Читать книгу A History of Ireland in International Relations - Owen McGee - Страница 9

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A Republican Moment:

Ireland’s Independence

Struggle in a Global Context,

1919–1922

Sinn Féin’s pro-American take on international relations was intended to capitalise upon the development of a political lobby group in the United States known as the Friends of Irish Freedom. This raised the possibility of Ireland’s case being presented before the US Houses of Congress.1 The fact that the United States was the only western power to respond positively to Pope Benedict XV’s call for universal peace in August 1917 also found an appreciative audience in Ireland.2 In an address to Pope Benedict, US President Woodrow Wilson stated that the United States believed that ‘peace should rest upon the rights of peoples … their equal right to freedom and security and self-government, and to participation, upon fair terms, in the economic opportunities of the world’. During its triumph in the 1918 parliamentary elections, Sinn Féin cited this remark as evidence that ‘our sentiments are in keeping with the greatest organised opinion of mankind – that is, republican opinion’.3 Neither the US president nor the Pope evidently mentioned Ireland when they met in Rome just prior to the initial meeting of Dáil Éireann.4 Nevertheless, the members of this Irish parliamentary assembly, which was established unilaterally in the wake of the 1918 elections, adopted the stance of appealing to a universal and pacifist body of public opinion that, it was expected, was watching closely the course of Anglo-Irish relations, and to whom it was trusted that the Dáil’s appointed consular representatives were making an effective case. These Dáil consuls focused particularly on the two republican powers in international relations, namely America and France. Indeed, no other countries tended to be mentioned in the Dáil’s parliamentary debates.5

Historically, the idea that a set of egalitarian republican values existed and were likely to find support through a kind of universal brotherhood of man had been romanticised by many European artists ever since the days of Ludwig van Beethoven. On an intellectual level, however, this idea had often been associated with the cult of freemasonry.6 In the Irish case, this had been evident in the historic examples of the United Irishmen and the Fenians once they became secret societies. By the twentieth century, however, a desire to emphasise the greater role of Catholicism in protecting religious and intellectual liberties had become an issue in Irish politics. Reflecting this, in the wake of the 1916 Rising, Sinn Féin typified freemasonry as now being on the side of perpetual warfare, military intrigues and controlled medias that were spreading falsehoods about international relations.7 It welcomed the fact that Russia was responsible for exposing a secret Anglo-French agreement to pervert the Pope’s calls for peace, and that the proposal of Alexander Kerensky for holding plebiscites on all questions of national independence ‘was that substantially made by Sinn Fein’.8 Be that as it may, Sinn Féin generally saw the entire Russian revolution as but an episode in the many military intrigues surrounding the First World War. Therefore, it drew its hope almost entirely from Woodrow Wilson’s dismissal of great power, or ‘balance of power’, politics as a ‘great game, now forever discredited’.9 This was reflected by Sinn Féin’s 1918 general election literature. This included a collection of Wilson’s speeches entitled Self-Determination and the Rights of Small Nations; a reprint of the American Declaration of Independence alongside various historic and contemporary expressions of Ireland’s desire for political independence entitled The Case of Ireland Restated; and a publication by a Protestant Irish Christian-democratic thinker entitled Towards the Republic: a Study of New Ireland’s Social and Political Aims.10 The theme of the latter publication by Aodh de Blacam was designed to reflect the fact that an American Catholic cardinal had recently noted that ‘it is my impression that the strong confirmation of the Holy See of the old American principle will give a new impetus to civil liberty the whole wide world over.’11

The material and economic basis of the Irish independence struggle was shaped largely by First World War circumstances. British trade between Britain and Ireland (about £100 million a year) had been greater than British trade with any independent country in the world, with the single exception of the United States, and was also greater than British trade with France and Germany combined.12 For the duration of the war, exports from Ireland to Britain grew to the level of a positive balance of trade and this probably served to boost Sinn Féin confidence. However, German submarine warfare led the British War Office, amidst food shortages caused by decreased shipping, to make the unpopular decision that Irish food exports to Britain should now operate exclusively via Belfast.13 This helped to sink support for the old Irish Party at Westminster, prompting some of its supporters in either academia or business to embrace Sinn Féin’s re-imagining of the Atlantic economy.14 Albeit for only a three-year period, this led to a very perceptible increase in writings on international relations within the Irish Jesuit journal Studies, which was published by University College Dublin (UCD).

Sinn Féin emphasised the degree to which America’s entry into the war and the war itself had been economically motivated.15 Nevertheless, the writings of Alfred Mahan, a founder of the US Naval College, were cited as providing very valuable lessons for Ireland as to why all islands and maritime nations must rely on international trade for their prosperity.16 Unlike the British Navy League, Sinn Féin argued that there was no logical reason why the principle of the freedom of the seas should not apply to Ireland and allow for the development of its west coast ports as a home for international trade.17 This served to revive a debate that had been silent since the 1860s regarding the potential role of the Atlantic economy in boosting Irish nationalism. Arthur Griffith suggested that the ‘real test of the freedom of the seas’ was the degree to which the international community allowed this to happen.18 In this campaign, Sinn Féin found an ally in the Irish Industrial Development Association (IDA). From Cork, it claimed to have received thousands of business queries from every part of the globe, but it had hitherto been unable to respond to any of them because of the British legal restriction on separate Irish trade agreements.19 With the support of the IDA, Henry Ford, an Irish American businessman, had long intended to establish an agricultural machinery factory in Cork as a base from which to export to a European market, but this project faced considerable British opposition.20

Henry Ford had been a pacifist during the First World War. In this capacity, he had promoted an American Protestant women’s movement that had appealed to the Vatican for its support in creating an international pacifist movement.21 The resulting international women’s movement prompted Hanna Sheehy Skeffington to go to America to look for its support for the cause of Irish independence. It also played a part in inspiring Katherine Hughes, the founder of the Catholic women’s movement in Canada (which was reputedly the world’s largest lay Catholic organisation), to support the cause of Irish independence.22 Another significant channel of pacifist support for Ireland came from Éamon de Valera’s decision to look for the support of Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier of Belgium, who had been the leader of a Catholic pacifist movement in Europe since 1915. Mercier would call for an independent investigation into Irish political circumstances and, in the process, attracted international support for the Irish claim that its independence struggle was a non-violent one based purely on a claim to national self-determination. As a result, G.K. Chesterton, a noted Christian humanist, became one of the very few English commentators to defy British Prime Minister David Lloyd George by expressing support for the justice of Irish nationalists’ demands.23

This growing international association between Irish nationalism and a liberal pacifism also impacted on domestic American politics. An Irish Progressive League was created in America that championed a new anti-militarist form of labour politics radicalism that issued a direct challenge to the tradition of Irish support for socially conservative American republican patriotism, represented politically by Devoy’s Gaelic American and the Friends of Irish Freedom.24 This trend played a significant part in setting the tone for subsequent American debates on Ireland.25 The most critical development in this regard, however, was that the foreign affairs committee of the US Houses of Representatives left itself open to hearing claims for Irish independence between December 1918 and September 1919. British aristocratic peers who supported Belfast unionists deemed this to be ‘intolerable gross libel’ upon British statesmanship.26 This American initiative, however, was an information gathering exercise regarding Ireland rather than an actual expression of American diplomacy. On the most critical question of the post-war peace settlement, the Irish belief that the American government and, in particular, Edward House, the key diplomatic advisor to President Wilson, would not be influenced by Britain,27 was not well founded.28

The first official diplomatic exercise of the republican government of Dáil Éireann was to issue a ‘message to the free nations of the world’ alongside an Irish declaration of independence. In keeping with Sinn Féin propaganda ever since America’s entry into the war in April 1917, this argued that ‘Ireland is the gateway of the Atlantic’ and that ‘her independence is demanded by the Freedom of the Seas’ since, geographically, Ireland was the ‘point upon which great trade routes converge’: ‘her great harbours must be opened to all nations, instead of being the monopoly of England’, and, in the process, make an independent Ireland ‘a benefit and safeguard to Europe and America’.29 America had recently announced that it intended to increase by fourfold the size of its mercantile marine. Ireland was now suggesting that altering British monopolies in international trade could be in everyone’s best interests. However, the fact that Britain was essentially the prime mover in promoting the idea of creating a post-war ‘League of Nations’ as a forum for multilateral diplomacy played a significant part in overshadowing this Irish claim.

The Belfast-born British diplomat James Bryce, a key intermediary in Anglo-American relations, was an author of the League of Nations idea in his capacity as a member of the International Court of Justice at the Hague.30 With an eye to Anglo-American relations, the Irish unionist leader Lord Midleton was likewise supporting the strategy of Arthur Balfour, the British foreign secretary and a long-term close personal associate who had also done much to set the tone of Anglo-Irish relations ever since the 1880s.31 Balfour had recently sent T.P. O’Connor (a well-known and Irish-born Liverpool MP who had formerly been the chief political advisor of the late John Redmond) to America to promote its level of wartime cooperation. This was done by networking with the two key American banks that financed the Allied war effort. This included J.P. Morgan, which had been the sole agent for the British and French governments in purchasing American munitions and supplies. While O’Connor’s mission was opposed both in ‘Irish-America’ and by Sinn Féin, a small and unsuccessful Irish League of Nations Society supported it. With the patronage of the British foreign office, this society also sought to win Irish support for the British government’s right to speak on Ireland’s behalf at the post-war peace conference,32 which would be held at Versailles. With the encouragement of Edward House, Woodrow Wilson had first announced his support for the ‘League of Nations’ idea as part of his ‘Fourteen Points for Peace’ during January 1918. In doing so, he made no mention of Ireland. Sinn Féin’s response was to suggest that ‘diplomatic pressure, no doubt, deterred President Wilson at this stage from placing Ireland side by side with Poland’, but this ‘does not mean that Ireland is ruled out of the international court’. As soon as Ireland spoke out ‘in definite terms for independence’, it was expected that the international community would have to recognise that ‘President Wilson declares that “all well defined” national aspirations must be met.’33

To enhance its capacity to maintain a competitive advantage over all its rivals, the British Empire purposively made all its overseas dominions representatives at the Versailles peace conference. In turn, this entitled them to both membership and voting rights in the proposed League of Nations at Geneva, which was announced as part of the final Versailles peace treaty of May 1919. As the Irish republic’s consul at Paris, Sean T. O’Kelly had attempted in vain to gain admittance to Versailles. The Irish government’s position with regards to the League of Nations was that it was prepared to support Irish membership of such a league if it was ‘based on equality of right’ with ‘guarantees’ that there would be no ‘difference between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak’.34 Dublin’s response to the Versailles treaty was to repudiate the UK’s right to sign the agreement on behalf of Ireland and to send Éamon de Valera, as the Dáil’s president, to America where he made the case that the existing covenant of the League of Nations was deeply flawed because its Article Ten meant that action on behalf of a victimised small power could only be taken if all the major powers agreed, in the process leaving unchanged the ‘balance of power’ diplomatic practices that had led to the First World War in the first place.35 Typifying this as England’s attempt to ‘trick America’, Sinn Féin argued that ‘today Ireland is doing more than all the remainder of Europe to prevent that trick succeeding’ and that this reality was elevating the question of Ireland into a ‘world question’.36

Noting that ‘the domestic problems of Europe are of no consequence to the United States of America’, Sinn Féin expected as early as the summer of 1918 that America would not be enthusiastic about the League of Nations idea. Reflecting this, Ireland’s primary concern was simply to concentrate on the fact that ‘our fellow countrymen in the states will know how to take advantage of the Irish pronouncement for independence’ to ensure that ‘America will understand the voice of Ireland and America will respond.’37 The first pronouncement of US Republican Party senators on Ireland was to declare that they believed that the Dáil’s representatives should have been admitted to the peace conference, but they did this only after the Versailles conference had ceased.38 In the autumn of 1919, the Friends of Irish Freedom in America celebrated when US Republican senators rejected the idea of America joining the League of Nations. This was viewed as having undermined the possibility of an Anglo-American alliance and increased the likelihood of persuading the Republican Party to take up the cause of Irish independence as part of its election manifesto for the next US presidential election.39 It was widely expected that the Republicans would win such an election on an isolationist foreign policy ticket. This was because Americans tended to view new institutions such as the League of Nations and the associated ‘International Labour Organisation’ as mere fronts for (British) imperial intrigue, as well as a means to lead America, against its own wishes, into European political entanglements. Sinn Féin was essentially correct that the United States would welcome if direct trade with Ireland could be boosted. However, America had no interest in involving itself directly in others’ affairs, preferring instead to stick dogmatically to a foreign policy of ‘[commercial] involvement without [diplomatic] commitment’.40 This was the Achilles heel of the Friends of Irish Freedom’s campaign.

