Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race / / Bruce Nelson.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Nelson, Bruce,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2012]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Edition: Core Textbook
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (352 p.) :; 22 halftones.

This is a book about Irish nationalism and how Irish nationalists developed their own conception of the Irish race. Bruce Nelson begins with an exploration of the discourse of race--from the nineteenth--century belief that "race is everything" to the more recent argument that there are no races. He focuses on how English observers constructed the "native" and Catholic Irish as uncivilized and savage, and on the racialization of the Irish in the nineteenth century, especially in Britain and the United States, where Irish immigrants were often portrayed in terms that had been applied mainly to enslaved Africans and their descendants. Most of the book focuses on how the Irish created their own identity--in the context of slavery and abolition, empire, and revolution. Since the Irish were a dispersed people, this process unfolded not only in Ireland, but in the United States, Britain, Australia, South Africa, and other countries. Many nationalists were determined to repudiate anything that could interfere with the goal of building a united movement aimed at achieving full independence for Ireland. But others, including men and women who are at the heart of this study, believed that the Irish struggle must create a more inclusive sense of Irish nationhood and stand for freedom everywhere. Nelson pays close attention to this argument within Irish nationalism, and to the ways it resonated with nationalists worldwide, from India to the Caribbean.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Part 1. The Making of the Irish Race -- Prologue: Arguing about (the Irish) Race -- Chapter One. "The blood of an Irishman" -- Chapter Two. Celts, Hottentots, and "white chimpanzees" -- Part 2. Ireland, Slavery, and Abolition -- Chapter Three. "Come out of such a land, you Irishmen" -- Chapter Four. "The Black O'Connell of the United States" -- Part 3. Ireland and Empire -- Chapter Five. "From the Cabins of Connemara to the Kraals of Kaffirland" -- Chapter Six. "Because we are white men" -- Part 4. Ireland and Revolution -- Chapter Seven. Negro Sinn Féiners and Black Fenians -- Chapter Eight. "The Irish are for freedom everywhere" -- Epilogue: The Ordeal of the Irish Republic -- Notes -- Index