, Kilmallock, Co. Limerick, 1867