Anti-Irish Racism
In the narrower sense, the term anti-Irish racism primarily describes a negative attitude of large parts of the English population towards Irish of Celtic descent in the 19th century, which was based in this period mainly in the then widespread teachings of physiognomy and in the further course of the century also related to the teachings of Social Darwinism . In a broader sense, however , anti-Irish racism refers to the general discrimination against Irish of Celtic origin, which crystallized as early as the 12th century and finally culminated in racism. For a long time, this discrimination was based on the denigration of Christian practices of the Irish and their alleged backwardness, laziness and malice. Allegations of violence and disturbance were added later.
12th to 14th centuries
The Normans had invaded Ireland as early as the 10th century, but were only able to hold out in a few parts of Ireland after a defeat by the King of Munster . In the 12th century there was another invasion under Henry II , which was more successful: by the middle of the 13th century three quarters of Ireland were in Norman and English possession. To justify the invasion, Gerald of Wales published his Topographia Hibernica around 1188 , in which he paid tribute to the nature of Ireland and Irish music , but described the Irish themselves as backward, lazy farmers who were in no way civilized and also used pagan rituals practiced. Gerald did not see the reason for this in the nature of the Irish, but in their isolation from the civilized world.
The Normans' progress in Ireland stagnated at the beginning of the fourteenth century; The maintenance of local customs, the mixture of Irish and Normans and other factors led to the adoption of the Kilkenny statutes in 1367 , which - strongly reminiscent of apartheid rules - forbade the use of the Gaelic language , for example .
16th Century
Under the Tudor - Monarchy England again tried to reconquer Ireland. Irish farmers were expropriated and their property handed over to English settlers (so-called plantations ). These measures were justified by the alleged backwardness of the Irish; They were also charged with attacking English settlers at every opportunity. The negative attitude towards the Irish was given particular impetus by the publication A View of the Present State of Ireland , written around 1598 by Edmund Spenser , who was highly esteemed at the time ; he assumes that the Irish have a barbaric superstition , blames the mixture of Irish and English for the “ degeneration ” of the latter and finally suggests that the “problem” should be solved by starving the Irish.
17th century
In the name of Charles I , accused of Catholicism in the course of the English Revolution, the first major rebellion of the Catholic Irish from Ulster against their oppressors arose in 1641 , which lasted several months and in which up to 12,000 Protestants were killed. The basis of this rebellion, however, was seen less in the oppression of England than in the ingratitude of the Irish. For example, the Scottish philosopher David Hume said the Irish were "too stupid" to see the benefits of an English government and to worship Protestantism . In 1649 Oliver Cromwell came to Ireland to "punish" the "murderers" of the rebellion. His entry into Ireland resulted in various massacres. He wanted to pay his soldiers with (Irish) land. He gave the Irish the choice "to hell or Connaught " ("To hell or to Connacht"), which meant that the Irish were forbidden to stay in any part of Ireland other than the very barren and poor Connacht. However, Cromwell's plan was unsuccessful. When Charles II restored the English monarchy and ascended the throne in 1660, the Irish hoped that their situation would improve. However, this hope was dashed when William of Orange was made king in 1689 . This introduced penal laws , which again denied, among other things, freedom of religion and the right to vote for the Irish.
18th century
In the 18th century, restrictive trade laws made Ireland a source of cheap food for England. So while they had to give most of their harvest to England and at the same time did not have the right to trade with any other country besides England, the population went hungry. During this period in particular, there was a high rate of emigration, especially to England and Scotland . At the same time, jokes flourished in English society portraying the Irish as stupid, lazy, sneaky and constantly drunk, in short supporting the notion that the poverty of the Irish was not due to exploitation by England, but to the incompetence and laziness of the Irish . Not only did these jokes support England's policy on Ireland, but they also show that discrimination against the Irish was not just a political one, but was found in society at large. In the satire A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen , the Irish-born writer Jonathan Swift denounced the desolate economic situation of the Irish in 1729.
In 1798 there was another rebellion, this time initiated by upper-class Protestant Irishmen who had an autonomous Irish government as their goal. The rebellion, however, was bloodily crushed and resulted in the dissolution of the Irish Parliament and later the Act of Union , which theoretically included the equivalent connection between England, Scotland and Ireland, but in fact contained strongly repressive regulations for Ireland; for example, only Protestants were allowed to enter parliament.
