Irish Studies

Return to main page

“Quite honestly I owned the Bogside in military terms. I occupied it.”(1)- Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford, Commander of the 1st Paras.  

The Walls of Derry have a long history of dividing Catholics from Protestants. In fact, since their construction in the early 1600s, the Walls have formed a hard boundary between the two. Built by Protestant settlers, the Walls functioned to protect the lives and property of the transplants from the colonized Irish Catholics living in the marshlands beyond, the area that would later come to be known as the Bogside (2).  When the Protestant settlers within successfully withstood a siege by Catholic forces loyal to King James II between 1688 and 1689 the Walls gained a symbolic weight previously not present.  Thereafter they were a clear source of pride for the Protestants and one of repression for the Catholics outside.

Following Partition in 1920, the situation of Catholics in Derry deteriorated.  Despite a growing population, by 1972 33,000 of the city’s 55,000 people lived in the Catholic districts of Creggan and the Bogside (3), successful gerrymandering ensured Protestant rule over the Catholics.  In August, 1969, an Apprentice Boys March past a major entrance to the Bogside triggered a three day clash between police and Catholic demonstrates. Political and social turmoil culminated when the inhabitants of the Bogside and Creggan defiantly walled themselves off from the remainder of the city using burned out cars, concrete slabs, old bed frames, rubble, and anything else at hand (4).  A city famous for its Walls had seen a second set of fortifications erected.  The Protestant population once besieged now found itself in the position of the besieger, and the Catholic majority found itself encircled in a sea of Protestant orange.  Further, the social and cultural boundaries that had long existed in the city were turned into a hard border between Catholic and Protestant.

“Derry/Londonderry is a place where walls and barricades, borders and boundaries- both material and symbolic- have defined political and social life throughout its 400 year modern history.”(5)

On January 30th, 1972, British Army forces used an anti-internment march in the Bogside as an excuse to tear tear down these borders and reclaim control. The erection of borders is always a statement of power, an assertion of the ability to control movement of people, similarly the deconstruction of borders is a clear declaration of strength. On that day, British forces effectively stormed the “walls” of Creggan and Bogside and bloodily ended the second siege of Derry.

The vanguard for the British reconquest was the elite 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment, a unit only recently arrived in Northern Ireland from operations in the Mediterranean.  These were not troops for standard anti-riot detail.  They stood apart from the British infantry that many in Northern Ireland had grown accustomed to seeing.  Many wore distinctive red berets and camouflage smocks, few wore riot gear. (6) It seemed clear the Paras, as they were known, were not here to keep the peace.  For the thousands gathered for the march, it soon became clear the Paras intent was the furthest thing from peaceful.

The first real sign of trouble came when the march came to the junction of Rossville and William Streets.  Here, about 200 of the protestors strayed from the main body to pelt the guards at the barricade there with stones.  However they were soon repelled with rubber bullets and water cannon. (7)  Paras stationed around the Presbyterian Church on William Street soon dispensed with rubber bullets though.  It was here that the first live high-velocity rounds were fired,  15 year old Damien Donaghy, the first shot, a non-lethal wound to the hip.(8)   He was the first of 26 shot that day, 13 of which died that day, followed by a 14th a year finally succumbing to his wounds.

As the primary goal of the British operation that day was to forcibly reassert control over Creggan and the Bogside, overt violence was viewed as a valuable means of achieving this.  Having stopped the marchers at the barricades and keeping them from crossing the border into the city center, the Paras went on the offensive and invaded the Catholic portion of Derry.  Though the assault lasted only a half hour, that 30 minute span has been seared into the memories of those who survived the attacks and witnessed the carnage.  The second siege of Derry which had begun with a defiant and unlikely erection of a border by a weaker group, ended with a hail of gunfire and the storming of that border.  Specific incidents like the shootings of Jack Duddy and at Glenfada Park potently emphasize the lopsidedness of the power dynamics at play.  Bloody Sunday is perhaps the most well known of a number of attacks by both Catholic and Protestant forces that would stretch right up to the Good Friday Agreement.

.

