Irish republicanism
Irish republicanism is the political movement for an Irish republic, void of any British rule. Throughout its centuries of existence, it has encompassed various tactics and identities, simultaneously elective and militant, and has been both widely supported and marginalized. One of its founding figures was Theobald Wolfe Tone.
The modern emergence of nationalism, democracy, and radicalism provided a basis for the movement, with groups forming across the island in hopes of independence. Parliamentary defeats provoked uprisings and armed campaigns, quashed by British forces. The Easter Rising, an attempted coup that took place in the midst of the First World War, provided popular support for the movement. An Irish republic was declared in 1916 and officialized following the Irish War of Independence. The Irish Civil War, beginning in 1922 and spurred by the partition of the island, then occurred.
Republican action, including armed campaigns, continued in the newly-formed state of Northern Ireland, a region of the United Kingdom. Tensions in the territory culminated in widespread conflict by 1969. This prompted paramilitaries: republicans assembled under the Provisional Irish Republican Army, who waged a campaign against the British state for approximately three decades—the most pronounced and prolonged republican campaign. Represented by Sinn Féin, republicans would gradually invest in political action, including the Northern Ireland peace process and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. The PIRA have since decommissioned and republicans have been elected to various echelons of government: those within the movement opposed to this outcome are often referred to as dissident republicans.
History
Background of British rule in Ireland
Following the Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th century, Ireland, or parts of it, experienced alternating degrees of rule from England. While some of the native Gaelic population attempted to resist this occupation, a single, unified political goal did not exist amongst the independent lordships that existed throughout the island. The Tudor conquest of Ireland took place in the 16th century. This included the Plantations of Ireland, in which the lands held by Gaelic Irish clans and Hiberno-Norman dynasties were confiscated and given to Protestant settlers from England and Scotland. The Plantation of Ulster began in 1609, and the province was heavily colonised with English and Scottish settlers.Campaigns against English presence on the island had occurred prior to the emergence of the Irish republican ideology. In the 1590s and early 1600s, resistance was led by Hugh O'Neill. The Irish chieftains were ultimately defeated, leading to their exile and the aforementioned Plantation of Ulster in 1609.
1627 Hispano-Irish proposal
In Europe, prior to the 18th and 19th centuries, republics were in a minority and monarchy was the norm, with few long-lasting republics of note at time, such as the fully-fledged Dutch Republic and the Republic of Venice, as well as the Old Swiss Confederacy and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which had republican aspects. However, as noted by Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich, the first ever document proposing a republic of Ireland independent from connections to England dates from 1627. Summaries of these plans are held in the Archives générales du Royaume in Belgium and were made familiar to Irish historians by the work of Fr. Brendan Jennings, a Franciscan historian, with his work Wild Geese in Spanish Flanders, 1582–1700.This early republican spirit was not ecumenical and was formed by exiled Irish Catholic Gaels with the support of Habsburg Spain as part of the Irish military diaspora who had fled into Spanish service in the aftermath of the Flight of the Earls during the Thirty Years' War. This was in the context of the break-down of the Spanish match and the onset of the Anglo-Spanish War of 1625–1630. Proposals were made at Madrid, with the involvement of Archbishop Florence Conry and Owen Roe O'Neill, for the Irish Regiment in the Spanish Netherlands then in the service of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, to invade and reconquer the English-controlled Kingdom of Ireland and set up an Irish government loosely aligned with the Habsburg Empire.
One of the main problems was that within the leadership of the Hispano-Irish diaspora, there were rivalries and factionalism between two primary contenders, Shane O'Neill and Hugh O'Donnell, over who should be the overall leader and thus have rights to an Irish throne if the project was a success. A third option was to resolve the conflict between the two factions before an invasion by making them family, with a marriage proposed between Hugh O'Donnell's sister Mary Stuart O'Donnell and Shane O'Neill, but this broke down. Ministers in Madrid, to Philip IV of Spain, instead drew up proposals on 27 December 1627 for a "Kingdom and Republic of Ireland" and that "the earls should be called Captains General of the said Republic and one could exercise his office on land and the other at sea." These proposals were approved by Philip IV and forwarded to Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia in Brussels. As the Anglo-Spanish War became more tepid, the plans were never put into practice.
