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REFLECTIONS ON THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE IRISH REVOLUTION*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2017

Richard Bourke
Richard Bourke*
Affiliation:
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEESSIDE
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Abstract

Examining the political thought of the Irish Revolution poses two distinct problems. First, we need to establish how we should date the Revolution for the purposes of intellectual history. There is no doubting that the 1916 Easter Rising was an event in British and Irish politics, but it was also an event in the world of ideas. Any serious consideration of this episode and its aftermath therefore needs to trace its origins to patterns of thought as well as shifts in affairs, and the two processes do not necessarily coincide. The second requirement for understanding the role of political thought in the Revolution is to reconstruct carefully the actual doctrines articulated and deployed. Irish historians have been reluctant to engage in this process of interpretation. Yet a more searching account of political ideas in the period has the potential to change our approach to the Revolution as a whole.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 27 , December 2017 , pp. 175 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2017 

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Footnotes

*

My thanks to Ultán Gillen and Roisín Higgins for organising the symposium at which this lecture was delivered, and to the Royal Historical Society for their support.

References

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41 Diarmaid Ferriter, A Nation and Not a Rabble: The Irish Revolution, 1913–1923 (2015), 9.

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53 My thanks to Colin Jones for discussing this tradition with me.

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58 English, Irish Freedom, 274. The claim derives immediately from Conor Cruise O'Brien. On O'Brien in this context, see Bourke, Richard, ‘Languages of Conflict and the Northern Ireland Troubles’, Journal of Modern History, 83 (2011), 544–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. O'Brien's underlying assumption has a longer history, mediated by Raymond Aron, and going back to Alexis de Tocqueville and Edmund Burke. The claim is in any case based on a misreading of both Burke and Tocqueville. See Aron, Raymond, ‘L'avenir des religions séculières’ (1944), Commentaire, 8 (1985), 369–83Google Scholar; de Tocqueville, Alexis, The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856), trans. Alan S. Kahan (2 vols., Chicago, 1998–2001), i, 99–101 Google Scholar; Burke, Edmund, Second Letter on a Regicide Peace (1796), in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, ed. Langford, Paul (9 vols., Oxford, 1970–2015), ix, 278Google Scholar.

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62 Ibid ., 365.

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68 Pearse, ‘The Sovereign People’ (31 Mar. 1916), in Political Writings, 350.

69 Poblacht na hÉireann: Proclamation of the Irish Republic, Easter 1916, para. 3.

70 For natural law, see Pearse, ‘Ghosts’ (Christmas 1915), in Political Writings, 230.

71 Ibid ., 231.

72 Ibid ., 230.

73 Ibid ., 232.

74 Pearse, ‘Oration on Robert Emmet’ (1914), in Political Writings, 66.

75 Ibid ., 69, 71.

76 Pearse, ‘The Coming Revolution’ (Nov. 1913), in Political Writings, 99.

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78 See Gandhi, Mahatma, ‘Hind Swaraj’ and Other Writings, ed. Parel, Anthony J. (Cambridge, 1997, 2009), 118 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on key texts that guided the author's critique of English civilisation.

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