The attitude of Wilson’s Democratic Party in the United States was disappointing for Ireland. A cross-party Irish delegation had attempted, in vain, to meet Wilson in Paris to offer him the freedom of Dublin. On this occasion, intimations were received from Edward House and Herbert Hoover, then the head of the American Relief Administration in Paris, that Wilson could not ‘officially’ take up Ireland’s case. Sinn Féin read this comment mistakenly as a hint of encouragement. Wilson was actually very unhappy that the Friends of Irish Freedom had unilaterally appointed a political delegation of three prominent Democratic Party members to visit Ireland and Paris in support of the Dáil. Frank P. Walsh, a Kansas City lawyer who was formerly chairman of American Commission on Industrial Relations, led this delegation.41 In the recent past, the Friends’ treasurer Thomas Hughes Kelly, who was chairman of the New York Emigrant Savings Bank, was prevented from even landing in Ireland by the British government. According to Lord Midleton, the only reason why the British government did not issue a warrant for the arrest of Walsh was that it had decided instead to present the British government’s case regarding Ireland to the American government purely as part of its negotiations for the holding of future joint Anglo-American naval conferences.42 From Britain’s point of view, the question of the freedom of the seas with regards to Ireland meant utilising the western coast of Ireland for the defence of British mercantile and military shipping alone. As acting president of the Dáil, Arthur Griffith believed that Britain’s massive wartime debt to the United States should work to Ireland’s advantage in presenting a different case.43 Ireland’s lack of financial clout, however, meant that it was poorly equipped to convince the Americans not to accept the Royal Navy’s ‘western approaches’ stratagem. An additional factor that did not help the Irish case was that Wilson had been very influenced by Casement’s misleading propaganda that had presented Irish nationalists as having been pro-German during the war.44

Dáil Éireann’s economic policy was based on a desire to change banking practices in Ireland by adopting a more American-style policy of allowing extensive loans to even small businesses. This was considered as an essential first step to allow Ireland to capitalise upon various international factors. This included the capacity of many ‘pre-war pastoral countries’ to capitalise upon the trend of American investment in Europe to transform themselves into ‘a manufacturing exporter’; the existence of ‘a permanent market’ on the European continent for Irish agricultural produce; and the potential, once Ireland was able to ‘burst through the trade wall’ of Britain, to revive various historical trade routes as well as to create entirely new ones.45 Dáil personnel worked with the IDA and American consular services to promote direct trade between Dublin and New York, and they also worked with French consular services to initiate new direct shipping lines with Le Havre and Bordeaux.46 These initiatives, however, involved American and French shipping lines exclusively because there was insufficient Irish risk capital to establish an Irish mercantile marine. The British government, which had already imprisoned many Sinn Féin TDs, formally outlawed Dáil Éireann in September 1919 after it began legislating on banking. Hitherto, almost half of the assets of the Irish joint stock banks and Post Office Savings Bank were held jointly as securities in London banks, and were legally tied into the operations of both the Irish Land Commission and the British government’s own ‘war loan fund’ that had financed the First World War.47 The Dáil issued a direct challenge to this situation in August 1919 when it launched its own National Land Bank in Dublin under the management of a former professor of economics in Toronto.48 This bank sought to cultivate links with cooperative banks in both America and Germany and to scrap the Irish Land Commission, but the British government considered this to be an illegal initiative.

Sinn Féin’s expected victory in all local government elections was intended to bring about a complete revolution in banking practices in Ireland. This was because of the willingness of all local government bodies, which swore an oath of loyalty to the Dáil as the national parliament and intended setting up their own courts, to invest their funds in the Dáil’s bank to effectively transform it into a new Irish national bank. This was the essential basis of Sinn Féin’s counter-state programme: enabling Irish nationalists to take administrative control of all the apparatus of government nationwide.49 The outlawing of the Dáil, however, not only made this policy impractical but also left the Irish republican administration without a secure outlet for investing its capital other than in Dublin Corporation stock. Therefore, the administration of the Irish government outside of Dublin city became an essentially ad hoc process that operated without the security of having a working relationship with any bank.50 This trend was enhanced by the fact that as soon as Sinn Féin took control of the national administration of local government during the summer of 1920, Britain sent army auxiliaries to Ireland to suppress this administration, causing fatalities in Ireland to peak thereafter.51 This situation naturally irked Sinn Féin supporters greatly. On Griffith’s insistence, the new Irish government had introduced its own oath of allegiance at the same time as it launched its own bank.52 This initiative had the support of the vast majority of Irish elected representatives, both locally and nationally, but it was perpetually frustrated thereafter.

After direct trade between Dublin and New York was initiated, the monthly figure for Dublin’s exports to America (£400,000) soon became equivalent to annual figures before the war.53 However, this was still only 5 per cent of the amount of Irish trade with Britain. Much more American trade was operating via Belfast, while virtually no American trade was operating via Cork, Limerick or Derry. The American consular offices in Ireland fully appreciated this reality.54 Reflecting this, President Wilson chose to close down the American government’s commission on Ireland as soon as Britain formally outlawed the Dáil. The lack of international protests about the suppression of the Dáil in September 1919 practically turned Irish diplomatic representatives abroad into outlaws. As a result, de Valera could no longer address state assemblies in America, although the Friends of Irish Freedom continued to attempt to introduce him to various state governors.55

Harry Boland, a gregarious Dublin sportsman who had resigned as IRB president to take up a position as the Dáil’s agent in America, responded by organising a well-publicised national lecture tour for de Valera.56 However, a definite solution to the problem of being labelled an outlaw needed to be found. This focused minds upon the press. During the First World War, the New York Times was the only American newspaper that Britain had allowed into Ireland. This prompted Sinn Féin to typify it as the eyes and ears of the British foreign office in America. Certainly, it had long typified Ireland as ‘the spoilt child of the Empire’,57 while also supporting the claim of T.P. O’Connor that Irish nationalism was neither a policy nor a coherent philosophy of self-government, but instead was a mere ‘child of provocation, insult, and want of all faith in English statesmanship or English good faith’.58 De Valera’s response to the closure of the American commission on Ireland in September 1919 was to set up an Irish National Press Bureau in both Washington D.C. and New York City under Katherine Hughes. This was done with funding from Thomas Hughes Kelly and John Castellini, a millionaire food-wholesaler from Cincinnati, Ohio, who usually funded Catholic rather than Irish causes. The official line of the Dáil’s department of foreign affairs, set down by Griffith, was that the struggle for recognition of Irish independence depended entirely on direct communications with other governments: mere propaganda was insufficient, while definitions of Ireland’s case with reference to the rights of other groups within the British Empire should be avoided.59 De Valera himself, however, did not share this belief, having already directed Sean T. O’Kelly in Paris that ‘in addition to using the press you should get into the closest possible contact with the South Africans, Egyptians, Indians, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, etc.’,60 even though the Dáil’s department of foreign affairs, in keeping with its republican aspirations, neither had nor would appoint any representatives to the British dominions. This belief of de Valera’s in the value of Irish propaganda within the British Empire had also been reflected by his response to an attempt to establish a support body for the Dáil in Britain. He recommended that this be done by forming an ‘Irish Self-Determination League’ as a purely propagandistic body that should seek to capitalise upon the fact that the term ‘self-determination’ was now a respectable norm in international discourse, associated with the pursuit of peace as an abstract principle.61

After September 1919, de Valera directed Katherine Hughes and Robert Lindsay Crawford, an Irish-born editor of the Toronto Statesman, to form an Irish Self-Determination League in Canada. This was supposed to work in tandem with the British organisation and to seek to establish a similar body in Australia.62 Hughes would concentrate on this goal. By contrast, Crawford would work primarily with French-Canadian politicians in seeking to mobilise both Canadian and American sympathy for the cause of Irish independence. This initiative was supported by Judge Daniel Cohalan, who was the practical leader of the Friends of Irish Freedom in New York.63 Although somewhat ineffective, a context to Crawford’s initiative was a dynamic of cross-border Canadian–American relations, whereby American-educated Canadian politicians were more inclined to favour a distinctly North American identity as opposed to a traditional British colonial identity for Canada, which nominally had its own department of external affairs since 1909.64

In February 1920, de Valera shocked the Friends of Irish Freedom by suggesting to the Westminster Gazette that Ireland could exist within a protective British military zone in a similar manner to Cuba’s relationship with the United States. The Friends of Irish Freedom not only deemed this idea to be a serious mistake but also saw it as undermining their efforts to get the US Republican Party to interest itself in the cause of Irish independence. In June 1920, Cohalan succeeded in persuading the Republican Party to issue a resolution during its Chicago national convention for selecting its next presidential candidate ‘that the people of Ireland have the right to determine freely, without dictation from outside, their own government institutions and their international relations with other states and peoples’. Although the Democratic Party had already rejected the idea of introducing a pro-Irish resolution in deference to Wilson, de Valera responded to Cohalan’s initiative by denouncing both Cohalan and the Friends of Irish Freedom for not also approaching the Democratic Party national convention. In doing so, de Valera bypassed entirely Cohalan’s carefully cultivated American political networks and prompted the Republican Party, for fear of becoming associated with an internal Irish dispute, to drop the idea of making a pro-Irish resolution altogether. The British ambassador to the United States viewed this development as evidence of ‘the immense influence Irishmen can exert on American politicians, if they proceed wisely, and how ready American politicians are to withdraw themselves from that influence if they find some honourable pretext for doing so’.65

