Ethnicity and Nationality: A Distinction Without a Difference
Massive waves of inward migration since the mid-1990s have had a shattering impact on both the substance and the concept of Irish nationality. The legacy Republican movements have lately begun to acknowledge the impact but they have yet to take on board its implications, particularly as regards broad demographics and Irish unification. Just as it is necessary to correct the revisionist attacks on Irish nationality which come from Unionist and Marxist sources, the standard apologetic for Irish nationalism must be interrogated, not in order to undermine it but to strengthen it for the challenges we face. In particular we must rebuke the assumption that nationality and ethnicity are separate considerations and further the assumption that “ethno-nationalism” is something surplus to nationalism rather than (what it actually is) a linguistic redundancy. We need only refer to the existence of the Irish Diaspora or to the fact that Irish nationality endured for centuries in the absence of a sympathetic nation state, to prove beyond doubt the ethnic ties which underlie our whole understanding of ourselves as a people. If we find it difficult to defend in the present it is because we have taken it for granted in the past.
My attention was recently drawn to a collection of essays by the late Brendan Bradshaw, the anti-revisionist historian of Irish history. The collection, entitled “And So Began the Irish Nation”, is a good all-in-one take-down of revisionism and particularly its Cambridge origins. His assertion (backed by solid evidence and argument) that “value free” history is not really value free makes me think of P.S. O'Hegarty's remark that “impartiality in Irish history writing has meant in every case the non-acceptance of the Irish nation.” Nationality is above all a matter of partiality and when we withhold our sympathy from it, we cannot see or recognise it properly. The following are some thoughts on and slight objections to Bradshaw's picture of nationality and ethnicity.
An Unnecessary Distinction?
In the course of his analysis Bradshaw draws a distinction between nationality and ethnicity which over the course of this article I will try to nullify. While Bradshaw defends the existence of Irish national consciousnesses as a continuity extending back into the mists of Gaelic civilisation he expresses the caveat that by its very “ethnic exclusiveness” Gaelic Ireland lacked a true sense of nationality. His definition of nation, which he takes from Adrian Hastings, is that of a “historico-cultural community with a territory that it regards as its own.” This he distinguishes from ethnic communities which as they are “bonded by perceived ties of blood” and by “common ancestry” are “necessarily exclusive.” Nations he claims are not so exclusive.
Such a dichotomy becomes increasingly problematic as we project into the present day. My impression is that he requires this distinction (or feels he requires it) in order to validate his overall thesis in which Gaelicism on the one hand and colonial parliamentary separatism on the other, fuse over time into modern Irish nationalism. It is a kind of updated restating of Geoffrey Keating who he also writes about in-depth. Just as in Keating's work the Norman invasion becomes another chapter of Lebor Gabála Érenn, Bradshaw is eager not merely to prove continuity and assimilation but continual progress and development. Each new chapter adding rather than subtracting from the case for Irish nationhood. This upbeat anti-sectarian developmental view of nationalism seems tied to his particular conception of anti-revisionism which fears above all a two-nation split.
He is balanced enough that he condones a “residual ethnic element.” This associates “the nation in a special way with the language and culture – material, aesthetic, spiritual – of the dominant ethnic community among those that coalesced to form it in the first place.” It is the “Deep Celtic imprint” that “testifies to the nation's antiquity and its distinctive identity and authenticates its claim to nationhood.” On the basis of that passage I might be accused of nitpicking his definitions. Just as I might be accused of nitpicking Aodh de Blácam for claiming that the Gael is the true basis of Irish nationality and yet disavowing ethnic conceptions of Irish identity practically in the same breath. I think I am justified because these small disavowals have consequences. Particularly so when Bradshaw extrapolates his overall conception to the modern era of turbo-capitalism and vast demographic shifts. Faced with changing times he suggests that Irish nationalists may need to throw off the heroic conceptions of a newly independent state and formulate “a notion of Irish identity capable of accommodating the historical traditions of Ulster Unionists as well as of republicans north and south and indeed one open also to the very different cultural waves of political refugees and economic immigrants now seeking to put down roots in Ireland.” It is difficult to conceive of what “residual ethnic element” might survive that sentence. How on earth can Ireland heal divisions of the past while our government is everyday planting the seeds of future racial and cultural divisions?
