The Black Hand of Republicanism: Fenianism in Modern Ireland

Description

Established in 1858, the Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret, oath-bound movement
dedicated to bringing about revolution in Ireland. This book is a result of a major conference to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and includes essays on Fenianism in its diasporic, transnational and imperial contexts; political violence; republican ideology and popular politicisation; culture, religion and identity; and memory and commemoration. This is the first publication to consider Fenianism as the truly international phenomenon it represented and includes essays from international scholars assessing the impact of Fenianism – a movement founded in America by the Irish immigrant community – throughout Ireland, Britain, continental Europe, the Americas and Australasia. The book spans the full chronological range of Fenian movement, from its origins in the aftermath of the Young Ireland movement, through its existence as a mass revolutionary movement in the 1860’s, the long period as an underground revolutionary conspiracy, culminating in its role as the driving force of the Irish revolution between 1916 and 1921.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Fearghal McGarry and James McConnel

I MID-VICTORIAN FENIANISM: CONTINUITY AND TENSION

1. The IRB and Young Ireland: Varieties and Tension
    James Quinn
2. National Brotherhoods and National Leagues: The IRB and its Constitutional Rivals during the         1860s
    Marta Ramón
3. The Irish People and the Disciplining Dissent
    Matthew Kelly

II POPULAR POLITICS AND GRASSROOTS FENIANISM

4. Permanent Revolutionaries: The IRB and the Land War in West Cork
    Frank Rynne
5. Gunfire in Hayes’s Hotel: The IRB and the Founding of the GAA
    Paul Rouse
6. A Period of Nationalist Flux: The IRB and the Growth of Devlinite Nationalism in East Tyrone,             1902-07
    Fergal McCluskey

III THE FENIAN DIASPORA

7. ‘Cheap as Soap and Common as Sugar’: The Fenians, Dynamite and Scientific Warfare
Niall Whelehan
8. The Prince and the Fenians, Australasia 1868-9: Republican Conspiracy or Orange
Opportunity?
Richard Davis
9. ‘The Black Hand of Irish Republicanism’? Transcontinental Fenianism and Theories of Global
Terror
Máirtín Ó Catháin

IV PRINT CULTURE

10. Richard Pigott, the Fringe-Fenian Press and the Politics of Irish Nationalist Transition to
Parnellism
Margaret O’Callaghan
11. Narratives of Confinement: Fenians, Prisons and Writing, 1867-1916
William Murphy

V CONTEXTS AND CONCEPTS

12. Fenianism: The Scope and Limitations of a Concept
R. V. Comerford
13. The Fenians and the International Revolutionary Tradition
Peter Hart

About the Editors

Fearghal McGarry teached history at Queen’s University Belfast. His previous books include Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War (1999) and Eoin O’Duffy (2005)

James McConnell lectures in Irish history at Northumbria University. He has previously published articles in Irish Historical Studies, Past and Present and Historical Journal.