Abstract
In July 1923, roughly two months after the IRA abandoned its armed campaign against the Free State, Éamon de Valera issued a defiant statement on behalf of the anti-treaty cause. ‘There will be no “Wild Geese”… this time’, he vowed. ‘The soldiers of the Republic have been ordered to live and die in Ireland, and they will obey. Living or dead, we mean to establish the right of Irish Republicans to live and work openly for the complete liberation of our country.’1 By referencing ‘Wild Geese’ — the folk term for Jacobite soldiers exiled from Ireland after their defeat in the Williamite War — de Valera was telegraphing a deeper historical truth that was on many people’s minds in the aftermath of the civil war.2 Well-versed in Irish history, the ‘revolutionary generation’ knew that failed nationalist risings tended to produce ‘mini-diasporas’ of exiles.3 Along with the ‘Wild Geese’, there had been the earlier ‘Flight of the Earls’, thousands of United Irishmen who fled government repression in the 1790s, the scattered remnants of the ‘Young Ireland’ Rising of 1848, and a stream of Fenian émigrés in the post-Famine period.
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Notes
Others who have likened the republican exodus to the ‘Flight of the Wild Geese’ include Ernie O’Malley (2012 edn) The Singing Flame (Cork), p. 358
and Liam Deasy (1998 edn) Brother against Brother (Dublin), pp. 30–1.
The term ‘revolutionary generation’ comes from F. S. L. Lyons (1979) Culture and Anarchy in Ireland 1890–1939 (Oxford), Chapter 4 passim.
I borrow the phrase ‘mini-diaspora’ from C. S. Andrews (1982) Man of No Property: an Autobiography (Volume Two) (Cork), p. 14.
Frank O’Connor (1961) An Only Child (New York), p. 271.
The TWU’s interwar leader was civil war veteran Mike Quill. See Brian Hanley (2009) ‘Irish Republicans in Interwar New York’, Irish Journal of American Studies, Vol. 1 (June), available online at <http://www.ijasonline.com/BRIAN-HANLEY.html>; Shirley Quill (1985) Mike Quill, Himself: a Memoir (Greenwich, CT);
and L. H. Whittemore (1968) The Man Who Ran the Subway: the Story of Mike Quill (New York).
Máire Comerford in Uinseann Mac Eoin (1980) Survivors (Dublin), p. 52; Andrews, Man of No Property, p. 14.
On Flannery see Dermot O’Reilly and Seán Ó Brádaigh (eds) (2001) Accepting the Challenge: the Memoirs of Michael Flannery (Dublin, 2001).
Brian Hanley (2002) The IRA 1926–1936 (Dublin) and ‘Irish Republicans in Inter-War New York’.
Gavin Wilk (2012) ‘Displaced Allegiance: Militant Irish Republican Activism in the U.S., 1923–39’, PhD thesis (NUI Limerick).
Kerby Miller (1985) Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (New York), pp. 453, 555. Italics added.
Matthew J. O’Brien (2001) ‘Irishness in Great Britain and the U.S.: Transatlantic and Cross-Channel Migration Networks and Irish Ethnicity, 1920–1990’, PhD thesis (Madison, Wisconsin), p. 3.
Peter Hart (2003) ‘The Protestant Experience of Revolution in Southern Ireland’ in The IRA at War 1916–1923 (Oxford), pp. 223–40;
Andy Bielenberg (2013) ‘Exodus: the Emigration of Southern Irish Protestants During the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War’, Past and Present, 218 (1): 199–233;
‘Kent Fedorowich (1999) ‘Reconstruction and Resettlement: the Politicization of Irish Migration to Australia and Canada, 1919–1929’, The English Historical Review, Vol. 114, No. 459 (Nov.), 1143–1178;
Enda Delaney (2000) Demography, State, and Society: Irish Migration to Britain, 1921–1971 (Liverpool), pp. 37–8, 42, and 69–83;
Michael Farry (2000) The Aftermath of Revolution: Sligo, 1921–1923 (Dublin), pp. 177–201;
and David Fitzpatrick (1998 edn) Politics and Irish Life 1913–1921: Provincial Experience of War and Revolution (Cork), pp. 39, 67–8.
