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Respondent
Professor Alvin Jackson
Empire, war and partition A Uachtaráin, I am most grateful for the invitation to speak today, and I am honoured to be part of this event. May I begin, perhaps, with the theme of empire, since the President has placed this at the heart of his concerns for our discussion – and since Professor John Horne has highlighted the issue in his eloquent introduction. Let me then move to consider partition, particularly in relation to unionism, since this has a relevance and challenge in terms of the President’s emphasis on ethical commemoration. Let me also attempt to follow Professor Horne, if I can, in his European and global approach to the history of Ireland a century ago.
Empire As Professor Horne has said, there is indeed a distinction between the great dynastic empires of the early 20th century, such as those of the Habsburgs, and the contemporary colonial empires of (for example) the French and the British. But there are also ways in which these categories overlap – and there are even senses in which there is an overlap between the concept of empire and that of union. In pursuing the idea of empire and imperialism, let me first take an example which was much invoked in the Home Rule era, and which has been mentioned already by others in the seminar.
Austria-Hungary, the Dual Monarchy, was the focus of a great deal of earnest Irish nationalist and British liberal reflection, most famously by Arthur Griffith, in his Resurrection of Hungary, but also by John Redmond and other home rulers in Ireland and Britain, including Gladstone and the Scottish scholar of central Europe, Robert Seton-Watson.1 All saw various forms of parallel or paradigm between Ireland and Britain and the constitutional relations within Austria-Hungary. Some even sustained this analysis for the period after 1918, seeing links between the UK and the Habsburg successor states.2 Not all of these efforts to find an ideal in central Europe were realistic.3 However, a careful comparison of the two, the UK and the Dual Monarchy, remains instructive as we reflect upon the history of Ireland’s relationship with union and empire a century ago. Austria-Hungary lacked an overseas colonial empire; but it was associated with periodic efforts at annexation and settlement in southern and eastern Europe, including, in 1908, Bosnia.4 Austria was associated with the military subjugation of its insurgent peoples. I would therefore add to the taxonomies already mentioned the notion of ‘internal colonialism’ – the idea that polities like the Dual Monarchy – or the United Kingdom – a century ago were characterised by complex colonial or colonial-style relationships with neighbouring territories, as well as having (in the case of the UK) an overseas imperial enterprise.5
1
Arthur Griffith, Resurrection of Hungary, new edition (Dublin, 1918); John Redmond Historical and political addresses (London and Dublin, 1898), pp. 191, 237-8; Richard Shannon, Gladstone: heroic minister, 1865-1898 (London, 1999), pp.372-3, 378; R.W. Seton-Watson, The southern Slav question (London, 1911), pp.ix, 66-71. See also Zsuszunna Zarka, ‘Irish nationalist images of Lajos Kossuth and Hungary in the aftermath of the 1848-9 revolution’ in Brian Heffernan (ed), Life on the fringe? Ireland and Europe, 1800-1922 (Dublin, 2012).
2
See eg R.W. Seton-Watson, The New Slovakia (Prague, 1924); Mark Cornwall and Murray Frame (eds), Scotland and the Slavs: cultures in contact 1500-2000 (Newtownville, 2001), pp.100, 121.
3
A.V. Dicey, A leap into the dark: a criticism of the principles of Home Rule as illustrated by the bill of 1893 (London, 1911), p.153.
4
For the Dual Monarchy and the occupation and annexation of Bosnia see Robin Okey, Taming Balkan nationalism: the Habsburg ‘civilising mission’ in Bosnia, 1878-1914 (Oxford, 2007).
5
A key starting point remains Michael Hechter, Internal colonialism: the Celtic fringe in British national development, 1536-1966 (London, 1975). For the wider comparison of 19th century empires see, for example, Jörn Leonhard and Ulrike von Hirschhausen (eds), Comparing empires: encounters and transfers in the long nineteenth century (Göttingen, 2011).
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