19th century
In contrast to the centuries before, discrimination against the Irish in the 19th century was mainly characterized by biological reasons.
Before 1860
In the first half of the 19th century numerous attempts were made to classify " races " on the basis of biological factors. The basis here was the prevailing idea that one could infer from the outside of a person about his inside. Physiognomy and phrenology in particular contributed to the fact that the Celtic race was settled far below the Anglo-Saxon race . According to the description of the physiognomics, Celts have a protruding chin and the distance between nose and upper lip is enormous, which suggests that they have the character of a child: rebellious, moody and can only be used for monotonous manual work. On the other hand, the description of the Anglo-Saxons was much more positive: everything about them was "just right" (although an explanation is missing here what exactly means right ), which means that they are balanced, honorable and creative.
In the 30s and 40s of the 19th century, the Irish politician Daniel O'Connell formed the Repeal Movement with the aim of using constitutional means to reverse the Act of Union. O'Connell was accused by the English of using the "childish spirit" of the Irish for his own purposes. In this phase, discrimination in the form of caricatures prevailed. The representation of the members of the rebellion of 1798 already contained some pig-like features. During the Repeal Movement these features were emphasized; Caricatures of the "rebellious" Irish regularly graced the front pages of English satirical magazines. Even if the representations of the Irish mostly showed them in very violent scenes, they remained human in their essence.
After 1860
Darwin's discoveries about evolution contributed significantly to a change in the image of the Irish. The denial of the genesis of man and his divine descent endangered the nobility of the "Anglo-Saxon race". This led to the assumption that there had to be some races more similar to the monkey in order to preserve the nobility of the Anglo-Saxons. These races also include the Celtic, whose blood is not "pure", while that of the Anglo-Saxons is very much (which from an anthropological point of view is hardly tenable); the Celtic Irish became the "White Negro".
British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli publicly expressed his views on the Irish: “The Irish hate our order, our civilization, our enterprising industry, our pure religion. This wild, reckless, indolent, uncertain and superstitious race have no sympathy with the English character. Their ideal of human felicity is an alternation of clannish broils and coarse idolatry. Their history describes an unbroken circle of bigotry and blood. "(Approximate translation:" The Irish hate our order, our civilization, our free industrial market economy, our pure religion. This wild, ruthless, lazy, unreliable and superstitious race has no sympathy for the English character. Their ideal of human bliss consists of grilling with the clan and gross idolatry. Their story consists of an unbroken circle of double standards and violence ”). In the course of the degradation of the Irish, a new wave of militant Fenianism arose on the part of the Irish, which in turn contributes to the image of the Irish troublemaker. In the 1880s, the Home Rule Movement was formed around the politician Gladstone . The caricatures after 1860 reflected both the new racial doctrine and militant Fenianism as well as the new political activity of the Irish: the pig-like but essentially human paddy of the early 19th century transformed into an ape-like caliban . The highlight is an earlier caricature by the London cartoonist Matt Morgan from 1869, entitled The Irish Frankenstein , depicting the Irish as a mixture of an orangutan and a village idiot. The representation of the Irish as more human apes than ape-like humans continued until the beginning of the 20th century. The rule was: the more militant the Fenians became, the more apelike they were depicted. Similar developments can be seen in cartoons from the USA .
20th century
After the separation of Ireland, England's interest in vilifying the Irish also diminished. However, prejudices were given a new impetus in 1969 with the founding of the IRA , whose appearance was seen as the cause of the Northern Ireland conflict between Catholics and Protestants rather than as a result of the British divide and rule tactic. Contemporary caricatures portrayed England as a mediator between the fighting Irish, but mostly withheld the influence that British politics had on the situation in Northern Ireland over the past centuries. Even today, jokes portraying the Irish as stupid, backward, and argumentative drunkards are still widespread in England.
See also
literature
- L. Perry Curtis: Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature . Smithsonian, 1997.
- Liz Curtis: Nothing But The Same Old Story: The Roots of Anti-Irish Racism . Sasta, 1985.
- Gerald of Wales: The History and Topography of Wales . Penguine Classics, 1983.
- Jonathan Swift : A Modest Proposal ... pagebypagebooks.com
- Friedrich Lexow : Erin in New York . In: The Gazebo . Issue 20, 1866, pp. 318-319 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thomas Cahill: How the Irish Saved Civilization - The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe . Doubleday, New York NY 1995, ISBN 0-385-41849-3 , pp. 6 .