A decade later, the Irish Rebellion of 1641 began. This consisted of a coalition between the Irish Gaels and the Old English rebelling against the English rulers. While some ideas from the 1627 proposals were carried on, the attempt to rally both Gaels and Old English to the banner, mean't trying to find common ground and one of these concessions was support for the Stuart monarchy under Charles I of England whom the Old English were strongly attached to. The motto of the Confederation would thus become Pro Deo, pro Rege et Patria, Hibernia unanimis, with any idea of a republic ditched. Beginning as a coup d'état with the aim of restoring lost lands in the north of Ireland and defending Catholic religious and property rights, it evolved into the Irish Confederate Wars. In the summer of 1642, the Catholic upper classes formed the Catholic Confederation, which essentially became the de facto government of Ireland for a brief period until 1649, when the forces of the English Parliament carried out the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and the old Catholic landowners were permanently dispossessed of their lands. The most explicit Irish separatist viewpoint from the period, found in Disputatio Apologetica, written in Lisbon in 1645 by Fr. Conor O'Mahony, a Jesuit priest from Munster, argued instead for a Gaelic monarchy to be set up in an explicitly Catholic Ireland, with no mention of a republic.
Society of United Irishmen and the Irish Rebellion of 1798
The origin of modern Irish republicanism exists in the ideology and action of the United Irishmen. Founded in 1791 and informed by the Enlightenment, popular sovereignty and the likes of John Locke and Thomas Paine, they initially propagated parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation. Degradation in the legal achievement of these outcomes, coupled with the burgeoning perception of England as a foreign conqueror, inspired revolutionary sentiment and eventual action.At this stage, the movement was led primarily by liberal Protestants, particularly Presbyterians from the province of Ulster. The founding members of the United Irishmen were mainly Southern Irish Protestant aristocrats. The key founders included Wolfe Tone, Thomas Russell, Henry Joy McCracken, James Napper Tandy, and Samuel Neilson. By 1797, the Society of United Irishmen had around 100,000 members. Crossing the religious divide in Ireland, it had a mixed membership of Catholics, Presbyterians, and even Anglicans from the Protestant Ascendancy. It also attracted support and membership from Catholic agrarian resistance groups, such as the Defenders organisation, who were eventually incorporated into the Society. The Society sought to unite the denominations of the island under the simple distinction of Irish.
File:Battle of Killala 1798.JPG|thumb|The Battle of Killala marked the end of the rising
The Irish Rebellion of 1798 began on 23 May, with the first clashes taking place in County Kildare on 24 May, before spreading throughout Leinster, as well as County Antrim and other areas of the country. French soldiers landed in Killala on 22 August and participated in the fighting on the rebels' side. Even though they had considerable success against British forces in County Wexford, rebel forces were eventually defeated. Key figures in the organisation were arrested and executed.
Acts of Union
Though the Rebellion of 1798 was eventually put down, small republican guerrilla campaigns against the British Army continued for a short time afterward in the Wicklow Mountains under the leadership of Michael Dwyer and Joseph Holt, involving attacks on small parties of yeomen. These activities were perceived by some to be merely "the dying echoes of an old convulsion", but others feared further large-scale uprisings, due to the United Irishmen continuing to attract large numbers of Catholics in rural areas of the country and arms raids being carried out on a nightly basis. It was also feared that rebels would again seek military aid from French troops, and another rising was expected take place by 10 April.This perceived threat of further rebellion resulted in the Parliamentary Union between the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. After some uncertainty, the Irish Parliament voted to abolish itself in the Acts of Union 1800, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, by a vote of 158 to 115. A number of tactics were used to achieve this end. Lord Castlereagh and Charles Cornwallis were known to use bribery extensively. In all, a total of sixteen Irish borough-owners were granted British peerages. A further twenty-eight new Irish peerages were created, while twenty existing Irish peerages increased in rank.
Furthermore, the government of Great Britain sought to replace Irish politicians in the Irish parliament with pro-Union politicians, and rewards were granted to those that vacated their seats, with the result being that in the eighteen months prior to the decision in 1800, one-fifth of the Irish House of Commons changed its representation due to these activities and other factors such as death. It was also promised by Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger that he would bring about Catholic emancipation, though after the Acts of Union were successfully voted through, King George III saw that this pledge was never realised, and as such Catholics were not granted the rights that had been promised prior to the Acts.