---

1. Jane Winter in Eyewitness Bloody Sunday , edited by Don Mullan, Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1997, pp. 29.
2. Graham Dawson, “Trauma, Place, and the Politics of Memory: Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1972-2004.” History Workshop Journal 59 (2005): 151-78, pp. 158.
3. Winter, Eyewitness, pp. 14
4. Peter Pringle, and Philip Jacobson, Those Are Real Bullets: Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972, New York: Grove Press, 2001, pp. 35.
5. Dawson, “Trauma, Place, and the Politics of Memory”, pp. 157.
6. Pringle and Jacobson, Those Are Real Bullets, pp. 96-97
7. Don Mullan, Eyewitness, pp. 17.
8. Pringle and Jacobson, Those Are Real Bullets, pp. 113-115

One way that artists try and commemorate the individuals from the Irish famine is through memorials. The vast variety of memorials that were built for these people are in a great abundance. One of the most meaningful memorials that was built for the Irish people is now located in Bailick Park, in Midleton, County Cork, Ireland called Kindred Spirits. The memorial was built in the year 2015, only about 3 years ago, by the sculptor Alex Pentek. The memorial consists of nine stainless-steel feathers all proposed in a circle to try and symbolize a soup bowl to represent the need for help and assistance for the

need for food. Alex Pentek is an Irish artist who has a growing portfolio of national and international work that explores different site specific ideas in a broad range of materials. With over 20 large scale permanent works completed in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Canada, long time interests in science, origami and music inform Pentek’s work on both practical and philosophical levels. This memorial also symbolizes the help that the Irish people had gotten from the Choctaw tribe during the famine. The assistance of these individuals was a very crucial part in the famine history because almost a decade before the tribe had made the donation to the irish people they were being forced out of their homeland to walk almost 1,200 miles of land because the United States did not think they were fit to be there anymore. This movement was called the Trail of Tears. Even though the Choctaw tribe was still not stable themselves from the Trail of Tears, they knew what it felt like to be in need and having to leave their homeland. They donated anywhere between $4,500 to $10,000 US dollars to the Irish people. Since we have talked a lot about NYC, we might also want to look at the memorial that is posted in Battery Park, NYC. The Memorial represents a rural Irish landscape with an abandoned stone cottage, stone walls, fallow potato fields and the flora on the north Connacht wetlands. It is both a metaphor for the Great Irish Famine and a reminder that hunger today is often the result of lack of access to land. The 96’ x 170’ Memorial, designed by artist Brian Tolle, contains stones from each of Ireland’s 32 counties and is elevated on a limestone plinth. Along the base are bands of texts separated by layers of imported Kilkenny limestone. The text, which combines the history of the Great Famine with contemporary reports on world hunger, is cast as shadow onto illuminated frosted glass panels. And as described

Some other events that had happened to the Irish people that unfortunately did not get commemorated, was the Irish Draft Riots that had occurred in NYC. CLICK HERE to learn more on the Draft Riots!

CLICK HERE to go back to the main page

Immigrants from Ireland faced difficulties upon arriving in the Americas. In 1847, especially, some ports were flooded with sick immigrants, and these ports were not equipped to deal with the amount of sick and hungry people who were arriving. Once quarantine measures were put in place, passengers were forced to stay on their ships for eight days so that they could be checked for contagious diseases. The quarantine did not work as effectively as it might have due to the number of immigrants needing to be quarantined; in September of 1847, there were at least 14,000 immigrants stuck in quarantine in the ships they had arrived from Ireland in. On these ships, the dead passengers were not removed regularly, and sometimes the dead would remain in the ships alongside living and extremely ill passengers for days. Sick passengers were sent from quarantine on ships to hospitals on islands such as Partridge Island and Grosse Ile. Even these hospitals were not equipped to deal with the amount of sick immigrants who passed through their doors; they quickly became overcrowded, and at Grosse Ile, the doctors and officials were overwhelmed and many passengers died. The death toll of quarantined immigrants was 50 people per day at one point in the summer of 1847. Additionally, immigrants arrived in North America poor, sick, and starving, and many were initially too sick to find work, which only worsened their lot in life. Even the people who were healthy when they arrived in North America often became sick because the temporary shelters they lived in after arriving were often overcrowded and unsanitary.

There is currently a memorial in Grosse Ile to those who died during the famine, created over a mass grave. It is the largest mass grave of famine victims, including the mass graves in Ireland. The monument claims that 5,424 people are buried in that mass grave; however, this estimate doesn’t begin to encompass the number of Irish immigrants who died while immigrating to the Americas. One scholar estimates that, all told, just under 50,000 people died due to immigration on the coffin ships. Included in this number are people who survived the coffin ships and quarantine, and traveled from Grosse Ile to cities in Canada, before dying in one of those cities in a fever hospital or an emigrant shed. These sorts of deaths are not commemorated by the Grosse Ile memorial, and they are also left out of the typical narrative of the Irish immigration experience. Immigration is typically thought of following the “American Dream” narrative, which not only ignores the fact that Irish emigrants traveled to countries other than the United States, but also ignores the fact that many immigrants were treated poorly or callously, and died of disease and poor conditions, upon their arrival in the Americas.