Although the Republican Party rejected the candidate that Cohalan supported for the presidential election, de Valera’s Cuban analogy and practical sabotage of Cohalan’s tactics was the subject of much criticism even from some Catholic bishops within the Friends of Irish Freedom, who accused de Valera of a lack of judgment and a failure to understand his need for American advice on how to handle American politics. Shortly thereafter, upon the arrival in America from London of Daniel Mannix, an Irish-born Catholic archbishop of Melbourne, de Valera decided to retire from public speaking in America. He wrote to Griffith that ‘the greater part of my usefulness here is over’ and that he believed ‘the work which is being done in Ireland towards making the government function as a de facto government is advancing our cause, even here, more than anything that could be done by our friends in this country’.66 Upon de Valera’s arrival in America, he had been made aware by Sir Shane Leslie and his British diplomatic friends in New York that the British government was fully confident that the Vatican was its unbending ally with regards to Ireland. To counteract this trend, de Valera had directed Sean T. O’Kelly to transfer himself from Paris to Rome, where he would eventually succeed in acquiring a papal audience during May 1920. The hardworking O’Kelly, who in the eyes of the Catholic hierarchy was a rather simple-minded or naïve individual, saw this as a triumph for the Irish republican cause, rather than what it actually achieved: a pledge of the Church’s effective neutrality. This was de Valera’s objective, even though this may have had very limited consequences in international relations.67

Writing to the IRB, which under the direction of Michael Collins (who was also the Dáil’s minister for finance) did much to keep the Dáil’s administration alive in an underground fashion, the old Fenian John Devoy emphasised that although ‘the defeat of English intrigues in America is essential to success’, ‘this can only be achieved by Irishmen here working as citizens of the US, guided by men who have intimate knowledge of American affairs’:

Therefore, there should be constant consultation between you and us as to the measures that concern purely American affairs. So that your hopes may not be raised too high as to possibilities, we would remind you that our people here are less than a fifth of the total population, that scarcely more than a tenth of that fifth are directly interested in the Irish cause and that our power to influence public measures that concern Ireland depends largely on our supposed, rather than our actual, strength and on our ability to make combinations with other and friendly sections of the American people, who still require enlightenment on the Irish question.68

If there were some wisdom in Devoy’s judgment, the Friends of Irish Freedom nevertheless declined thereafter. Cohalan blamed this entirely on de Valera, although as Cohalan (an ex-Fenian) was also fond of stating on American Republican Party platforms that Britain’s wartime debt to the United States could be paid up by surrendering its control of Canada and the West Indies, Cohalan’s sense of American foreign policy was seemingly about fifty years out of date.69 In October 1920, acting on de Valera’s direct orders, Harry Boland severed the secret connection that had existed between the American Clan na Gael and the IRB in Ireland on the grounds of the political influence that Cohalan wielded over the former body through Devoy.70

The non-inclusion of Ireland in the American presidential election campaign of the winter of 1920 was perhaps a death blow to the chances of securing international recognition for an Irish republic. Before returning to Ireland in December 1920, de Valera’s final initiative in America was to direct Joseph McGarrity of Philadelphia to set up a rival organisation to the Friends of Irish Freedom. While this was entitled the ‘American Association for Recognition of the Irish Republic’ (AARIR), ironically, it expressed its unwillingness to deal directly with the American government. This indicated that the AARIR existed solely as a propagandist and fundraising body. Its formation coincided, however, with a fresh impulse provided to Irish propaganda in America by the existence between November 1920 and March 1921 of the congressional ‘American Commission on Conditions in Ireland’. By criticising the operation of British martial law in Ireland, this body evoked a hostile reaction from Midleton, Austen Chamberlain and other British political leaders, but it created room for fund collection efforts in America for the relief of the many victims of British coercion in Ireland ever since the summer of 1920. This was done by means of a new ‘American Committee for Relief in Ireland’ that was led by Thomas Hughes Kelly and would send its funds to a new organisation in Dublin known as the Irish White Cross.71 This committee succeeded in receiving subscriptions from both the east and west coasts of America, including from leaders of a new motion picture industry in California.72

De Valera returned to Ireland in December 1920 on the same day that Westminster passed a Government of Ireland Act, which legally established, under British law, assemblies of Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland with no powers of fiscal autonomy. Having decided to concentrate almost wholly on propaganda and fund collection efforts, de Valera attempted to link the initiative of the American Committee For Relief in Ireland with the operations of Irish self-determination leagues throughout the British Empire by making each a supporter of the ‘great Christian and national work’ of the Irish White Cross in offering relief to all victims of British martial law and coercion in Ireland: ‘I am convinced it is a work in which Irishmen and women in every part of the world will want to take part and that the example of our friends in America will soon be followed by those in Canada, South America, Australasia, South Africa and in Britain itself.’73The Irish White Cross in Dublin was not formally instituted as an organisation until February 1921, around the same time as de Valera encouraged the National Land Bank to affiliate itself with the Irish Banks Standing Committee, led by the loyalist Bank of Ireland. The White Cross intentionally encompassed leaders of all religious denominations and interest groups within Irish society.74 This was done for two reasons. First, nationally its existence illustrated the reality that it was the British government, not the Irish republican supporters of Dáil Éireann, who was adopting violent coercion in Ireland to attain its goals. Second, internationally the existence of the Irish White Cross was intended to substantiate the argument of the Irish Self-Determination Leagues that were it not for the Orange brand of freemason propaganda that the British foreign office was distributing worldwide via Reuters, the world would understand fully that the Irish demand for independence was an entirely national, democratic and economic matter, embodying no sectarian dimension. Be that as it may, this emphasis upon media work rather than appealing directly to republican governments abroad practically opened the door to an Irish acceptance of British overtures (previously rejected by Griffith, who was thereafter imprisoned) to offer Ireland the status of a British dominion. Not surprisingly, these overtures began during the summer of 1920 in the wake of the Irish failure to persuade American political parties to make the question of Irish independence a platform issue in the next US presidential election contest.75

Archbishop Mannix’s former status as a leader of an Australian anti-conscription movement was the principal strength and weakness of the Irish Self-Determination League in Australia. Like the Canadian league but unlike the British league (which included various IRB activists),76 this occasionally succeeded in getting either ex-government ministers or ex-cabinet members within the British dominions to chair Irish meetings.77 This development had been made necessary in Canada because Crawford’s support for supposedly pro-American (as opposed to pro-British) Canadian politicians had led to a violent backlash from the Orange Order in Canada, which adopted physical violence to prevent his Irish league from holding public meetings.78 Meanwhile, in Australia a move had actually been made, despite opposition from some Australian labour MPs (one of whom would be expelled from the Australian parliament as a result), to label all Catholics as inherently disloyal subjects of the British Empire in order to secure the arrest of any probable sympathisers with Ireland in Australia.79 While an Orange brand of Freemasonry certainly thrived within all the British dominions, its attacks upon the Irish Self-Determination Leagues purposively ignored the fact that the chief argument of these bodies had also been made by the Canadian and Australian prime ministers: namely, British coercion in Ireland reflected badly on all British territories and, therefore, it must be stopped for the sake of the better governance of the Empire.80 Sir Osmond Thomas Grattan Esmonde, a new member of the Dáil’s foreign affairs department, was denied entry into Australia because he refused to take an oath of allegiance to the British Crown on his arrival, while thereafter he was threatened with arrest on a charge of sedition on a visit to Vancouver. Reflecting the limits of their ambitions, the Irish Self-Determination Leagues of Australia and Canada refused to comment on Esmonde’s case, however, because they feared a public backlash.81

From a republican point of view, the Irish diplomatic mission had faced insurmountable obstacles not only in America but also in France. Sean T. O’Kelly and George Gavan Duffy, the Irish consuls at Paris, had always arranged that their communiqués be sent to the French foreign office.82 On the French government’s orders, however, formal acknowledgement that this was taking place could not be published either in France or in Ireland.83 In the Dáil itself, Griffith only acknowledged that the French National War Museum had requested copies of all Irish literature ‘with a view to giving them a place in the Museum together with the literature issued by other countries’.84 The intensity of French fears, or even hatred, of the Germans, which de Valera had predicted as early as April 1919 could make the Versailles settlement the basis of another war,85 also governed French attitudes towards Ireland. The reports of the French consul in Dublin to Ariste Briand, the French foreign minister, took the form of a précis of Irish news, almost in the fashion of intelligence reports. Rather than suggesting the cultivation of diplomatic relations with Ireland, these were concerned entirely with figuring out Irish attitudes towards Franco-German relations; in short, whether the Irish were either ‘pro-French’ or ‘pro-German’. From the contemporary French point of view, one could not be neither or both.86

The French press was far more interested in the Irish question in America as an aspect of Anglo-American relations and, in turn, how this might affect Franco-British relations than it was in circumstances in Ireland itself. During the spring of 1920, this began to change when Irish Catholic criticisms of a British declaration of a military curfew in Ireland (the first of many) evoked a response in Catholic France. Virtually alone amongst Parisian deputies, Marc Sangnier, who was also France’s leading Christian-democratic thinker,87 began to speak regularly in favour of complete Irish independence at public meetings. Although Sangnier’s influence in France was limited somewhat by the fact that he was widely considered to be a dated politician with a pre-1914 worldview,88 he professed to be willing, if requested by the Dáil, to either offer his pen or speak in the French National Assembly on behalf of Ireland.89 Unlike the situation in America, there was not a noticeable Irish community in France. Nevertheless, Michael MacWhite, a Sinn Féiner and former French Foreign Legionnaire who operated a small Franco-Irish Society, served the Irish Parisian consulate well by generating publicity in the French press. The tenor of a weekly Irish Bulletin, which detailed all acts of British coercion and was distributed internationally in the wake of the suppression of the Dáil, would seem to have made some impression in France. Sympathetic press reporting became more common in sectional (Catholic as well as socialist) as well as provincial (agricultural as well as municipal) French newspapers.90 However, as the Irish department of foreign affairs noted, the French national press was far more guarded because:

The fear of Germany is so great that France is very anxious not to break with England. Hence official France is not prepared to take the side of Ireland in her present struggle. The Paris press is for the most part governed in its outlook by the prevailing official viewpoint and is accordingly very guarded in its expressions on Irish questions.91

Considering that pro-Irish press reportage in France was ‘activity which comes more properly under the head of propaganda’, Duffy and O’Kelly were far from enthusiastic about this situation and so, by the summer of 1920, had already become doubtful of the continued value of the Parisian diplomatic mission. That autumn, after French press interviews were arranged with Griffith and Duffy, both men issued direct appeals to the French government to protest against Britain’s treatment of Terence MacSwiney, the imprisoned mayor of Cork who, in common with many Irish political prisoners, had gone on hunger strike. In doing so, however, Duffy broke with protocol by publishing his appeal, prompting the British consulate in Paris to demand that Duffy be expelled from France immediately. As the French had to comply, Duffy relocated to Belgium. After being allowed a final sympathetic French press interview in his defence, he left for Rome, where he joined a by now ailing Sean T. O’Kelly.92 Inspired partly by some initial Irish efforts with the Italian press, they began focusing on the idea that Ireland should present itself to Catholic Europe as a ‘bulwark of religion in a godless world’.93

