About Irish independence that is.
I just posted this item on that topic, the commencement of the First Dail, the Irish declaration of independence, etc.
Lex Anteinternet: January 21, 1919 Ireland declares independence and...: The Casper paper, like most, lead with headlines about the German election held the prior day. They were more than a bit optimistic abo...
In 1919, when this was declared, I had one great grandparent at least, who was Irish born. In thinking on it, there's an element of irony to that as that was my father's maternal grandmother, who had been born in Cork, Ireland. The irony is that my father put very little stock in a person's national ancestry and nearly didn't approve of people focusing on it very much. The big American Irish holiday wasn't really much of a matter to observe as far as he was concerned and he never called himself an "Irish American". Indeed, with a German (Westphalian) last name, if the topic came up at all, he might mention that we had German ancestry but he'd never emphasize it and didn't approve of people calling themselves "German Americans" or "Irish Americans" of anything of that type. People were just Americans as far as he was concerned.
My mother, who was not an American citizen until after my father had passed away was, however, very proud of her Irish ancestry. There's an element of irony here as well as she also had French ancestry and Scots ancestry, which were never really mentioned. She was more Irish in ancestry than anything else, but that Irish ancestry was Anglo Norman Irish ancestry, which was a matter of some controversy for eons in Ireland itself. Still, the Anglo Normans became "more Irish than the Irish" and two of her ancestors (which she was unaware of) had died fighting for Irish independence at Vinegar Hill in the 1700s.
Her family was part of the Irish community in Quebec, a largely forgotten demographic now, and her grandfather had done extremely well in Montreal. He was the son of an Irish immigrant but rose up to be in charge of a company called the Anglo Canadian Insurance Company.
Anglo, we'd note.
Anyhow, in Quebec of that distant day English speakers still ran things even though French political parties were in charge. Economically, Quebec was closely tied to the United Kingdom, even if a majority of its population was not. That created a fair amount of tension in that Quebec wasn't keen on English projects, like World War One, but English Canadians, quite a few of which were from England itself, weren't shy about their Englishness, including holding Orange Day parades. . . something that wouldn't happen now. Perhaps that's why the Irishness of the small English speaking Irish Canadian population was emphasized. They were English speaking, but they were not Englishmen.
Anyhow, given all of that, I wonder how these folks saw the Dail's declaration on January 21, 1919.
I suspect my father's grandmother likely approved of it, even though she had been in the United States since she was three years old and had a brother still in the English Army. I don't know much about her really, other than that she was a character. Her husband, my father's maternal grandfather, I also know very little about other than that in photographs he had a very Irish appearance. He'd come to Colorado from Ohio, but nobody knows if he was born there or had come there as a small child. They were typical Irish Americans for their era in every way, and like most Irish Americans, they almost certainly were glad to see Ireland break away from the United Kingdom.
And what about those on my mother's side?
I suspect they did as well, but in doing so they must have taken that strange trip that so many Irish of the era did. Going into the Great War the Irish supported the cause as long as they were not forced to. You can find plenty of Irish writing of the era about the mission of the "British", of which they were part. But as soon as independence came, they supported Ireland in their thoughts and writings. It was an intellectual leap, but they somehow managed to do it, even those who had a vested interest in the United Kingdom, as my great grandfather would have. Somehow that didn't seem to be effected by the switch in loyalties.
Indeed, that was true for a lot of the Irish themselves. Going into the war, they were for home rule. Coming out of it, they were for independence. Maybe the war caused that switch. In the peace negotiations, they were for dominion status. They continued to have mixed feelings about the United Kingdom for a long time thereafter. At least at first, only a few in Ireland had really virulent views about that topic, although that minority has managed to keep that going until this very day, and likewise in the United States, long separated from the old problems, keeping an exaggerated clarity on a complicated topic seems to have lasted a long time as well.
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