CLICK HERE to learn more about the difficulties immigrants faced upon arriving in the Americas.

CLICK HERE to learn about other memorials to famine victims.

CLICK HERE to return to the main page.

For a major portion of the Irish population, the reaction to British imperialism involved reclaiming what was considered “Irish tradition”. The Irish nationalist Eamon de Valera made the argument in a 1943 speech that the universality of the Irish language is the key to authentic nationhood in Ireland. His hardline rhetoric is representative of the nationalism that made waves throughout Ireland during the 20th century. The notion of a return to what is “authentic” is what became the backbone for the tourism industry in Ireland and also what became the basis for the assertion of Irish stereotypes from an international perspective.

The late 19th century in Europe was a time of national uncertainty and change. In Ireland, the extended history of British oppression drove the question for what defined Ireland. The Gaelic League formed during this time in an attempt to return to what is authentically Irish, and also in an attempt to claim something that can belong to Ireland alone, such as language. De Valera’s ideal outcome of establishing Gaelic in Ireland is that it would be the basis for something essentially Irish in the nation. The problematic outcome that emerged in the 20th and 21st centuries is actually the emergence of the tourism industry in Ireland, in which the aspects of the nation that de Valera would argue are “essentially” Irish are actually sold to an international market and used for profit instead of practical use.

However, the commodification of what is “traditionally Irish” became a foundation for a major part of the revenue that the nation generates as an independent nation. Prior to the independence of Ireland, Great Britain would profit from the exploitation of the Irish landscape from tourism. British imperialists saw that they could benefit from selling the notion of the sublime in Ireland; however, this required the separation of the landscape from the Irish people, in which the absence of people would only benefit the sublimity of the land. In modern tourism, the Irish are sold along with the landscape by acting as “traditional” people of Ireland. Advertisements show this duality between the commodification of people as extensions of the landscape and commodification of the landscape on its own. The difference between Irish tourism as operated by the Irish themselves and tourism as operated by British imperialists is that the Irish people have a role in their own landscape and that they are the people making a direct profit from this tourism.

Figure 1:

A traditional house represents the authenticity that is commodified

 

 

Connemara and Killarney are the perfect representations of idealized authenticity in Ireland. While these regions are best known for the traditional culture that they seem uphold, In western Ireland, local farmers and businesses benefit from tourists who seek to experience the “authentic” Ireland. In Connemara and Killarney, this experience is sold to tourists in the form of hand-made goods and the image of a simple daily lifestyle. For tourists, these regions represent a perspective of life back in 19th century Ireland.

Figure 2:

A sheep!

 

 

 

The landscape in these regions represent something that has been lost in time, such as tradition. Unpaved roads and traditional houses as seen above are typically associated with these areas, and the absence of technology is a part of the commodification of this experience. Many who seek the “authentic” that is represented by this region participate in the local economies of Killarney and Connemara. Farms, local co-operatives, sawmills, and medical facilities occasionally employ outsiders of the region. This kind of tourism benefits local economies while promoting the notion of authenticity as perceived by the international community, therefore generating more tourism.

Figure 3:

Unpaved roads signify an absence of technology.

 

 

 

Despite the benefit of tourism to the local communities of Connemara and Killarney, this commodification of landscape and the Irish people limits the international perspective of Ireland. The true authentic Ireland is lost among the conceptualized authenticity that is sold to outsiders of the community. This perception of Ireland is marketed in a way that enforces blatantly stereotypical images of Ireland in celebrations such as St. Patrick’s Day in the United States.

Figure 4:

Irish step dancers perform in a parade in Washington D.C., 2012.

 

 

 

International celebrations of this holiday typically pair the traditional with the stereotypical. While St. Patrick’s Day features traditional cultural practices such as step dancing, it is unfortunately better known for its glorification of alcohol.

Main Page

“If beauty is to have any role at all, it must co-exist with something else to give it meaning.”

• – Hugh McElveen

Western Ireland is known for having some of the most breathtaking and visually engaging landscapes. The landscapes are known for drawing travelers from all corners of the world, whether it is people who desire to experience the true authenticity of the Irish culture, or those in search of the sublime landscape that Ireland is known for. Advertisements enticing consumers to travel to Ireland display exaggerated notions of the landscape. How did tourism reach this point?

Here, we will focus directly on two distinct locations in Western Ireland: Connemara and Killarney, both of which are known for their rustic, authentic portrayal of the Irish culture and landscape. These two specific case studies serve as examples of the commodification of the Irish landscape, people, and culture.

Irish tourism is rooted in a history of colonial oppression, and has since become a source of Irish agency. Ultimately, the industry has emerged as a crucial source of national income and allows for greater autonomy. As tourism has evolved over time, Irish authenticity has come into question.