Sections of the French media were willing to question the wisdom of British plans to partition Ireland. The Revue du Politique et Parlementaire, a prominent French journal, deemed Westminster’s Government of Ireland Act to be an unjust act that was inherently doomed to fail because it was endeavouring to create ‘two Irish provinces, but no Ireland; a Quebec, or an Ontario perhaps, but no Canada’.94 In common with most of the international press,95 French journalists were impressed by MacSwiney’s hunger-strike protest, leading to frequent critiques of British military rule in Ireland, although British protests would mean that this trend virtually ceased by the spring of 1921.96 Being eager to negate Irish attempts to appeal to American opinion, David Lloyd George, the British prime minister, wanted to convince the international community that the Dáil and its supporters should be viewed akin to how the Confederacy was viewed by the Union during the American civil war, considering this claim to be an effective counter to de Valera’s argument that the only potential parallel between contemporary Irish circumstances and American history dated from 1776.97 London used this civil war claim to justify its stance that Irish rebels should be treated according to pre-existing law without recognising their right either to secede from the Union or to receive formal acknowledgement of their status as belligerents or political prisoners. It was clear to all observers, however, that this campaign was not working, particularly on a moral level. Due to local government elections, by the summer of 1920, Irish republican volunteers were able to supplant the authority of British police forces (many of whom voluntarily retired) as peacekeepers across most of the country, prompting Lloyd George to send army battalions of 60,000 men to Ireland to take their place. These British soldiers, however, found themselves in a situation in which they had no clearly defined responsibility other than to wield by virtue of their armed physical presence the moral authority of regular policing forces of law and order, which little to none of the general Irish populace was prepared to give them. This was reflected by the fact that as many as 100,000 unarmed men pledged to offer their services to the Irish volunteer movement in opposition to this British armed presence.98

In Boland’s absence, Michael Collins, as acting president of the IRB (which had no more than 3,000 members), had used its secret networks in an effort to coordinate the activities of all Irish volunteer officers with the view to systemically create the basis of an Irish republican police force and army. However, the Dáil itself had no regular army. Most Irish republican volunteers performed regular civilian jobs and only about 3,000 in total had firearms. While there were several thousand volunteers in the Irish capital, the ‘Acting Service Unit’ in Dublin of would-be permanent Irish soldiers, who were essentially akin to mere infantrymen, amounted to just fifty men. The old revolutionary organisation of the IRB supplied this nucleus by providing a small permanent staff and an officer corps, but the directive power of its General Headquarters (GHQ) was limited because of the Dáil’s restricted administrative capacity outside Dublin. The IRB, which also acted as an intelligence department for the underground Dáil, was prepared to kill a number of British intelligence agents in Dublin whenever they attempted to seize the Irish government’s funds. Actual confrontations with British forces, however, was confined to the activities of a few flying columns of volunteers in Munster over whom GHQ exercised virtually no control. Particularly during the spring of 1921, some of these men attempted to resist by force the imposition of a British military curfew in Cork. This curfew was designed to punish all sympathisers with MacSwiney’s hunger strike by burning Cork city to the ground and summarily executing any armed member of the general Irish public. The Sinn Féin mayor of Limerick was also shot dead by Crown forces at this time.99

Ever since the summer of 1920, British attempts to force Ireland to meet its terms had increased the number of British and American foreign correspondents that visited Ireland.100 Supporters of the Dáil knew, however, that the purpose of these men was simply to collect intelligence reports on Irish politics purely for their own governments’ benefit. Therefore, they were not taken fully into their confidence.101 The Irish correspondent of Le Temps, a semi-governmental French organ, also worked as an intelligence intermediary between the British and French governments.102 Nevertheless, he was trusted by Michael MacWhite, who managed to cultivate some pro-Irish sympathies in southern France, including Lyon, after he addressed a French republican assembly in Bordeaux, a one-time home to fairly influential Irish merchants. MacWhite also attempted to encourage debate on the question of direct Franco-Irish trade in northern France. Yann Goblet of the University of Rennes, which also produced French publications on Ireland, supported this work and also organised regular public meetings in sympathy with Ireland in Brittany. This was probably not a potential source of strength for Ireland, however, due to Parisian antipathy to all Breton nationalists.103

Upon assuming direct personal responsibility for the Dáil’s department of foreign affairs in February 1921, de Valera gave a French press interview in which he contrasted alleged British state support for sectarian riots in Belfast with the full civil and religious liberties offered to Irish citizens by the Irish republic. He also emphasised his belief, however, that the Anglo-Irish dispute ‘can be solved definitely and completely by any of the general formulae about the rights of small nations which received almost universal recognition during the war, and were particularly approved of by the responsible statesmen of Britain’.104 De Valera’s determination to allow Ireland to adapt fully to the emerging European political order, whether it was influenced unduly by Britain or not, was reflected by his subsequent promotion of MacWhite to a diplomat in Switzerland, with the job of keeping Ireland fully informed of all developments surrounding the League of Nations initiative at Geneva.105

Before leaving the French capital, MacWhite together with Joseph Walshe, an ex-Jesuit now appointed to the Parisian consulate office, decided to launch an Irish cultural mission in France to ‘project a distinct image of the country’.106 This was done through the promotion of Irish arts and culture, and was based on an understanding of ‘how closely intellectual esteem is related to social and trade relations’.107 Some inspiration for this idea was drawn from a prior Canadian suggestion that a ‘World Conference of the Irish Race’ should be held in Montreal.108 A new Irish organisation that was founded in South Africa to support the Irish White Cross offered to host such an occasion.109 De Valera, however, preferred Paris as a choice of location. This was possibly because the American Relief Association had its headquarters in Paris. Certainly, the Dáil had some hopes that the separate ‘American Committee for Relief in Ireland’ initiative could help to encourage a process of American foreign direct investment in Ireland.110 It seems, however, that Paris was favoured simply because of its much closer proximity to Dublin. To boost support for the Irish White Cross, Laurence Ginnell was sent to Argentina, where historic Irish émigrés had traditionally been of British imperial sympathies. Perhaps for this very reason, Ginnell was allowed to meet the Argentinian foreign minister and to organise a Buenos Aires convention in support of both the Irish White Cross and the idea of sending South American representatives to the proposed Parisian conference.111 It was also announced that this was to become the occasion for launching a new global Irish organisation with a focus upon the world of international trade. The value that the Dáil placed in this initiative was reflected by the fact that its foreign affairs department would spend £6,000 in planning the event.112

Symbolically, the ‘World Conference of the Irish Race’ was planned to take place in January 1922 on the third anniversary of the formation of Dáil Éireann and the initial Irish republican declaration of independence. To a significant extent, however, this obscured the reality that the original Irish diplomatic mission to seek foreign powers’ formal recognition of an Irish republic had already reached an unsuccessful conclusion. The evident impossibility of convincing the republican countries of America and France to defy Britain by recognising the Irish government can explain why Irish political debate now became focused almost exclusively on attempting to convince British public opinion of the justice of Irish demands. The best illustration of this trend was Aodh de Blacam’s dedication of his book What Sinn Féin Stands for: The Irish Republican Movement, Its History, Aims and Ideals, Examined as to Their Significance to the World (Dublin, 1921) to all ‘men of goodwill’ throughout the British Empire.113 It was also reflected by de Valera’s suggestion to an Australian interviewer that while ‘Australia, Canada and New Zealand might, in a sense, put forward a plea that they enjoy something more than independence [by being partners in a British Empire] … we in Ireland, in claiming the republic, seek simple independence and nothing more.’114 Griffith had encouraged Irish merchants or journalists in Denmark, Italy and Argentina to affiliate themselves with the Irish department of foreign affairs, while de Valera persuaded a couple of individuals to launch diplomatic work in Spain. However, such candidates could only report on the tenor of journalism in their host countries.115 Egyptians who sought Irish contacts were rebuffed, while the Middle East, Africa and Asia were ignored entirely. In central Europe, a couple of journalists or academics offered to do propaganda work,116 while Gerald O’Kelly, an Irish-born Austrian count, could be said to have launched the Irish mission in Switzerland.117 St John Gaffney, a former American consul in Munich, had expressed support for an Irish republic, but he could not be recruited for diplomatic purposes because he was an American citizen.118 Finally, Patrick MacCartan, a former member of the IRB who visited the United States frequently, tested the possibility of receiving recognition from the USSR. After initial and seemingly positive contacts were made, the Russians decided that they valued the prospect of a British trade agreement more, and so they sent MacCartan away from Moscow without granting any recognition to the Irish republic.119

These diplomatic dead ends increased the relevance of British foreign office personnel in seeking to broker an Anglo-Irish understanding. Having first offered to do propaganda work for the Dáil, by February 1921 Erskine Childers had managed to persuade de Valera to employ him as a political advisor. For a time, this led John Chartres, a former colleague of Childers’ in the British labour ministry, to nominally assume the responsibility of attempting to set up an Irish diplomatic office in Berlin.120 Through Irish organisations in South Africa, British army personnel such as Maurice Moore and Tom Casement (a brother of Roger Casement’s) managed to persuade de Valera to enter into communications with Jan Smuts en route to the signing of a truce-like agreement in July 1921. Under its terms, restrictions on the bearing of firearms by Irishmen were applied and secret liaison officers were appointed between the British and Irish governments for both military and policing matters. The Irish liaison officers for the army were Eamon Duggan and Robert Barton, who were also the Dáil’s ministers for home affairs and agriculture respectively. The Irish liaison officers for the police were Emmet Dalton, a former British soldier, and Eoin O’Duffy, an increasingly outspoken figure regarding disturbances in Ulster, both of whom now became associates of Michael Collins.121 Rather than reflecting on these details, Irish public opinion was inclined to simply celebrate the cessation of British coercion in July 1921. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the compromises involved, the liaison situation appeared to most Irish republican volunteers to be a welcome ‘first sign of official British recognition for Oglaigh na hEireann’,122 which was the official title of the Irish republican volunteer movement that was often nicknamed the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which was the title preferred by the IRB. No political settlement had been reached, however, while the prospects for a formal institutionalisation of an independent Irish army and police force remained uncertain.

Britain had entered negotiations with de Valera on the basis of offering Ireland dominion status rather than complete independence. While the officer corps of Óglaigh na hÉireann pledged to abide by whatever the Dáil voted to accept, the effect that any Anglo-Irish agreement would have upon discipline among their own followers was far from certain, not least because the Sinn Féin organisation in the provinces acted under very different (and perhaps less disciplined) circumstances than in Dublin.123 De Valera’s initial correspondence with Lloyd George that summer was published almost immediately. Press reactions abroad were often very sceptical. The Toronto Star suggested that, within all the British dominions, ‘everybody knows that the status offered Ireland by Lloyd George falls a long way short of being dominion status … the half-dozen “reservations” made in the offer to Ireland make all the difference in the world’.124 The British approach to negotiating with the Dáil stemmed partly from its greater priority of settling Anglo-American relations. In the United States, the Friends of Irish Freedom had launched a congressional campaign that called upon the new Republican administration of President Warren Harding not to compromise with Britain, nor tolerate any reduction in American naval strength, at the forthcoming Washington Naval Disarmament Conference.125 On the British side, joining Balfour’s negotiating team was Maurice Hankey, the British cabinet secretary, director of intelligence and a key figure in setting the tone for British international relations. He privately feared that commercially motivated Anglo-American tensions could lead to an actual war.126 Just prior to Hankey’s leaving for Washington D.C., his intelligence agents in Dublin reported that any forthcoming Anglo-Irish agreement would be opposed by de Valera, in a party political sense, which was seen by Britain as a development that might minimise the dominance of the Sinn Féin Party hitherto within the Dáil Éireann assembly and allow for the re-emergence of old Irish Party networks.127 This strategy reflected Britain’s approach to negotiating with a six-man team of Irish plenipotentiaries that de Valera appointed a forthnight later. Having in no sense conceded defeat, London was determined to prioritise a demand that Dublin pay reparations for alleged damages caused to Irish unionists’ property during the recent independence struggle as a price for merely allowing the liaison arrangements to continue. In addition, London pressed home the Royal Navy’s alleged need of three western Irish ports, encompassing the northern and southern tips of the island, in order to sustain the defence of its ‘Western Approaches’, stretching from the northern and southern tips of the island of Britain out to several hundred miles beyond Ireland’s Atlantic coastline.128