The Baby and the Bathwater
If there is a perennial question in Irish historiography it is perhaps this. Must we throw out the baby with the bathwater? Too often Irish nationalists have felt the need to disavow ethnic conceptions of nationality simply on the grounds of assimilating relatively small numbers of Anglo-Irish converts and using the “Old English” as a precedent. Bradshaw may well claim that Irish Catholic nationalism – as it evolved through the 17th Century – was more “inclusive” than what proceeded it but that should not lead us to a reductive “civic” conception of national identity, which is to say one where ever increasing “openness” is a necessary condition. I would suggest that what he is really describing is not the casting off of ethnic exclusiveness but rather a slow ethnogenesis or even ethno-consolidation brought about (in the end) by the catastrophes of the 16th and 17th centuries. While the word ethnogenesis might be objected to on the grounds of suggesting a total break from the past, I contend that it should be viewed as a form of blood continuity incubating the potentiality of a Gaelic resurgence, one which did in fact partially come about and which may in the fullness of time be completed. What is more, this way of looking at things is more instructive to our own times and it also reflects critically upon the now obvious limitations of ecumenical Republicanism. Once the concept is understood and internalised the language can be simplified to the traditional metaphor of nation as extended family. The welcoming of new people into the family, traditionally through marriage, is a workable analogy for the limited expansion of nations through absorption of compatible outsiders.
The fusion of ancient Gaels and the descendants of 12th Century Norman colonists was a process of centuries. It was also a process of catastrophic and traumatic dispossession of both parties. Becoming “more Irish than the Irish themselves” meant being (in the end) as dispossessed as the Irish themselves. Thomas Fitzgerald after he rebelled against Henry VIII is said to have repudiated his English wife, wanting nothing more “to do with English blood.” His getting executed for his troubles by the Crown you could say made him truly part of the national family. The nation as extended family of course has its fair share of “black sheep” and these must be cast out for the good of the whole. Will we ever forgive James Butler, Marquess of Ormond, who gifted Dublin to Cromwell in 1647 and who John Minahane pithily described as, “the Norman who didn't become 'more Irish than the Irish', the one that got away.” It is notable that in all the contemporary media discourse about the “New Irish” in our midst, it is assumed as a matter of etiquette that every one is a “Silken” Thomas and not a James Butler.
The Irish Catholic nationalism that resulted from the turbulent 1640s and 1690s was not “inclusive” in the hackneyed modern sense. It was not a throwaway thing but rather the complex, painful melding of blood and race. Whatever it was it was earned.
In the 1780s, the likes of Edward Fitzgerald and Wolfe Tone and Michael Dwyer attempted to initiate a second ethnogenesis less successful than the first. The attempt through French-style Republicanism to fuse Protestant Patriot revolutionaries with the agrarian Catholic Defenders was not exactly brought to perfection in 1798. The Rising in Leinster (for all its glorious feats) was marred in the eyes of some by the sectarian atrocities which Tone in his speech from the dock appeared to distance himself from. The Rising in Ulster did not draw out the Catholics in force who remained suspicious of the Protestant revolutionaries. However blood was shed and martyrs were made. The 19th Century would add more Anglo-Irish names to the roll of honour: men who as John Mitchel confessed had not “a drop of Milesian blood” in their veins.
The problem with this second ethno-consolidation was that the Anglo-Irish (as a race) never suffered a cataclysm from without such as the “Old English” did. No Cromwell swept them away. Instead their Ascendancy world diminished in the face of a rising Catholic middle-class. This was a slower, more banal and more ambivalent process with more ambivalent results. Yeats wrote of a Celtic Twilight but what he felt most perhaps was the twilight of the Big House and the Protestant Ascendancy.
