Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ixAcknowledgments xiPart 1. The Making of the Irish RacePrologue: Arguing about (the Irish) Race 3Chapter 1. "The blood of an Irishman": The English Construction of the Irish Race, 1534-1801 17Chapter 2. Celts, Hottentots, and "white chimpanzees": The Racialization of the Irish in the Nineteenth Century 30Part 2. Ireland, Slavery, and AbolitionChapter 3. "Come out of such a land, you Irishmen": Daniel O'Connell, American Slavery, and the Making of the Irish Race 57Chapter 4. "The Black O'Connell of the United States": Frederick Douglass and Ireland 86Part 3. Ireland and EmpireChapter 5. "From the Cabins of Connemara to the Kraals of Kaffirland": Irish Nationalists, the British Empire, and the "Boer Fight for Freedom" 121Chapter 6. "Because we are white men": Erskine Childers, Jan Christian Smuts, and the Irish Quest for Self-Government, 1899-1922 148Part 4. Ireland and RevolutionChapter 7. Negro Sinn Feiners and Black Fenians: "Heroic Ireland" and the Black Nationalist Imagination 181Chapter 8. "The Irish are for freedom everywhere": Eamon de Valera, the Irish Patriotic Strike, and the""last white nation . . . deprived of its liberty" 212Epilogue: The Ordeal of the Irish Republic 242Notes 259Index 323

About the Author

Bruce Nelson is professor emeritus of history at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality (Princeton) and Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s.

Reviews

"This is . . . a most impressive study, not only for its breathtaking scope and Nelson's command of such vast and varied scholarship but for pointing to many unexplored directions for future comparative and transnational studies. This book is a welcome addition to the literature on Irish nationalism and on the construction of group identity."---Patrick Furlong, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics

"Nelson's book is a timely chronology of the quest by both foreigners and the Irish themselves to define and redefine race and identity."---Lar Joye, History Ireland

"Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race is . . . a wide-ranging work rooted in large volumes of both primary and secondary sources. It succeeds in broadening our understanding of Irish identity by digging up new and interesting intellectual connections between Irish nationalists and the outside world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."---Cian McMahon, New Hibernia Review

"The whole book . . . rests on a solid base of original research and analysis. Even when we may be familiar in outline with some of the incidents [Nelson] recounts . . . this book enriches our understanding."---Patrick Maume, Irish Historical Studies

"This is an important book that will chart a way forward to a fuller and more complex understanding of the role of race in Irish nationalist ideology."---Michael de Nie, American Historical Review

"For anyone interested in the development of an Irish national identity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and its connection to the popular racial ideologies of the same period, this book is an essential starting point."---David T. Gleeson, Journal of British Studies

"His book is a welcome and important addition to the subject of Irish nationalism."---Sean Farrell Moran, Historian