Upon his release from prison in July 1921, Arthur Griffith was appointed as the Dáil’s foreign minister and was now chosen by de Valera to head the Irish team of plenipotentiaries. Dublin was determined that Ireland should have the right both to be neutral in international military conflicts and to have control of its own naval defence. London was prepared to concede that its need for western Irish ports should be made temporary, pending the formal assumption by Ireland of its own naval defence. So long as London’s right to these ports was conceded, however, Ireland’s capacity to capitalise upon the existence of an Atlantic economy could be neutralised. A practical consequence of this would soon be felt. Entrepreneurs in Ireland that had hitherto tendered their support for Sinn Féin’s trans-Atlantic ideas for the future of Irish commerce would soon withdraw that support and instead accommodate, or re-accommodate, themselves to Britain’s desire that Irish business would concentrate exclusively on imperial markets.129 On a diplomatic level, Britain had the means to potentially cement such an arrangement. Its offer to Ireland of dominion status equivalent to that of Canada would allow for an Irish admittance to the League of Nations on similar terms. This could potentially frame the future evolution of Irish economic, diplomatic and military affairs within a broader British imperial programme that was being championed not only by the Dominions Office but also by Sir Arthur Salter of the Royal Navy, who had managed to get himself appointed as the head of the economic and financial secretariat of the League of Nations.130

In negotiations, Griffith emphasised that Irish amenability to membership of the British Commonwealth would depend on a British recognition that Ireland could opt out of any future British war effort, and that ‘on no account could I recommend any association with the Crown or the Commonwealth if the unity of Ireland were denied in form or in fact’.131 The latter, essentially national, issue was one that Griffith believed should involve northern unionist representatives as much as the Dáil’s plenipotentiaries. H.E. Pollock, the chairman of the Belfast Harbour Board and London’s proposed finance minister for Northern Ireland, had argued previously that ‘northern Irishmen are just as patriotic as those in the south’ and ‘we will welcome a chance to join it in a self-governing Ireland’.132 Acting on the advice of the British Lord Chancellor, however, James Craig opted out of negotiating directly with the Dáil’s plenipotentiaries. Whilst championing fiscal autonomy for Ireland, Griffith emphasised that Britain’s demand for an Irish contribution to the British national debt was completely contrary to the fact that ‘none of the dominions has any share of Britain’s debt’.133 In this matter, the combined facts of the all-island nature of the economy of Ireland and Belfast’s status as an imperial city would prove problematic for Dublin. While Craig acknowledged privately that Ireland had been a victim of ‘excessive payment of contribution to imperial taxation in years gone by’,134 he would soon start demanding that Ireland make a massive contribution to the British national debt, in the process placing Dublin and Belfast at loggerheads, with London acting as an unwilling intermediary.135

Griffith maintained that because the English king held his position purely by a parliamentary title that could be revoked, it ‘follows that equality of status would make it possible for the Irish parliament to abolish the monarchy in Ireland’.136 Craig’s fears of Irish republican aspirations made him hostile to Irish claims that Article Twelve of a proposed treaty agreement, set up to deal with the northern border, should give the proposed Irish Free State within the British dominions a legal claim to a suzerainty over the whole of Ireland. Even more problematic was that Eoin O’Duffy, in his capacity as co-director of policing in Ulster, was acting as a fierce critic of the partiality of Craig’s prospective northern Irish administration.137 This fact would soon make Ulster unionists adamant that a condition of the establishment of an Irish Free State must be a legal declaration by Dublin that all republican political movements, including the secret IRB (of which O’Duffy, Collins and reputedly Griffith were also members), were illegal.138

The Irish negotiating team signed ‘articles of agreement for a treaty’ with London on 6 December 1921 on the understanding that the agreement would be binding only if it were subsequently approved by both Dáil Éireann and the Westminster parliament. A month later, the Dáil voted narrowly to accept the agreement, prompting the election of Griffith, rather than de Valera, as president. Michael Collins assumed the role as chairman of a temporary ‘Provisional Government’ to facilitate an administrative transfer of powers from London to an Irish Free State government. During the treaty debates and afterwards, Griffith and Collins deemed its principal selling points to be the agreement’s status as a guarantor that all British armed forces would legally have to be withdrawn from the proposed Irish Free State’s jurisdiction, and that the Dáil would have the capacity to exercise complete Irish fiscal autonomy and parliamentary sovereignty.139 However, the treaty debates were characterised by comparatively little reflections on either issues of sovereignty or international affairs, with most members of the Dáil evidently being concerned solely with how they would be perceived by their constituents. Partly for this reason, Erskine Childers, who subsequently became a spokesman for de Valera’s supporters who opposed the agreement, was of note for placing particular emphasis on Britain’s retention of three western Irish ports as a probable negation of Ireland’s right to exercise any independence in international relations.140 Griffith evidently came to believe that Ireland’s membership of the British Commonwealth could serve to guarantee its equal right to exercise an independent voice in international relations,141 although in doing so he would seem to have underestimated the extent to which that commonwealth invariably spoke with a united political voice. By contrast, Collins argued that while ‘the expression “common citizenship” in the treaty is not ideal’, ‘it does not attempt to confine Ireland’s mother [country] claims to the states of the British Commonwealth’.142 In making this argument, he was evidently thinking of the potential value of the planned ‘World Conference of the Irish Race’ in Paris, after which de Valera would return to the Irish parliament to highlight various other issues.

France welcomed the Anglo-Irish agreement. While Le Figaro inaccurately predicted that the Irish would soon outdo the French republic in abolishing all aristocratic titles,143 the French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré, on accepting a suggestion from Michael MacWhite, invited the Dáil’s delegation to the World Conference of the Irish Race to the French Foreign Office at the Quay D’Orsay. On this occasion, Poincaré recalled ‘the secular friendship that existed between Ireland and France in the past’ and expressed his gladness that now that Ireland had reached an agreement with Britain he could express his sympathy for the Irish government ‘without offending the susceptibilities of his English allies’.144 At the time of the Parisian conference, an American-born Óglaigh na hÉireann army officer J.J. ‘Ginger’ O’Connell, who was deemed by the French as ‘the only competent army expert in Ireland’, visited the French War Ministry in the hope of initiating an agreement whereby an Irish army would purchase most its armaments from Parisian suppliers.145 British forces, however, had not yet even begun to withdraw from the country, making this a premature action. As a result, George Gavan Duffy, the Dáil’s new minister for foreign affairs, chastised both O’Connell and MacWhite.146 This reflected a definite reality about the Anglo-Irish agreement for a treaty. Although the Dáil had ratified it in January 1922, Westminster would not even vote on it until December 1922, placing an unknown moratorium upon its eventual implementation.

Katherine Hughes and Thomas Hughes Kelly had been in Paris since the autumn of 1921 laying the basis for the weeklong conference and the associated art, drama and music festivals. This was done with support from Robert Brennan, an under-secretary of the department of foreign affairs, and Art O’Brien, the Dáil’s London consul who also liaised with the Irish in the British dominions. A sad reality for the Parisian conference, however, was that although delegates were originally expected from every American state, aside from Hughes and Kelly, the only North American attendee would be de Valera’s Catholic business friend John Castellini, an Italian American. Aside from the location (Paris), this happened because American political opinion was focused almost entirely upon the Washington Naval Conference. The lack of American attendance gave the conference a very imbalanced profile, with just six representatives from the Americas, including three from South America, and an extraordinarily high number of representatives from Britain, namely, thirty members of the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain, which almost doubled the representation from Ireland itself.147 Furthermore, tensions developed quickly at the conference because the London representative Art O’Brien determined that the British delegates should vote en bloc on all proposals with a view to making the proposed global Irish organisation, to be established in the wake of the conference, both independent of the Dáil’s department of foreign affairs as well as politically opposed to the whole treaty agreement. This evoked protests from the Australian, South African, Argentinian and New Zealand representatives (totalling five representatives), who were in favour of Ireland being a member of the British Commonwealth and reported that they were unwilling to cooperate with a movement such as O’Brien suggested.148 A compromise agreement was soon arranged, but not without controversy.

Eoin MacNeill, who was intended to be minister of education in Dublin and acted as a representative of the Dáil cabinet in Paris, found some reasonable fault with the whole planning of the conference: P.J. Little, a member of the governing body of UCD who de Valera had previously sent to South Africa, appointed many proxy delegates. More controversially, MacNeill judged that Robert Brennan, on resigning as under-secretary of the department of foreign affairs, was attempting to use the conference not for the purpose for which the department of foreign affairs had funded the conference – the creation of a global Irish organisation – but instead to create a new Irish party political movement specifically in Britain to campaign against the treaty agreement.149 Reflecting this, de Valera and Childers were already launching a company in Manchester called Equity Press to publish Poblacht na hÉireann newspapers. This included a Glasgow paper called Éire: the Irish Nation (edited by P.J. Little) with a stated editorial policy of calling on the Irish in Britain to actively campaign in British party politics for a revision of the treaty agreement.150 Quite illogically, de Valera had even suggested to Brennan that he should concentrate on creating ‘an entente between ourselves, the Scotch, Welsh and the overseas dominions as if they were nations independent of England’.151 The incongruity of this whole situation was judged by MacNeill to be reflected most by the choice of a mere seven-man executive for the global Irish organisation, to be known as ‘Fine Gaedhael’, in which he was to be the only representative of the Dáil cabinet. This idea originated with Harry Boland who, as the Dáil’s former representative in the United States, evidently desired to give maximum pre-eminence to American businessmen John Castellini and Thomas Hughes Kelly by making them its treasurers. The latter assured MacNeill that he would ensure that Fine Gaedhael served its intended purposes, including Kelly’s own personal plan to fund various American university scholarships in Irish studies. This was an educational initiative that matched the sensibilities of Katherine Hughes, who, like MacWhite, considered the Parisian conference a success, particularly in appealing to French opinion.152 MacNeill, however, considered that the four other proposed members of the executive, namely de Valera, Brennan, O’Brien and Scotsman Henry Hutchinson, had no purpose other than to launch a new political movement within Britain in opposition to the Irish government. Therefore, he reported to Gavan Duffy that ‘the organisation established in Paris is not one in which confidence can be placed’.153 On the return of all the Irish delegates to Dublin, however, de Valera would re-enter the Dáil to place his case to the contrary.

