This was a time of vibrant writing about the Irish past, in which the colonial question and the nature of Irish society before the twelfth-century English conquest remained key contexts. The dispute over the ancient origins of the Irish, always viewed through that colonial prism, continued to engross antiquaries. This chapter examines eighteenth-century iterations of this theme, looking at the two main theories of Irish origins: the Milesian, derived from rich medieval Gaelic sources (employing the biblical template of the Israelites), which posited Scythian, Egyptian and Spanish ancestry, mirroring the various sojourns of the Irish on their epic journey to the “promised land” of Ireland; and the Scandinavian, propounded by the upholders of the benefits of English colonization, and aiming to place that colonization in a framework of pre-existing contact with, and invasion by, the Germanic tribes of northern Europe. The debate was also inflected by the modern imperial project, thus linking England’s oldest colony, Ireland, with its newest, India. Nevertheless, the core question remained the same – the nature of Irish national character – and was primed for the onset of overtly racial constructions towards the end of this period.

This chapter examines Donal Ryan’s From A Low and Quiet Sea (2018), Melatu Uche Okorie’s This Hostel Life (2018), and Correspondences (2019). These three publications offer insight into the directions being taken by contemporary Irish literature to address the absence of Black and minority ethnic peoples from Irish literature. Despite an ongoing boom in Irish publishing that has seen the global success of many authors, Irish literature continues to demonstrate a preoccupation with notions of Irishness rooted in the Irish literary Revival of the turn of the twentieth century. This essay questions the continuing whiteness of Irish literature through an examination of two recent exceptions in Irish publishing, which, in their inclusion of people of color, challenge comfortable notions of what Irish literature comprises. These texts force readers to confront issues of silencing and traumatic cultural absence for people of color in Ireland, raising important questions about a contemporary Ireland that is often congratulated for its liberal-mindedness.

No western country experienced as protracted a debate on contraception as Ireland. The longstanding ban on contraception has commonly been seen as the consequence of Catholic church teaching and the near-universal religious observance by Irish Catholics. But the Irish debate went far beyond Catholic teaching. The merits of large families and the laws banning contraception (as well as prohibition of divorce and abortion) came to be seen as a symbol of Ireland’s national identity; the Irish approach to contraception was intimately bound up with ideas of Irishness. The logic of opposition to the use of contraception shifted over the decades. Initially, the belief that ‘artificial’ contraception was contrary to the teaching of the Catholic church was the engine that drove state policy and broader opposition. By the 1970s this argument was being abandoned, in favour of claims that permitting contraception would destroy the fabric of the family and society. The battle to protect Irish society from the “menace” of contraception, abortion and divorce continued into the present century in the face of falling fertility, many single mothers, and a significant abortion trail to Britain.

This introductory chapter lays out the central importance of the interlocking influence of Henry George and the Irish Land War in animating a resurgent agrarianism in the 1880s, as well as the influence these political tendencies had on the trajectory of liberal political thought. It briefly explores the historiographical background of the late nineteenth century land question, particularly interpretations of the Irish Land War, and the uneasy place of Henry George in these narratives. The role of land in shaping Ireland’s distinctive political economy and its liminal place in the wider Anglophone world is also discussed. This introduction also assesses how the question of land can cut across the concerns of intellectual and social history in a way that enables connections to be made between popular attitudes and political thought, and explains how this methodological approach will be used. Finally, the chapter sets out the structure of the subsequent book.

George’s remarkable popularity among Irish-Americans is used as a lens through which to review the cultural force of ‘Irishness’ as a potent subaltern category. Here, the intersections of class and culture that shaped the distinctive form of Irish-American social radicalism are examined by looking at the enmeshed nationalist, pan-Celticist, anarchist, socialist, agrarian, journalistic, commercial, charitable, and ethno-religious networks that constituted Irish-American associational culture, and the political and poetic discourses they utilised. The political uses and resonances of the American past, and how these mapped on to contemporary political disagreements is examined, particularly the idea of slavery in the politics of land redistribution. The chapter also offers an analysis of the Irish National Land League of America, its support across different regions and among different social groups, and its internal political and ideological tensions. Finally, it considers the use of romantic and poetic imagery in the sustenance of the agrarian political ideals that animated radical agitation and broader conceptions of Irish identity in the United States.