About Us

 

Blight is a plant disease, especially one that is caused by fungi such as mildews, rusts, and smuts. It is a rapid and complete chlorosis, browning and then death of plant tissues, such as leaves, branches, twigs, or floral organs. On leaf tissue, symptoms of blight are the initial appearance of lesions which rapidly engulf surrounding tissue. However, leaf spots, may, in advanced stages, expand to kill entire areas of leaf tissue and thus exhibit blight symptoms. The highlands of central Mexico are considered by many to be the center of origin of the disease, although others have proposed its origin to be in the Andes, which is also the origin of potatoes. The color of potato sign is white. People can observe blight produce sporangia and sporangiophores on the surface of potato stems and leaves. Under ideal conditions, the life cycle can be completed on potato or tomato foliage in about five days. Sporangia develop on the leaves, spreading through the crop when temperatures are above 10 °C and humidity is over 75–80% for 2 days or more. This disease in the potatoes caused massive amounts of deaths during the 19th century in Ireland. People were getting sick while eating these infected potatoes, but the majority of people dies from starvation because the potato crop was in such abundance before the blight outbreak, and Irish people were so dependent on the crop. When taken away from them they had nothing else to turn to. 

 

Because of the potato flight in the 19th century many Irish people suffered from the Irish potato famine. CLICK HERE to learn all about the Irish potato famine that was caused by the blight disease!

CLICK HERE to go back to the main page

 

Although many Irish people emigrated from Ireland in order to escape suffering due to the famine, they faced a new set of challenges while immigrating. During the year 1847 especially, immigrants were crowded into disease-ridden ships, which have been referred to as ‘coffin ships’ because of the high death that tolls for passengers. Not only were the ships overcrowded, in many cases, they had been intended to hold lumber, rather than passengers. The ships were not designed for the comfort and safety of many passengers, and furthermore, many of them were not in good condition for sailing.

Diseases such as typhus and dysentery spread quickly on crowded ships. Many peasants were already ill when they boarded these ships, and the unsanitary conditions on the ships aided the spread of disease. In 1847, especially, the spread of typhus and dysentery on coffin ships reached levels that have been referred to as “epidemic.” The immigrants who died on board coffin ships were quickly buried at sea. Out of the 4,427 immigrants who traveled to Montreal in July of 1847, 804 died at sea and 847 were sick when they arrived in Montreal. Not to mention, illness threatened the supply of rations, as the sick tended to be thirsty, and rations could be further threatened if the conditions of a ship or the weather conditions caused a voyage to stretch on longer than intended. In other cases, passengers had been so desperate to leave Ireland and the famine behind that they didn’t prepare well enough for long voyages.

Robert Whyte, a passenger on one of the coffin ships, described the conditions on these ships in the diary he kept of the experience, saying in one entry, “A few convalescents appeared upon deck. The appearance of the poor creatures was miserable in the extreme. We now had fifty sick, being nearly one half of the whole number of passengers. Some entire families, being prostrated, were dependent on the charity of their neighbors… The brother of the two men who died on the sixth instant followed them today… The old sails being all used up, his remains were placed in two meal-sacks…” Whyte’s account highlights the hardships that passengers faced on coffin ships, as almost half of the ships’ passengers were sick, and so many had died that the old sails were used up burying people at sea.

However, Whyte’s diary simultaneously reveals the gaps in the typical narrative of the Irish immigrant experience. In one of his earliest entries, Whyte says that “On account of this discovery [of a stowaway], there was a general muster in the afternoon, affording me an opportunity of seeing all of the emigrants- and a more motley crowd I never beheld.” When people think of Irish immigration, they typically think of the Irish as a unified class of people, and Whyte’s account reveals that this was not the case, as Whyte clearly thinks of himself as separate from the rest of the immigrants. Earlier in his account, he notes that he has his own stateroom, which shows that he was of a higher economic class than most of the immigrants on the boat. Whyte’s account also shows that Irish famine immigrants were looked on with pity and disgust, even by their own countrymen, an aspect of Irish immigration that is often left out of the typical narrative.

On top of all the difficulties that immigrants faced on board coffin ships, they also had to contend with the looming threat of shipwreck. On one voyage in May of 1847, for example, a ship called the Carricks was wrecked off of the coast of Quebec. Only a quarter of the passengers were able to swim to shore and survive.

Even once they reached their destinations, immigrants weren’t guaranteed an easy life. CLICK HERE to learn more about the challenges that immigrants faced upon reaching North America. CLICK HERE to learn about living conditions for Irish immigrants.

