Publication: Race and Class
Publication Date: 01-OCT-03
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Rolston, Bill
Article Excerpt
Ireland has been an island since the end of the last Ice Age. This meant that it remained isolated from some major developments in European history and thought. For example, the Romans did not colonise the country and, as a result, native Brehon law remained intact at a time when Roman law was the basis of legal developments in places like feudal England. Another example is in the development of the early Irish Christian church. The ideals and ascetic practices of early monastic Christianity in Egypt and Syria were much more attractive to Irish Christians than the emerging centralism and bureaucracy of Rome.
But the emphasis on isolation should not be overstressed. Being on an island does not necessarily mean insularity, not least because people travel. Thus, from the earliest days of their written history, it is evident that the Irish met black slaves from North Africa, brought to Dublin by the Vikings, as well as Coptic monks, Phoenician traders and others. In addition, like many island peoples, the Irish have travelled throughout their history, whether as missionaries, soldiers, administrators or simply as people looking to make a living. In doing so, they have encountered other peoples, cultures and ideas, and these experiences have fed back into mainstream Irish culture on the island itself. One key instance of this is how, in two periods of mass emigration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Irish emigrants encountered African Americans and came to subscribe to a widespread global ideology: racism.
The Scots Irish
When the Elizabethans sought to subjugate Ireland, they found that the greatest obstacle was the power of the northern clans, the O'Neills and O'Donnells. But eventually the clans were militarily defeated and in 1607 their leaders fled to continental Europe. The event, known since as 'the Flight of the Earls', was a watershed in Irish history; it sounded the death knell of the old Gaelic order. It also ensured that the armies of many European countries had an influx of battle-proven Irish soldiers, known as 'the Wild Geese'. In 1635, there were seven Irish regiments in France, totalling around 10,000 soldiers, and, following the defeat in Limerick in 1691, a further 16,000 were shipped to France on British ships. There were over one hundred Irish field marshals, generals and admirals in the Hapsburg armed forces from 1612 on, and 6,000 Irish swordsmen serving the Swedish monarch at the same time. (1)
The Flight of the Earls left the northern part of the country, Ulster, open to conquest and colonisation. Land was seized and distributed to militarists and adventurers. And plantations, which had been initiated earlier in the southern province of Ireland, were now established in Ulster. In the next thirty years or so, somewhere in the region of 100,000 settlers were planted in Ulster on land confiscated from the native Irish. About two-thirds of these settlers were English, and the rest--around 30,000--were Scots. Ulster appeared particularly attractive to the Scots; impoverished as they were in their native country, Ireland seemed to hold out the possibility of a new world, a new life, perhaps even the chance of wealth. That they were determined, tough pioneers was beyond doubt. At the same time, as it turned out, Ulster was not the promised land it may have appeared from the short distance across the Irish Sea. The Irish were not happy to have been cheated out of their land and rebelled, most notably in 1641; newly established settlements were burned, settlers were slaughtered and, for a brief time, it looked as if the plantation project was about to disintegrate.
Moreover, as Presbyterians, the immigrants were second-class citizens in a situation where the English and Anglican upper class owned the land and monopolised political power. The rents were high and the ruling class showed no qualms about using 'the hard men of frontier society' for their own political ends. (2) In particular, they were more than content to have the poor Scots Presbyterians as a buffer between themselves and the discontented Irish. One English settler in County Armagh, a Mr Taylor, put it quite unapologetically in his 'Proposition for Planting My Lord of Essex's Land' in 1622: 'The Scotch shall be as a wall betwixt them [the English] and the Irish through which quarter the Irish will not pass to carry any stealths.' (3)
It only took the arrival on the scene of another new world--which beckoned with apparently untold opportunities--for the Scots to leave Ulster in droves. An estimated 250,000 emigrated to North America between 1726 and 1776; a further 100,000 left in the next quarter-century. (4) By the end of the eighteenth century, one in six of the European population in North America was Scots Irish by birth or descents. (5)
They arrived in the new world as impoverished as they had been when they reached Ulster; 'No group before the Scotch-Irish had arrived in such complete destitution', says Oakes. (6) Although their first destination was New England, the area around Philadelphia and Delaware became the centre of Scots Irish settlement from 1720 on. Poor and marginalised as they were, they could not afford to settle in genteel Philadelphia. So they headed out to where the land was cheap or free, to the 'back country'. There, their experience was not unlike their previous one in Ulster, not least in terms of their confrontations with the natives. In 1763, for example, they were the first to face the attacks on settlers by a confederation of Indian nations led by Chief Pontiac of the Ottowas. Unlike in later wars, settlers and natives were fairly evenly matched in military terms; at the same time, even at this early stage, the settlers showed not only skill but also a potential for brutality which augured the later genocide of the native Americans, in which the Scots Irish were to play a key role. History repeated itself in one other sense too; a century earlier, as we have seen, Mr Taylor from County Armagh had proposed that the Scots be used as a buffer to protect the upper-class settlers from native attacks. In the Americas, some were quick to see the Scots Irish fulfilling the same function. Thus, James Logan, a Quaker who also hailed from County...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.
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