See, for example, Michael Hopkinson, ‘Civil War and Aftermath, 1922–4’ in Hill (ed.) (2003) A New History of Ireland, VII, Ireland 1921–84 (Oxford), p. 55; J. Bowyer-Bell (1997 edn) The Secret Army: the IRA (Dublin), p. 50;
Tony Farmar (1991) Ordinary Lives: Three Generations of Irish Middle Class Experience, 1907, 1932, 1963 (Dublin), p. 89;
Helen Litton (1995) The Irish Civil War: an Illustrated History (Dublin), p. 132;
Bill Kissane (2002) Explaining Irish Democracy (Dublin), p. 11.
E. Rumpf and A. C. Hepburn (1977) Nationalism and Socialism in Twentieth-Century Ireland (New York), pp. 87–8.
David Fitzpatrick (1984) Irish Emigration 1801–1921 (Dublin), pp. 1, 3;
Kevin Kenny (2000) The American Irish: a History (Harlow, England), pp. 97, 131.
See for example, Tom Garvin (1996) 1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy (Dublin), pp. 21–2; Fitzpatrick, Irish Emigration 1801–1921, p. 41; Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life, p. 199; Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, 1900–2000 (London), p. 472;
and Enda Delaney (2002) Irish Emigration Since 1921 (Dublin), p. 43.
See, for example, John Mitchel (Patrick Maume, ed.) (2005 edn) The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps) (Dublin). Fitzpatrick, Irish Emigration1801–1921, p. 16.
Tom Garvin (2005 edn) Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland 1858–1928 (Dublin), p. 72.
See also D. P. Moran (1905 edn) The Philosophy of Irish-Ireland (Dublin), pp. 16–17.
Table 1.1 in Delaney, Demography, State and Society, p. 22. Although lower than in the late nineteenth century, emigration from the 26 counties was averaging 26,000 per year between 1911 and 1926, David Johnson (1985) The Interwar Economy in Ireland (Dublin), p. 37.
In a well-known comment during a 1920 interview with France’s Le Journal, the Irish Lord Lieutenant Field-Marshal Lord French explicitly blamed Ireland’s political unrest on the fact that 100,000–200,000 young men who ordinarily would have emigrated had been unable to do so, Dorothy Macardle (1968 edn) The Irish Republic (London), p. 308. See also Kissane, Explaining Irish Democracy, p. 11.
Peter Hart (1997) ‘The Geography of Revolution in Ireland 1917–1923’, Past and Present, Vol. 155, No. 1, 142–76, argued that British Army recruitment effectively took up the surplus. For both County Clare and Ireland as a whole, Fitzpatrick would appear to agree, Politics and Irish Life, p. 199.
For a convincing rebuttal of Hart’s argument, however, see Marie Coleman (2003) County Longford and the Irish Revolution, 1910–1923 (Dublin), pp. 173–5.
See also Michael Laffan (1999) The Resurrection of Ireland: the Sinn Féin Party, 1916–1923 (Cambridge), pp. 188–9,
and Michael Hopkinson (2002) The Irish War of Independence (Dublin), p. 20.
According to Arthur Mitchell, from a mere 3000 emigrants in 1919, Irish emigration (to the US and Britain combined) reached 30,000 in 1920, Arthur Mitchell (1995) Revolutionary Government in Ireland: Dáil Éireann 1919–22 (Dublin), p. 240.
Michael Hopkinson (2004 edn) Green against Green: the Irish Civil War (Dublin), p. 10.
Report on Kerry IRA’s efforts to prevent local men of military age from leaving the country, An tÓglach, 15 July 1920. On Sinn Féin emigration policy more generally see Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland, pp. 240–1; Joost Augusteijn (1996) From Public Defiance to Guerrilla Warfare: the Experience of Ordinary Volunteers in the Irish War of Independence 1916–1921 (Dublin), pp. 299–300;
M. G. Valiulis (1992) Portrait of a Revolutionary: General Richard Mulcahy and the Founding of the Irish State (Dublin), pp. 63–4, 91; and Hart, The IRA at War 1916–1923, pp. 154–5.
See for example, David Fitzpatrick (1998) The Two Irelands 1912–1939 (Oxford), pp. 214–15; Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, p. 330;
and John A. Murphy (1975) Ireland in the Twentieth Century (Dublin), p. 153.