The immigrant experience still looms large in the public mind. The National Famine Monument in County Mayo, Ireland, depicts a coffin ship surrounded by skeletal figures. The monument was created in 1997 by sculptor John Behan, and is dedicated to all those who lost their lives during the Great Famine, although it specifically invokes Irish experiences on coffin ships. By commemorating the coffin ships in the way it does, the Mayo monument reaffirms the typical, simplistic narrative of Irish immigration history. Since it is the National Famine Monument, it implies that coffin ship experiences were emblematic of the entire Irish immigrant experience, or even the entire Irish famine experience. It’s especially important to consider the disconnect between the emotions the memorial invokes and the reality of the situation, considering that the worst of the coffin ship experiences were mostly confined to 1847; the coffin ship experience by no means encompassed the entirety of the Irish immigrant experience.

CLICK HERE to learn more about other monuments to the famine.

CLICK HERE to return to the main page.

1845 was the start of the Potato famine in the southern and western areas of Ireland. It is not difficult to understand the reasons for famine in the past centuries was poor technology and static economic systems that hampered human beings from getting access to food. The potato crop became very scarce to the point where individuals were starving because a lot of people were so dependent on the potato for their meals. One of the causes of famine was an imbalance of population with respect to food supply (and could thus be solved by population control methods). Famine could also come from the problem of food distribution and Irish poverty. And while food shortages can certainly cause famines, it does not follow that all famines must necessarily be caused by food shortages. Famine implies that some people do not have adequate access to food, it does not imply that food itself is in short supply. Another known cause of this decrease in the potato crop and the famine was because of the disease called blight. The mould fungus that grew on the undersurface of blighted potato leaves consisted of multitudes of extremely fine, branching filaments, at the tips of which were spores. When mature, these spores broke away and, wafted by the air, settled on other plants, restarting the process of destruction. An important component of the famine history, however, are the structural features of Irish society that made the potato crop failure so devastating:  structural poverty and limited economic opportunity, over-dependence on the potato, limited state intervention, and legal/political processes that encouraged landlords to move starving farmers off the land. Without the potato crop, peasants were unable to pay their rent, and were evicted by their landlords. Although people were starving because they had been so dependent on the potato crop for food, most people who died during the famine died of diseases like typhus and cholera, brought on by their starvation and poor living conditions. In the face of difficulties due to the famine, many Irish people chose to emigrate from Ireland. They went anywhere to the United States to Canada. Irish individuals found better living conditions for themselves and for their families and were able to get new jobs that would assist them on getting back on their feet, from the horrendous amount of poverty that they had during the famine. The population due to the famine had decreased significantly, due to the fact that people were emigrating from the country and people who had suffered from starvation and disease. Irish individuals could not last long in Ireland during the famine because they were so dependent on the potato crop, that when they no longer had it in their availability, they had nothing else to fall back on. 

Resulting in the Irish potato famine, many individuals had made life of the hardships that had occurred during the 19th century. CLICK HERE to learn about commemorations and memorials that have been built for remembrance. 

If you would like to learn more about the blight disease and how it effected the lives of the Irish people then CLICK HERE now!

CLICK HERE to go back to the main page

The Troubles in Northern Ireland were a fiercely sectarian event.  Few periods in modern history have seen such clear demarcation between Protestant and Catholic.  This partition was expressed both in terms of the formation of political borders, as well as social and cultural boundaries.  Such forceful and violent rivalry allowed old fissures to be opened anew. At times these cultural boundaries were enforced with physical force violence such as at Bloody Sunday in Derry.  In other instances, these borders were created peacefully as seen with the Belfast Agreement. Throughout the Troubles symbols such as peace lines, murals, and the Orange Order all served to mark identity and create lenses for which to view the events in retrospect.  

What’s the Difference Between Borders and Boundaries? 

The terms borders and boundaries are often used in everyday life, sometimes used interchangeably. However, despite their synonymous sound the two are not necessarily one and the same. Borders and boundaries are similar to each other in the way that they are both manifestations of divisions in society. Borders are physical divides and usually involve politics, whereas boundaries are social and cultural separations. These concepts are intertwined and play off of each other continually and cyclically. Social boundaries tend to create borders and in return borders perpetuate boundaries and the cycle continues. One can see this dynamic everywhere from a bathroom to the Berlin Wall showing that the idea of “you are not allowed in this area because you aren’t a certain way” is everywhere, operating at different levels of conscious realization. We found the Troubles in Northern Ireland to be a particularly good time period to analyze the complexities of borders and boundaries.

 Protestant and Catholic tension in Northern Ireland

About the Authors