Partition later demonstrated (or seemed to demonstrate) the limitations of consolidation. The divide-up of the country formalised deep seated ethnic and religious divisions. But to be clear it was those divisions that created partition and not the other way around. Neither Irish Republicanism nor liberalism has since succeeded in overcoming the problem. In light of such, we should view any renewed attempt at radically expanding the franchise of Irish nationality with great caution. The results of the last attempt are not yet fully in.
“Civic”, “Ethnic” or Just Nationalism?
The point of all this is that “civic” conceptions of nationalism are in themselves highly deceptive. All nationalism is ethnic nationalism. Even civic nationalism is ethnic nationalism. You may well ask at what point does assimilation reach its limits? The simple answer is as follows. A person may be assimilated into another nation up until such point as his pre-existing nationality rebels and attempts to overthrow the new one. In many cases the ceiling on the process is very low even if the persons themselves are not fully conscious of it. An assimilated Polish man for instance may object to tough immigration policies out of consciousness of himself as an immigrant. He has reached his natural ceiling. His “civic” conception of Irish nationality cannot overcome his ethnic conception of himself as a Polish national in a foreign country. The latter is his nationality in truth, not the former. His descendants on the other hand may well break through this ceiling so long as an Irish super-majority exists to assimilate into. Even people who are Irish by blood and by the passage of centuries may carry competing instincts within ourselves which reflect the still ill-resolved turmoil of our history.
In the cases of people of other racial identities and radically different cultures, one merely has to put oneself in their shoes and ask, “At what point would I as a Western European person become Chinese or Indian by assimilation? At what point would my cultural and racial interests (even my unconscious ones) cease to be a barrier to that assimilation?” The answer is probably never. But even at that, the chances of a single Western European being subsumed into the vastness of Chinese or Indian civilisation is greater than the chances of vast numbers of Chinese or Indian people being subsumed into the relatively small and fragile body we call the Irish Nation.
Liam Mellows once said that “Blood is thicker than water, and Irish blood is thicker than any blood that I know.” But too few Republicans have taken him at his word. The common religion of Catholicism guaranteed the steady intermarrying of Hiberno-Normans and Gaels whereas religious sectarianism was at least a substantial speed bump to such intermingling. Religion becomes bound up with ethnicity for the same reason that the word ethnicity itself derives from groups sharing a common language. Language, religion and territorial boundaries are barriers historically denominated in shared blood ties. Nationality is sealed in ties of blood. It is ethnic. When it is not ethnic in origin it is ethnic in destination. Where there are competing interests one side usually wins out. In Irish mythology Lugh sided with his Tuatha Dé Danann heritage against his Fomorian heritage just as Patrick Pearse sided with his mother's People against his father's People. The trend is towards ethno-consolidation if it is not towards national dissolution. What cannot be consolidated cannot be nationalised. And let's not pretend that these conclusions are radically new. They seem new only in the sense that circumstance reveals them. The Irish language revivalist D.P. Moran wrote better than anybody else about the merits and limits of Gaelic assimilation in an Anglicised modernity. And that was over a century ago.
Conclusion
Bradshaw's work is a heroic enterprise. He defends with gusto every epoch of Irish national life. The only flaw I see is that he projects a retrospective optimism onto the past which we cannot afford in the present. It is a flaw only in the sense that we may take the wrong lessons from it. We can be optimistic about our chances but not about our raw material. About that we must have a little cold realism at last. Ireland has survived until the present day but it has done so at great cost and at great expenditure of life and energy. By the school of hard knocks, Irish nationalists have come to know their nation's capacity for resilience as well as any experienced crew know the stress limits of a ship at sea. The processes of assimilation or consolidation cannot overcome impossible obstacles. That much is clear. Ireland has not become more Gaelic by being more inclusive. It has not become more Gaelic at all if judged by the long thread of history. It has survived and just about. The Gaelic resurgence of the late middle ages alone could not assimilate the Norman colonists. It took the Black Death, the Tudors and Cromwell to finally achieve that. In the same way, we cannot assume that modern Ireland is capable of assimilating vast numbers of economic migrants. In the best case scenario the shock caused by the onslaught will eventually be a catalyst for nationalising untapped reserves of the population but that is for some future Bradshaw to project back upon with retrospective optimism.