8 - ‘Never denie your country’: politics and identity in the Old and New Worlds

Summary

In November 1883, when his cousin Daniel departured from Lehinch, County Tipperary, John Strong proffered his advice:

Dan never denie your country. Always help it to the best of your ability and according to your means, and never sit silent while your country or your countryment are misrepresented or slandered. Finally Dan shun evil company and everything evil but above all things beware of drunkeness that curse of Irishmen that follows them into every land degrading and debasing them. (St 2)

John Strong's guidance to his cousin raises two issues that are the focus of this chapter. First, what political matters did correspondents at home and abroad discuss? As with John Strong, several letter writers in Ireland provided insightful accounts of Ireland's political state. Their kinfolk in New Zealand, on the other hand, stayed relatively silent on matters pertaining to Irish politics. This chapter provides further support for studies highlighting the weak nationalist – as well as unionist – sentiment among the Irish in Australasia. For the Irish in New Zealand, as with the Irish in Australia, ‘the nationalist cause was to be embraced only warily’. Conversely, Irish migrant letter writers in New Zealand were immensely preoccupied with domestic affairs and wrote often about political issues in New Zealand society. These local concerns ranged from the electrifying impact of the New Zealand Wars through to the tumultuous events of the 1912 strike.

The other issue raised by John Strong's comment concerns Irish identity. In his comment he linked Irishness with drunkenness. The second section of the chapter therefore explores the various positive and negative attributes associated with Irishness. For Catholics, especially, their Irish ethnicity was amplified by church leaders to encourage their continuing adherence to the faith. But among correspondents, Irish Protestants were more inclined to proclaim their Irishness. In addition, aspects of colonial identity are also briefly explored. These issues of politics and identity are central to the history of the Irish diaspora.

Armed insurrection was one means by which some Irish people sought the end of British rule in Ireland. The earliest references in the correspondence to Irish nationalist and political enterprises concerned the Fenians, a revolutionary group who attempted through physical force to end British rule in Ireland.