Burke, Ireland and the Empire

Abstract

Burke was born and educated in Ireland; but he moved to London when he was little more than twenty years of age and he made his career and his reputation in England. Though he continued throughout life to take an active interest in the affairs of his native country, there is nothing national, let alone nationalist about the policies he advocated for Ireland. Indeed, if we are to describe Burke as in any sense a ‘nationalist’ then he was an English (or perhaps one should say British), rather than an Irish, nationalist. Again, though it may be possible to find in his views on politics and society some elements that may reasonably be traced to his Irish background, his writings, taken as a whole, cannot be regarded as the product of a distinctively Irish culture.