An Irish Revolution Without A Revolution

Authors

  • Aidan Beatty Concordia University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2016.602

Abstract

There is a conventional view among Irish historians that a revolution occurred in that country between the passing of the Third Home Rule Bill of 1912 and the end of the Civil War in 1923.  The violence of those years, the collapse in support for the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), the meteoric rise to power of Sinn Féin, a new sense of meritocracy, a greater sense of democracy and a widespread radicalism; all are seen as elements of a major change in Irish politics and life, a ‘Revolution.’  Drawing on Gramsci's notion of a “revolution without a revolution”, this paper seeks to understand the events in Ireland of 1912-23, not as a sudden rupture with the past but as the culmination of a much longer period of (often British-backed) capitalist development in post-Famine Ireland. This paper argues that Irish nationalist politics in the decades before 1912 is better understood via categories such as class, gender, capitalism and the pervasive power of the British state.  As such, as well as pursuing a reassessment of the project of Irish historical development and state-building, this paper also seeks a reassessment of the project of (an equally statist) Irish historiography.

 

Author Biography

Aidan Beatty, Concordia University

Aidan Beatty holds a doctorate in international history from the University of Chicago.  His first book, Masculinity and Power in Irish Nationalism, 1884-1938 will be published this summer by Palgrave-Macmillan, as part of their Genders and Sexualities in History series. He is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies and a Scholar-in-Residence at the School of Canadian Irish Studies, at Concordia University in Montreal.

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Published

2016-03-22

How to Cite

Beatty, A. (2016). An Irish Revolution Without A Revolution. Journal of World-Systems Research, 22(1), 54–76. https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2016.602

Issue

Section

Special Issue: Ireland in the World-System