The Dáil debates from February to June 1922 were often acrimonious and usually revolved around a single point: obstructionist queries from de Valera’s supporters whether or not the Dáil was functioning as a sovereign assembly and repeated efforts by the Dáil cabinet or its supporters to explain how the transfer of powers was only beginning. Perhaps the best illustration of this was Griffith’s statement that the Dáil was indeed a sovereign assembly but that Ireland’s annual policing budget would cost £4 million, and until Westminster gave its formal consent to the treaty agreement (the British cabinet had arranged that this was not due to take place until one year after the agreement was signed) the Dáil’s civil service could not yet count on the support of the country’s financial institutions to fund such schemes.154 Practically speaking, this meant that law and order was temporarily suspended, making London’s exercise of its year-long moratorium the root of most Irish political difficulties throughout 1922. The Fine Gaedhael initiative, which all parties declared their wish to see succeed, was one matter that the Dáil felt that it could sort out by itself. One proposal made at Paris was implemented almost immediately. This was planning the holding of an Irish Olympic Games, known as the Tailteann Games, as an international tourist attraction in Dublin.155 The first of such events would be held under state patronage in 1924 and be the largest sport event held in the world that year.156 By contrast, state patronage was delayed for Fine Gaedhael itself. This was intended to be a permanent body to keep the Irish government in perpetual touch with an Irish diaspora which would help to promote Irish trade worldwide. De Valera requested that the cabinet provide £5,000 support immediately and typified Gavan Duffy and Griffith’s hesitancy in offering funding to Fine Gaedhael, in deference to MacNeill’s judgment, as ill-befitting their records in attempting to promote Ireland in international relations. In doing so, de Valera even warned: ‘When the Minister of Foreign Affairs [Duffy] may find that he is not able to function and when there is a grip on him under the new Free State Constitution, you will be very glad to have some unofficial non-government machine by which Ireland’s interests in foreign countries can be safeguarded.’157

In a manner akin to the previous initiative of the Irish White Cross, an organisation such as Fine Gaedhael needed to be a non-governmental organisation that was legally registered in each of its host countries without actually being state managed. Therefore, there was some logic in de Valera’s recommendation that ‘if it is valuable at all, it will be valuable because of its work as an autonomous self-supporting organisation … the Government … ought to retire from the business’.158 A Dáil committee headed by Patrick MacCartan practically dismissed MacNeill’s objections. Although Michael Collins, as Minister of Finance, maintained that he had agreed with Boland that Fine Gaedhael could receive some form of government loan, Boland himself declared that Fine Gaedhael could ‘finance itself’ without the Dáil’s support. Gavan Duffy stated on 8 June that the issue was being suspended for the time being, as the next international conference under Fine Gaedhael’s management was not due to take place until 1925,159 but neither Fine Gaedhael nor a World Conference of the Irish Race would meet again. Its records indicate that Brennan wound up the association in September 1924 upon using its funds precisely as MacNeill had predicted: to form a new party political newspaper for de Valera.160 This would seem to indicate that, contrary to Brennan’s recollections,161 a scramble for party-political capital rather than diplomatic savvy had won the day.

In the wake of the Parisian conference, Marc Sangnier had made a very sympathetic address to de Valera, in which he described him as a ‘world-famed champion of liberty’ and argued that ‘the cause of Ireland was a cause that rightly belongs to the world’.162 While the French national press had paid attention to Griffith, the French consul in Dublin privately considered de Valera to be ‘the only real statesman that Ireland possesses’.163 However, the outbreak of hostilities in June 1922 practically silenced for good the sympathy of international observers like Sangnier and Thomas Hughes Kelly, and also augmented the belief in Ireland that Britain was attempting to smother Irish national aspirations as much as possible. This did not work to de Valera’s advantage. Instead, it simply lessened the opportunities available to present a persuasive case regarding the Irish situation. Responding to Sangnier in January 1922, de Valera had argued that Irishmen agreed that

Their fight was not for Ireland alone … Their fight was for the reign of true democracy and true internationalism … The widespread influence of the Irish race would be instrumental in saving for humanity the democratic principle of which President Wilson had been the chief exponent during the war and which had been lost at the [Versailles] peace. The Irish people were determined to save those principles for the world … France, with America, was regarded [in Ireland] as the leading nation in modern democratic ideals.164

British embargos on all desired Irish reforms ensured that it would take several years before the Irish Free State could start to become operational. This quickly led international observers to jump to the conclusion that ‘after enjoying the doubtful dignity of being a world question the Irish problem is once more domestic’.165 Ignoring Griffith’s protests that London was breaking the spirit of the treaty agreement,166 in early June 1922 the British government resolved to keep complete control of all Irish finances until such time as it was satisfied that Irish public opinion was not breaking the spirit of the treaty agreement and, in particular, obnoxious parties were arrested.167 A mysterious killing in London and the kidnapping of the would-be Irish army leader J.J. O’Connell prompted the Dáil to act, but an impression soon existed, both nationally and internationally, that the proposed Free State administration was in a helpless state after the sudden deaths of Griffith, Collins and Boland and the nominal assumption of the reigns of central government by W.T. Cosgrave, a former minister for local government. Noting this trend, an American commentator pointed to the presence of George Gavan Duffy as Irish foreign affairs minister as an indication that ‘the complete resources of Sinn Féin statesmanship have certainly not been exhausted’.168 Duffy resigned suddenly, however, in September 1922 upon the creation of a new ‘Department of External Affairs’ under Desmond FitzGerald and Joseph Walshe that Whitehall expected to abandon any intention of upholding a separate Irish foreign policy.169 It had been expected that peace would be restored within a fortnight of the outbreak of hostilities in late June 1922, but this would not occur until April 1923. This had a divisive and deeply traumatic effect on the Irish polity. Meanwhile, several initiatives came to a sudden halt.

Government ministers worldwide flocked to make contributions to the US journal Foreign Affairs, which was founded in 1922. However, despite the centrality of American opinion hitherto to the Irish struggle for independence, no Irish government minister would. Failing to find an audience, Griffith’s would-be diplomatic representative in America, Joseph Connolly (a Belfast man and future Irish senator), resolved simply to return home to Ireland. By contrast, the un-elected southern unionist leader Lord Midleton, being a known colleague of Arthur Balfour and the British Foreign Office, was actually able to acquire a hearing at the White House. He used this opportunity to express contemptuous attitudes about all Irish nationalists.170 Thereafter, Stephen Gwynn of the British Foreign Office set a new tone for Irish political debate by writing for Foreign Affairs a negative portrayal of the Irish Free State compared to Northern Ireland, typifying Irish hesitancy in outlawing republican or Sinn Féin sensibilities, as well as a failure to follow in the footsteps of the late John Redmond (who died in March 1918), as being the cause of all Irish political difficulties.171 As a result, the idea that there had been a ‘victory of Sinn Féin’ based on a new and more democratic international order that was inspired by American republican values would soon be silenced in Irish political debate.172

In the past, many Irish commentators had been fond of pointing to the historic record of Irish émigrés attaining government office in Europe, or even in the Americas, as evidence of the ‘rank political heresy’ of British nationalists, who held as a cardinal belief that Irishmen were unworthy, or even incapable, of ‘ruling and governing at home’. Be that as it may, longstanding Irish claims to be one of the oldest and thereby one of the most suppressed nationalities in Europe had essentially rested on purely cultural premises. Traditionally, being aware of the country’s complete lack of financial clout, many were actually loath to dwell on economic factors, preferring instead to assert that Irishmen ‘could fight for an abstract notion – for love, for glory, for liberty; but they never knew how to take up arms for a countinghouse or a till’.173 The Irish revolution, which was a response to America’s entry into the First World War as much as it was a reaction to the 1916 Rising and Britain’s frustration of Irish desires for self-government, essentially changed this situation. The unilateral setting up of an Irish parliament and civil service was directly linked with a new focus upon seeking diplomatic recognition worldwide and entering the world of international trade. This was the Sinn Féin policy of Arthur Griffith, first spelt out in 1905. Crucially, however, considerable international attention did not translate into the creation of any Irish diplomatic alliances in defiance of Britain. Ireland’s trading profile also revealed very limited international interest in the country. Although the prospect of growing US trade existed, this was far from a central concern of the Americans and did not dictate their diplomatic stance. Meanwhile, the absence of a viable market for Irish goods in France cemented the French inclination to consider Ireland to be, at best, only a small potential factor in European geopolitics. As a result, there was no potential advantage to such foreign powers in taking a direct interest in the Irish case.

There had also been a local dimension to the Irish revolution. Massive recruitment of unarmed men to the volunteer movement in defiance of the British administration in Ireland shaped national perceptions of the revolution as well as levels of disappointment with its outcome. Meanwhile, ever since the 1880s, the sense of the democratic legitimacy of the Irish desire for self-government had actually rested upon the results of UK general elections, including Sinn Féin’s triumphant election campaigns of 1918 and 1921. While some commentators have suggested that de Valera was simply being duplicitious, his ill-advised attempts during 1922 to capitalise upon an extant Irish capacity to work within a UK party-political framework was essentially a reflection of this electoral legacy. Privately, he would admit in later years that he knew in advance how the treaty agreement was going to be used unjustly by Britain as a weapon against Griffith and Collins rather than as an instrument to fulfil either their or the Irish parliament’s declared political goals.174 As Ireland’s attempt to win recognition for an Irish republic had failed to win any international allies, the only remaining alternatives were to act as a ‘restless dominion’ within the British Commonwealth or else to aspire to achieve an entirely non-aligned position in international relations.175 Such considerations would colour the history of the new Irish state up until at least the Second World War as much as a determination to sustain the ideals of Ireland’s initial independence movement.

Endnotes

1 Michael Doorley, Irish-American diaspora nationalism: the Friends of Irish Freedom, 1916–1935 (Dublin, 2005).

2 ‘The Pope, the President and the Peace’, Nationality, 22 Dec. 1917.

3 Nationality, 21 Dec. 1918 (editorial).

4 ‘President Wilson and the Pope’, Irish Independent, 14 January 1919.

5 Dáil Éireann, Miontuaric an chead Dala 1919–1921 (Dublin, 1994).

6 Pierre-Yves Beaurepatre, ‘The universal republic of the freemasons and the culture of mobility in the enlightenment’, French historical studies, vol. 29 no. 3 (summer 2006), 407–31 Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ would later be made the anthem of the European Union.

7 Nationality, 17 Mar., 9 Jun. 1917.

8 Nationality, 17 Mar., 31 Mar., 16 Jun. (quote), 11 Aug. 1917.

9 Nationality, 15 Feb. 1918 (quote).

10 Nationality, 26 Oct., 28 Dec. 1918.

11 Nationality, 9 Nov. 1918.

12 Nationality, 4 Aug. 1917.

13 Nationality, 8 Sep. 1917, 10 Nov. 1917.

14 John J. Horgan, ‘Ireland and world contact’, Studies, vol. 8 no. 29 (Mar. 1919), 35–45.

15 Nationality, 17 Mar., 7 Apr., 14 Apr. 1917.

16 ‘Ireland and the seas’, Nationality, 3 Nov. 1917.

17 Nationality, 23 Jun. 1917, 8 Sep. 1917, 3 Nov. 1917, 17 Nov. 1917, 8 Dec. 1917, 28 Jan. 1918.

18 Nationality, 5 Oct. 1918 (quote), 20 Oct. 1917.

19 Nationality, 10 Aug. 1918, 23 Jun. 1917.

20 Nationality, 17 Mar., 7 Mar., 23 Jun. 1917.

21 Steven Watts, The people’s tycoon: Henry Ford and the American century (New York, 2005), 230–40. ‘The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’ was an outgrowth of the Woman’s Peace Party, founded by Rosika Schwimmer. Ford funded and joined its Peace Ship to Europe in December 1915.

22 Pádraig Ó Siadhail, Katherine Hughes (Ontario, 2014).

23 Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith (Dublin, 2015), 155–6, 180, 196, 212, 242.