Hopkinson, ‘Civil War and Aftermath, 1922–4’ in Hill (ed.), N.H.I., Vol. VII, p. 55; Kenny, The American Irish, p. 199; Robert Kee (2000 omnibus edn) The Green Flag: a History of Irish Nationalism (London), p. 749;
Joanne Dempsey (1997) ‘Irish Republican Women 1921–1923’, MA Thesis (UCD);
Meda Ryan (2003) Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter (Cork), p. 202; Hopkinson, Green against Green, p. 274.
Kissane, Explaining Irish Democracy, p. 11; Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, p. 453; Francis Blake (1986) The Irish Civil War 1922–1923 and What It Still Means for the Irish People (London), p. 63; Macardle, The Irish Republic, p. 805.
On the initial Canadian destination of many Volunteers see March 1924 Army Intelligence report for Kerry, MS 175, Military Archives; and West Limerick Brigade member’s 1941 pension application, Ms. 27.606(2), NLI. Seamus O’Connor (1987 edn) Tomorrow Was Another Day: Irreverent Memories of an Irish Rebel Schoolmaster (Dun Laoire, Co. Dublin), p. 121.
Dudley Baines (1991) Emigration from Europe 1815–1930 (London), pp. 58, 71.
C. L. Bankston et al. (eds) (2006) Immigration in U.S. History (Pasadena), p. 347.
Francesco Cordasco (ed.) (1990) Dictionary of American Immigration History (Metuchen, New Jersey), p. 372–3, 384–5, 397–8.
James Ciment (ed.) (2001) Encyclopedia of American Immigration (Armonk, NY), p. 15.
Michael Doorley (2005) Irish-American Diaspora Nationalism: the Friends of Irish Freedom, 1916–1935 (Dublin), p. 154. On Irish-American reactions to quota adjustments see press extracts and commentary in P69/37(235), Twomey Papers, UCDA.
M. E. Daly (2006) The Slow Failure: Population Decline and Independent Ireland, 1920–1973 (Madison, WI), pp. 140–1.
Jeremiah Murphy (1998) When Youth Was Mine: a Memoir of Kerry, 1902–1925 (Dublin), pp. 282–3, 301; Seamus O’Connor, Tomorrow Was Another Day, p. 118, 121.
On prison officials’ encouragement of this, see J. Campbell (E. Ní Chuilleanáin, ed.) (2001) ‘As I Was Among the Captives’: Joseph Campbell’s Prison Diary, 1922–1923 (Cork), p. 115.
C. Lawlor (ed.) (2005) Seán MacBride: That Day’s Struggle: a Memoir 1904–1951 (Blackrock, Dublin), p. 105.
Gavin Wilk (2014) ‘“No Hope for Him Unless He Can Be Got Out of the Country”: Disabled Irish Republicans in America, 1922–1935’, New Hibernia Review, Vol. 18, No. 1, 106–119.
Richard English (1998) Ernie O’Malley: IRA Intellectual (Oxford), p. 27. See also MacBride’s recollection of O’Malley in Paris, Lawlor (ed.), Seán MacBride, pp. 100–1.
2 June 1925 RE: ‘Migratory Labour’, P69/37(47); Adjutant General to Army Units RE: ‘Employment in France’, 20 July 1925, P69/37(2–5), all Twomey Papers, UCDA. Also see Peter Pyne (1969) ‘The Third Sinn Féin Party: 1923–1926, Part I’, The Economic and Social Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, 38.
Kee, The Green Flag, p. 749; Murphy, When Youth Was Mine, p. 315. A degree of post-revolutionary disenchantment existed throughout southern Irish society. See Andrews, Man of No Property, p. 2; Charles Bewley (1989) Memoirs of a Wild Goose (Dublin), p. 88.
Fitzpatrick, Irish Emigration 1801–1921, p. 9. For a contemporary perspective see Denis Gwynn (1928) The Irish Free State, 1922–1927 (London), p. 35.
On the social background of the average emigrant see Delaney, Demography, State, and Society, p. 49, and Delaney, Irish Emigration Since 1921, p. 14; and Peter Pyne (1970) ‘The Third Sinn Féin Party: 1923–1926, Part II’, The Economic and Social Review, I, No. 2, 245.
Richard English (1994) Radicals and the Republic: Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State 1925–1937 (Oxford), p. 95.
Michael McInerney (1974) Peadar O’Donnell: Irish Social Rebel (Dublin), p. 104.
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Foster, G.M. (2015). IRA Emigration and the Social Outcomes of the Civil War. In: The Irish Civil War and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137425706_8
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