Dr. Muiris MacGiollabhuí - 'Irish Liberty, Black Slavery, and the Green Atlantic'

Recorded May 6, 2021.

Dr. Muiris MacGiollabhuí: "Irish Liberty, Black Slavery, and the Green Atlantic: The Racial Ideology of the Exiled United Irishmen, 1791-1830"

What did it mean to be Irish and revolutionary during the “Age of Revolution”? Dr. Muiris MacGiollabhuí, PhD University of California at Santa Cruz and the Institute's Moore-Livingston Fellow for the 2020-2021 academic year, posits this question when exploring the racial ideology of the United Irishmen first during the 1790s and then in exile. Thousands of Irish men and women were banished throughout the Atlantic World during the 1790s for membership in the United Irishmen or participation in the 1798 Rebellion. In exile, the United Irishmen came face to face with the realities of slavery, a practice they had almost unanimously rejected in Ireland. In exile, however, their consistent rejection of slavery was fractured. Instead, the exiled United Irishmen related to the institution of slavery in a variety of ways: some saw it as a unfortunate feature of nations like the United States, others a financial opportunity, and a few maintained their commitment to its immediate abolition. This talk will explore which factors account for this divergence. Moderator: Chanté Mouton Kinyon, Postdoctoral Scholar, Notre Dame Department of English; National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, 2017-2018

[donalfoley]

Thank you very much. Very enlightening. I attended the re-enactment of the debates over the emancipation of Catholics in Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church in 1991 as a young student full of indignation over apartheid and having read up about Steve Biko (after seeing Richard Attenborough’s film, of course), and read my father’s copy of the Jail Journal. It all seemed to come together, and reinforced my admiration for the United Irishmen and the Young Irelanders. Finding out afterwards that John Mitchell was an enthusiastic supporter of slavery in the US was a bit of a shock. He had the Carlylean view that if the slaves were prepared to fight for freedom they should be supported, but if not then they deserved their enslavement. I could not accept that but still appreciated his courage in fighting for the rights of Catholics in Ireland and trying (unsuccessfully) to encourage his own people (those who were on the ‘Orange’ side) to make common cause with them against an external enemy. His great rival in Irish politics at the time, Daniel O’Connell, was unambiguous in his opposition to slavery in the US as elsewhere. Which of them was right as regards peaceful or violent resistance to injustice in Ireland is a separate question.