24 Michael Doorley, Irish-American diaspora nationalism: the Friends of Irish Freedom, 1916–1935 (Dublin, 2005).

25 Elizabeth McKillen, ‘Ethnicity, class and Wilsonian internationalism reconsidered: the Mexican-American and Irish-American left and US foreign relations 1914–1922’, Diplomatic history, vol. 25 (fall 2001), 553–87.

26 Earl of Midleton, Ireland: dupe or heroine (London, 1932), 142–7 (quote p. 147).

27 Nationality, 15 Dec. 1917.

28 Walter Lippmann, ‘The intimate papers of Colonel House’, Foreign affairs, vol. 4 (1926), 383–93.

29 Documents on Irish foreign policy, vol. 1 (Dublin, 1998), no. 2.

30 James Quinn, ‘James Bryce (1838–1922)’, Dictionary of Irish biography (Cambridge, 2009).

31 Catherine B. Shannon, Arthur J. Balfour and Ireland 1874–1922 (Washington D.C., 1988); Earl of Midleton, Ireland: dupe or heroine (London, 1932).

32 Nationality, 23 Jun., 30 Jun, 18 Aug., 6 Oct. 1917; Gerard Keown, First of the small nations: the beginnings of Irish foreign policy in the interwar years 1919–1932 (Oxford, 2015), 30.

33 Nationality, 12 Oct. 1918 (editorial).

34 Dáil Éireann, Miontuaric an chead Dala 1919–1921 (Dublin, 1994), minutes for 11 Apr 1919; Documents on Irish foreign policy, vol. 1 (Dublin, 1998), no. 4.

35 Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith (Dublin, 2015), 208.

36 ‘England, Ireland and America’, Nationality, 16 Aug. 1919.

37 ‘America, Ireland and the general election’, Nationality, 31 Aug. 1918.

38 Gerard Keown, First of the small nations: the beginnings of Irish foreign policy in the interwar years 1919–1932 (Oxford, 2015), 42.

39 Michael Doorley, Irish-American diaspora nationalism, 93, 96–100, 105, 112–13.

40 G.C. Herring, From colony to superpower: US foreign relations since 1776 (Oxford, 2008), 436.

41 Gerard Keown, First of the small nations, 30, 39–41, 43.

42 Earl of Midleton, Ireland: dupe or heroine (London, 1932), chapter 13.

43 ‘The coming of America’, Nationality, 2 Aug. 1919; ‘England, Ireland and America’, Nationality, 16 Aug. 1919; ‘The perils of Europe’, Nationality, 16 Aug. 1919.

44 J.B. Duff, ‘The Versailles Treaty and the Irish Americans’, Journal of American history, vol. 55 (Dec. 1968), 582–98.

45 ‘Sinn Féin’, Nationality, 12 Jul. 1919; ‘Ireland and Sweden’, Nationality, 9 Aug. 1919; ‘Free Trade’, Nationality, 16 Aug. 1919; ‘The perils of Europe’, Nationality, 16 Aug. 1919; ‘Ireland and Australia’, Nationality, 23 Aug. 1919; ‘National Bank’, Nationality, 16 March 1918; Nationality, 23 Aug. 1919, p. 2.

46 ‘Our foreign trade’, Nationality, 23 Aug. 1919; Young Ireland, 10 Jan., 17 Jan., 11 Dec. 1920; Young Ireland, 23 May, 25 Jun., 18 Jul., 27 Aug. 1921.

47 Eoin McLaughlin and Nathan Foley Fisher, ‘State dissolution, sovereign debt and default: lessons from the UK and Ireland 1920–1938’, European historical economics working paper no. 61 (August 2014), 20–4.

48 Dáil Éireann, miontuaric an Chead Dala, 1919–1921 (Dublin, 1994), 151–3, 167–86; Lionel Smith-Gordon, The place of banking in the national programme (Dublin, 1921).

49 Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith (Dublin, 2015), chapters 8–9; Bureau of Military History WS1170.

50 Thomas J. Morrissey, Laurence O’Neill (Dublin, 2016), 190–1.

51 Andy Bielenberg, ‘Fatalities in the Irish revolution’, in J. Crowley, D. O’Driscoll, M. Murphy (eds), Atlas of the Irish revolution (Cork, 2017), 752–61.

52 Dáil Éireann, miontuaric an Chead Dala, 1919–1921 (Dublin, 1994), minutes for Aug. 1919.

53 Young Ireland, 24 Jan. 1920; 23 May, 18 Jul. 1921.

54 Bernadette Whelan, US foreign policy and Ireland (Dublin, 2006), 74–80, 378, 516.

55 Friends of Irish Freedom Newsletter, 6 Feb. 1920.

56 For press coverage of de Valera’s American lecture tours, see Dave Hannigan, De Valera in America (New York, 2010).

57 Nationality, 17 Apr., 8 Jun., 15 Jun. 1918 (quote from New York Times).

58 Nationality, 7 Sep. 1918 (quoting O’Connor in London on his return from America) In a would-be direct address to Woodrow Wilson during April 1918, de Valera had argued that ‘Ireland is the acid test of England’s sincerity.’ Nationality, 21 Sep. 1918.

59 Gerard Keown, First of the small nations, 32–3; Documents on Irish foreign policy, vol. 1 (Dublin, 1998), nos 11, 59 and 67.

60 Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, vol. 1 (Dublin, 1998), no. 10 (quote p. 14).

61 NLI, Art Ó Briain papers, Ms8426/61, de Valera to Ó Briain, 22 Mar. 1919.

62 Robert McLaughlin, Irish Canadian conflict and the struggle for Irish independence (Toronto, 2011), 124. While Hughes was essentially a literary figure, Crawford had a deep interest in economics and was a former Orangeman who would establish a separate ‘Protestant Friends of Irish Freedom’ organisation in New York City.

63 Crawford’s correspondence with Cohalan on this theme can be found within the Daniel Cohalan papers in the library of the American Irish Historical Society in New York City. I am grateful to Michael Doorley for this information. See also Robert McLaughlin, Irish Canadian conflict, 137–9.

64 Greg Donaghy, Michael K. Carroll (eds), In the national interest: Canadian foreign policy, the department of foreign affairs and international trade 1909–2009 (Calgary, 2011), chapter 1.

65 Michael Doorley, Irish-American diaspora nationalism, 128–31 (quotes p. 129).

66 Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith (Dublin, 2015), 227, 228 (quote).

67 Gerard Keown, First of the small nations, 57–8. De Valera wrote to the Dáil cabinet in April 1920 that he believed that not alienating the church was the most essential issue. UCD, de Valera papers, P150/1132, confidential memo, 15 Apr. 1920.

68 UCD, de Valera papers, P150/1154, letter of Devoy 17 Aug. 1920 with an attached American Clan na Gael statement to the IRB Supreme Council in Dublin. Papers of the IRB were acquired by de Valera after Boland’s death in 1922.

69 Michael Doorley, Irish-American diaspora nationalism, 140.

70 UCD, de Valera papers, P150/1125, Boland to Collins 4 Nov. 1920.

71 J. Crowley, D. O’Driscoll, M. Murphy (eds), Atlas of the Irish revolution (Cork, 2017), 515–19.

72 Young Ireland, 16 Apr. 1921. D.W. Griffith, the film director of Birth of a Nation (1915), was one of its earliest subscribers.

73 Young Ireland, 22 Jan. 1921.

74 Young Ireland, 12 Feb. 1921.

75 Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith, 230, 236–8.

76 The papers of the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain can be found within the Art Ó Briain papers in the National Library of Ireland.

77 Patrick O’Farrell, The Irish in Australia (Kensington, 1987), 280; Robert McLaughlin, Irish Canadian conflict, 142.

78 Robert McLaughlin, Irish Canadian conflict, 132–3, 140–3.

79 Patrick O’Farrell, The Irish in Australia (Kensington, 1987), 269–74, 284.

80 Patrick O’Farrell, Irish in Australia, 267; Robert McLaughlin, Irish Canadian conflict, 21–2, 120, 122.

81 Young Ireland, 28 May 1921; Patrick O’Farrell, Irish in Australia, 284.

82 These have been reproduced in Documents on Irish foreign policy, vol. 1 (Dublin, 1998).

83 Nationality, 17 and 31 May 1919. This reality would later be reflected in Mark Tierney (ed.), ‘Calendar of Irlande, vol. 1, 2 and 3, in the Collection Europe, 1918–29 in the Archives Diplomatiques, Paris’, Collectanea Hibernica, 21–2 (1979–80), 205–37.

84 Dáil Éireann, Miontuaric an chead Dala 1919–1921 (Dublin, 1994), minutes for 27 Oct. 1919.

85 Dáil Éireann, Miontuaric an chead Dala 1919–1921 (Dublin, 1994), minutes for 11 Apr. 1919.

86 Mark Tierney (ed.), ‘Calendar of Irlande, vol. 1, 2 and 3, in the Collection Europe, 1918–1929 in the Archives Diplomatiques, Paris’, Collectanea Hibernica, 21–2 (1979–80), 205–37; Gerard Keown, First of the small nations, 172, 177.

87 Gearoid Barry, The disarmament of hatred: Marc Sangnier, French Catholicism and the legacy of the First World War 1914–1945 (London, 2012).

88 Pierre Ranger, ‘The world in Paris and Ireland too: the French diplomacy of Sinn Féin 1919–1921’, Études Irlandaises, vol. 36 no. 2 (2011), 7, 9, 15.

89 ‘France and Ireland’, Young Ireland, 27 Mar. 1920, 30 Apr. 1921, 4 Jun. 1921.

90 Reports from over 100 such publications, published in English translation by Michael MacWhite, were reproduced in the series ‘France and Ireland’, which ran in Young Ireland from Jan. 1920 until Feb. 1922.

91 Documents on Irish foreign policy, vol. 1 (Dublin, 1998), no. 37 (quote pp. 70–1).

92 ‘France and Ireland’, Young Ireland, 27 Mar., 17 Jul., 31 Jul., 4 Sep., 11 Sep. 1920.

93 Gerard Keown, First of the small nations (quote p. 52), 54–5.

94 ‘France and Ireland’, Young Ireland, 10 Apr. 1920.

95 A very large collection of international press reportage on the MacSwiney hunger strike can be found in the Art Ó Briain papers in the National Library of Ireland. De Valera judged in late August 1920 that the ‘worldwide publicity’ generated by this protest action of Irish political prisoners in Britain going on hunger strike ‘will be the nearest we can go to securing [international] intervention’ in settling the Anglo-Irish dispute. Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith, quote p.228.

96 ‘France and Ireland’, Young Ireland, 26 Mar. 1921.

97 Young Ireland, 2 Jul. 1921 (interview with de Valera, reproduced from the Australian press).

98 J. Crowley, D. O’Driscoll, M. Murphy (eds), Atlas of the Irish revolution (Cork, 2017), 390.

99 Colonel John Duggan, A history of the Irish army (Dublin, 1991), 28, 35–6, 50–1, 55–6, 60–2. British forces had shot dead previous mayors of Limerick and Cork cities on the charge of sympathising with rebels.

100 Maurice Walsh, The news from Ireland: foreign correspondents and the Irish revolution (London, 2008).

101 NLI, Art Ó Briain papers, Ms8427/26; Ms8430/12, Michael Collins to Ó Briain, 17 Jan. 1921, forwarding a communication from de Valera.

