The history of the Irish revolutionary period continues to undergo its own revolution. It was once common for large, structural narratives of political change and ethno-religious division to characterise its core tenets, but in recent years the most exciting work has been the attempt to restore histories which have been ‘squeezed out’ of the traditional canon. Work on religious minorities, Protestant home rulers, Catholics who supported the First World War and English perceptions of the 1919–21 conflict are some of the alternative histories that have complicated our understanding of the revolutionary period. Conor Morrissey's book is part of this trend. It explores another minority — Protestant nationalists in pre-independence Ireland. At first glance, much of its substance does not appear to be particularly new. Constance Markievicz, Bulmer Hobson and others are well-known names in the historiography of modern Irish nationalism, and readers will find little difference in the biographical data discussed here to what already exists in the Dictionary of Irish biography. What is new is that Morrissey considers these individuals as a group. Hitherto, Protestant nationalists have been treated as a kind of aberration in the revolutionary period, an ‘add on’ to the main event, which was Catholic nationalism. Morrissey demonstrates that for these individuals there was nothing abnormal about being a nationalist, and they often relied upon family connections and religious networks to cultivate their political beliefs.
The book is divided into eight chapters. The first two demonstrate the importance of culture, particularly the literary movement, in cultivating Protestant nationalists. From the Gaelic League and Ulster Literary Theatre to the less well-known Craobh na gCúig gCúigí and Independent Orange Order, Morrissey demonstrates the strong connection between politics and culture, and evaluates the success of these movements in mobilising Protestants. Chapter three reminds us that Ireland's history stretches beyond the island, in this case to Britain and the United States, where Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B.) recruited important members. It includes a detailed insight into Protestant advanced nationalist women, most of whom were Episcopalian and clergymen's daughters. Twenty-eight out of the ninety-one identified were published authors and gave nationalism a group of ready propagandists from which it could draw. Chapters four and five discuss the minority of the minority: the militants who mobilised from 1912 to 1917 inside and outside of the capital, and Morrissey quashes the myth of widespread conversion to Catholicism (only three out of the twenty-four discussed converted after the Rising). Chapter six is a useful addition to the historiography of the First World War. The 1918 protest against conscription, often viewed in a binary model of Catholic opposition versus Protestant support, is challenged by the considerable minority of Protestants (who were not all nationalists) that were against the measure. The final chapters illuminate how most Protestant nationalist women took the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War and, upon its conclusion, that many others willingly accepted the new Free State and were prepared to make it a success.
Some important findings emerge from this research. Much of the evidence presented from local case studies troubles the timeline which is usually rolled out in national characterisations of modern Ireland. One example of this is the Irish Guild of the Church (and its later spin-off, the Irish Guild of Witness) which lobbied for Irish language services to be said in St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin from 1908. Permission from the dean was granted in June 1914 (one month before the potential outbreak of civil war between Ulster unionists and Irish nationalists) and members continued to press for Irish language services even in the difficult years between 1918 and 1920 and beyond, demonstrating a longer history of a counter-culture that did not follow the cementing of the Irish language with Catholicism in the late nineteenth century, or even the more explicit tie between Catholicism, the Irish language and Sinn Féin which became most clear following the 1918 conscription crisis. The frequency of inter-communal action is also evident throughout. From the Irish Transvaal Committee (which protested against the Boer War) and Alice Milligan's Irish Women's Association (which lobbied for self-government) to the Irish Volunteers and I.R.B., Morrissey demonstrates the limitations of politico-religious divisions in characterising the associational life of pre-independence Ireland.
However, Morrissey does not appear to see these connections. The biggest drawback of this work is that opportunities for analyses that challenged common assumptions were not taken. In the introduction, Morrissey states that he is only looking at Protestants who engaged in the advanced nationalist movement, which he commonly interchanges with a desire for independence, yet plenty of evidence cited demonstrates that these advanced nationalists were in fact a mixed bag who ranged from political moderates (Bishop Charles Dowse, F. J. Bigger) to the extreme (Constance Markievicz). This reluctance to engage with the evidence on its own terms is seen elsewhere. He is at pains to argue that a ‘rising tide’ of Catholicism emerged after 1916, yet his examples do not always support this assertion. For example, Protestants and Catholics, who were imprisoned after the Rising, partook in shared prayer services; similarly, inter-communal organisations that had existed prior to 1916, such as the guild, did not collapse in its aftermath (divisions only appeared following the 1918 conscription crisis). Explanation is at times lacking: for example, Alice Milligan turned from a home ruler to a disenchanted nationalist in the space of a year but no reasons for this ‘conversion’ are given (p. 48). Similarly, an older generation of Fenians are described as having generally turned to alcohol: why did this happen? Sources can be used uncritically; the memoirs of Bulmer Hobson are a good indicator of his own narrative of ‘conversion’, but as he wrote these in 1964, their reliability is questionable. The same can be said for the Bureau of Military History witness statements. This book emerged from a Ph.D. thesis, and I felt that the theories of nationalism discussed in the introduction did not add anything to the argument. Either the author or the publisher should have picked up the typos on pp 58, 73, 81, 101 and 222.
Conor Morrissey's book is a rich, empirical study of Protestant nationalists, though readers seeking revolutionary analyses to complement its empiricism will be left wanting. Nonetheless, this is a topic deserving of study and Morrissey has helped to further enrich the study of revolutionary Ireland by restoring the attitudes and actions of a significant minority group.