102 This was Maurice Bourgeois, who was not personally unsympathetic to Irish aims. Art O’Brien (Art Ó Briain) kept watch on him whenever he was in London and reported to Collins about him in intelligence communiqués. These telegraphed memos between O’Brien and Collins can be found in the Art Ó Briain papers in the National Library of Ireland.

103 ‘France and Ireland’, Young Ireland, 10 Mar. 1920, 26 Mar., 30 Apr., 14 May 1921.

104 ‘France and Ireland’, Young Ireland, 5 Feb. 1921.

105 Michael Kennedy, ‘Michael MacWhite (1883–1958)’, Dictionary of Irish biography (Cambridge, 2009).

106 Gerard Keown, First of the small nations, 177.

107 ‘France and Ireland’, Young Ireland, 4 February 1922.

108 NLI, Art Ó Briain papers, Ms8460/46.

109 Young Ireland, 16 Apr. 1921; NLI, Art Ó Briain papers, Ms8460/44, Ms8425/23; Donal McCracken (ed.), Ireland and South Africa in modern times (Durban, 1996), 49, 55–7.

110 Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith, 228, 236. Griffith suggested that this could be done by American towns adopting devastated Irish towns as twin cities, in a manner comparable to what was done in post-war Britain and France. Young Ireland, 2 Oct. 1920, p. 1.

111 Young Ireland, 8 Oct., 15 Oct. 1921. The first demonstration for Irish independence in Argentina was held on 20 Jun. 1920, although it took some time for this news to reach Dublin. Young Ireland, 4 Sep. 1920.

112 George Gavan Duffy revealed this in the Dáil debates of 8 June 1922, which can be found at https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/find/.

113 Young Ireland, 8 Oct. 1921 (book reviews).

114 Young Ireland, 2 Jul. 1921.

115 Some of the correspondence of Griffith’s appointees to Denmark (Sean O’Duinn and Gearoid O’Lochlain) and Italy (Donal McHales), as well as de Valera’s appointees to Spain (Máire Ní Bhriáin) and Germany (Nancy Wyse Power), can be found in the Art Ó Briain papers in the National Library of Ireland.

116 This included E.M. Aldborough, an Irish-born journalist in Austria, and Chatterton Hill, an academic in Geneva with close links to Germany. Some of their correspondence can be found in the Art Ó Briain papers in the National Library of Ireland.

117 Michael Kennedy, ‘Gerald Edward O’Kelly (1890–1968)’, Dictionary of Irish biography (Cambridge, 2009). O’Kelly would remain in Irish diplomatic circles for many years.

118 Nationality, 23 Mar. 1918.

119 Gerard Keown, First of the small nations, 59–64.

120 B.P. Murphy, John Chartres (Dublin, 1995).

121 Colonel John Duggan, A history of the Irish army (Dublin, 1991), 65–7; Sean Boyne, Emmet Dalton (Dublin, 2015). By the autumn of 1921, O’Duffy’s status as the liaison officer for policing matters in Ulster was being mentioned frequently in the press because of his outspokenness. Young Ireland, 1 Oct. 1921.

122 John Duggan, A history of the Irish army, 70.

123 John Duggan, A history of the Irish army, 132, 329–30, ft.29.

124 Young Ireland, 1 Oct. 1921 (republished extract from the Toronto Star).

125 Michael Doorley, Irish-American diaspora nationalism, 140, 163.

126 Churchill Archives, Churchill papers, CHAR25/2, Hankey to Churchill, 4 July 1921.

127 Westminster Parliamentary Archives, Lloyd George papers, F25/1/19, Hankey to Lloyd George, 27 Sep. 1921. This item is numbered F25/1/19 but is filed at F25/2/19. The British cabinet’s reliance on old Irish Party networks is evidenced in John Turner, Lloyd George’s secretariat (Cambridge, 1980).

128 Westminster Parliamentary Archives, Lloyd George papers, F25/2/32, Tom Jones to Prime Minister, 14 Oct. 1921; NLI, Art Ó Briain papers, Ms8425/8 (copies of government reports on defence meetings).

129 A good illustration of this was John Horgan’s move at this time from being a sympathetic contributor to Studies to being the Irish correspondent for the Round Table, Chatham House’s journal of commonwealth affairs. Horgan also attempted to act as a champion of the legacy of the late John Redmond. J.J. Horgan, Parnell to Pearse (1949, 2nd ed., Dublin, 2009), biographical introduction.

130 Denis Rickett, M.C. Curthoys, ‘Baron Arthur Salter (1881–1975)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (online edition).

131 Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith, 261–4 (quote p. 264).

132 Young Ireland, 19 February 1921 (letter of Pollock on p. 1).

133 Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith, 263.

134 Churchill Archives, CHAR22/11/2, Craig to Churchill, 11 Jan. 1922.

135 Documents on Irish foreign policy, vol. 2 (Dublin, 2002), nos 358–68.

136 Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith, 261–2.

137 As early as the autumn of 1921, O’Duffy was making protest speeches in Armagh that his official reports, made in his capacity as liaison officer, to British authorities on various abuses of police authority in Ulster were being completely ignored, and so ‘I say that it is time we should take steps to protect ourselves.’ Young Ireland, 5 Nov. 1921, p. 1. He continued in this tone during the spring of 1922. Although O’Duffy notoriously lacked political acumen, Northern unionists had hitherto been complicit in deliberate British efforts to destabilise the whole of Ireland, both economically and politically, by means of provoking disturbances in Ulster. Churchill Archives, Lord Hankey papers, HNKY1/5, diary entry for 7 Sep. 1920; Westminster Parliamentary Archives, Lloyd George papers, F25/1/42, Tom Jones to Lloyd George, 15 Jun. 1921 (report of Irish Situation Committee).

138 Churchill Archives, CHAR22/13/40–1, 58–60.

139 Arthur Griffith, Arguments for the treaty (Dublin, 1922); Michael Collins, Arguments for the treaty (Dublin, 1922).

140 Dáil Éireann, Debate on the treaty between Great Britain and Ireland (Dublin, 1922); Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith, 270–91.

141 Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith, 327–8.

142 Michael Collins, The path to freedom (Dublin, 1922), 43.

143 ‘France and Ireland’, Young Ireland, 24 Dec. 1921. The Office of Chief Herald remained in existence in Ireland.

144 Statement made by Poincaré on the conclusion of the World Conference of the Irish Race (30 Jan. 1922), reproduced in Young Ireland, 11 Feb. 1922.

145 Mark Tierney, ‘Calendar of Irlande, vols 9, 10 and 11’, Collectanea Hibernica, no. 25 (1983), 209–12 (quote p. 211).

146 Gerard Keown, ‘The Irish race conference 1922 reconsidered’, Irish historical studies, vol. 32 no. 127 (May 2001), 372–3.

147 Lists of delegates can be found in NLI, Art Ó Briain papers, Ms8431/2. Correspondence from several delegates to O’Brien can be found in the Ó Briain papers.

148 Copies of this report can be found in NLI, Art Ó Briain papers, Ms8456/5–6.

149 Copies of MacNeill’s report and that of other delegates at the conference can be found in NLI, Art Ó Briain papers, Ms8456/5–6.

150 NLI, Art Ó Briain papers, Ms8432/45, 8460/55, 8426/25, 8432/33, 8445/20, 8432/16. G.N. Plunkett, a one-time foreign affairs minister of the Dáil, was also a champion of this idea of focusing entirely on party politics in Britain. NLI, Art Ó Briain papers, Ms8423/13, Plunkett to O’Brien, 27 Oct.1922.

151 Gerard Keown, The first of the small nations, quote p. 83.

152 Young Ireland, 4 Feb. 1922. Excepting Marc Sangnier, who held his own reception for all Irish attendees (Irish Examiner, 30 Jan. 1922), no French politician appears to have taken an interest in the conference, although the French police sent some intelligence reporters. Mark Tierney, ‘Calendar of Irlande’.

153 Copies of MacNeill’s report and that of other delegates at the conference can be found in NLI, Art Ó Briain papers, Ms8456/5–6.

154 Speech of Griffith in the Dáil debates of 28 Feb. 1922, which can be found at https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/find/.

155 Speech of J.J. Walsh in the Dáil debates of 28 Feb. 1922, which can be found at https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/find/.

156 Paul Rouse, ‘When Ireland’s Tailteann Games eclipsed the Olympics’, Irish Examiner, 18 Nov. 2016.

157 Speech of de Valera in the Dáil debates on Fine Gaedhael, 2 Mar. 1922, which can be found at https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/find/.

158 Speech of de Valera at the Dáil debates on Fine Gaedhael, 8 Jun. 1922, which can be found at https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/find/. Mary MacSwiney spoke to the same effect.

159 Speeches of MacCartan, Collins, Boland and Gavan Duffy in the Dáil debates on Fine Gaedhael, 8 Jun.1922, which can be found at https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/find/.

160 NLI, Art Ó Briain papers, Mss8461/17, 8456/4, 8429/29, 8421/7, 8426/22. Fine Gaedhael’s official motto was an expression of Patrick Pearse’s, that ‘beyond all telling is the destiny which God has in store for Ireland’.

161 Robert Brennan, Allegiance (Dublin, 1950), 334–6.

162 Irish Examiner, 30 Jan. 1922.

163 Mark Tierney (ed.), ‘Calendar of Irlande, vols 1, 2, 3’, Collectanea Hibernica, nos 21–2 (1979–80), 217.

164 Irish Examiner, 30 Jan. 1922. Shortly before this event, de Valera and Sangnier laid a wreath at the grave of the Unknown Soldier of France, as well as at that of the United Irishman Miles Byrne. Irish Independent, 30 Jan. 1922.

165 Ernest Boyd, ‘Ireland: resurgent and insurgent’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 1 no. 15 (1922), 97.

166 Westminster Parliamentary Archives, Lloyd George papers, F21/1/8, Griffith to Lloyd George, 2 Jun. 1922.

167 Churchill Archives, CHAR22/13/103–12.

168 Ernest Boyd, ‘Ireland: resurgent and insurgent’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 1 no. 15 (1922), 93–4.

169 Westminster Parliamentary Archives, Lloyd George papers, F/10/3/49, Alfred Cope to Lionel Curtis, 9 Sep. 1922; Churchill Archives, CHAR 22/14/71.

170 J.A. Gaughan (ed.), Memoirs of Senator Joseph Connolly (Dublin, 1996); Lord Midleton, Ireland: dupe or heroine (London, 1932), 149–51. Alongside Connolly, Griffith had sent another Belfast man Denis McCullough to America as a would-be diplomatic representative, but he also resigned. While Midleton was in America primarily to assist the British Foreign Office press its case upon US President Harding regarding Anglo-American naval relations, he also used this occasion to speak about Ireland.

171 Stephen Gwynn, ‘Ireland: one and divisible’, Foreign affairs, vol. 3 (1924), 183–98.

172 The last manifestation of this literary trend could be said to have been P.S. O’Hegarty, The victory of Sinn Féin (Dublin, 1924), although it was also deeply influenced by the acrimonious debates of 1922.

173 Owen McGee (ed.), Eugene Davis’ souvenirs of Irish footprints over Europe (1889, 2nd ed., Dublin, 2006), 179–80.

174 Ronan Fanning, A will to power: Éamon de Valera (London, 2015), 258. Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith, chapter 12.

175 David Harkness, The restless dominion: the Irish Free State and the British Commonwealth of Nations 1921–1931 (London, 1969).