British Decolonisation, 1918-1984
British Decolonisation, 1918-1984
Edited by
Richard Davis
British Decolonisation, 1918-1984,
Edited by Richard Davis
This book first published 2013
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2013 by Richard Davis and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
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ISBN (10): 1-4438-5049-7, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5049-0
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations .................................................................................... vii
Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1
Introduction
Richard Davis
Chapter Two ................................................................................................ 9
Ireland and End of Empire
Karine Bigand
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 25
Holding onto Empire in the Middle East, 1919-1939
Richard Davis
Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 61
Decolonisation in South East Asia: Burma and Malaya with notes
on Australia and New Zealand
Deirdre Gilfedder
Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 79
Vestiges of Empire: Britain, the Commonwealth and the Common
Market Negotiations (1957-1967)
Richard Davis
Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 99
The Falklands Issue: Decolonisation Revisited
Marc Fourches
Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 117
Decolonisation under Margaret Thatcher, 1979-1984:
Rhodesia and Hong Kong
Raphaële Espiet-Kilty
Selected Bibliography ............................................................................. 139
Contributors ............................................................................................. 155
Index ........................................................................................................ 157
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Fig. 3-1 The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916
Fig. 3-2 British mandates in the Middle East
Fig. 6-1 The Falklands War
Fig. 6-2 ‘Gotcha’, The Sun, 4 May 1982
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
RICHARD DAVIS
Of all the various topics of historical debate over the past decades few,
if any, have been more controversial or more widely conducted than that
of the history of imperialism and that of the British Empire in particular.
From Western Europe, the home of the old imperial powers, to Africa,
Asia, the Americas and Australasia questions of empire continue to raise
controversies to a degree that few other areas of historical study can
match. More than fifty years after the end of the great majority of the
world’s formal colonial relationships, the strength of opinions that empire
has raised still shows no signs of waning. That this should be so is hardly
surprising. Few histories can be, or should be, entirely relegated to the
pages of history books and the subjects of purely academic interest. The
history of empire, perhaps more than any other field of historical research,
is of the utmost interest to today’s world, no part of which is devoid of the
legacies of an imperial past. This extends most obviously to the old
imperial powers, and foremost among them to Britain, to the ex-colonies
of these empires in their multifarious forms, and to those few parts of the
world that were never, at one time or another, formally brought within
their scope. Within each of these components of the imperial world there
were numerous participants and actors, whether they were the colonisers,
the colonised or the colonists, the colonial rulers or the ruled, the victims,
beneficiaries or various other participants, the collaborators or those who
resisted; those who worked to put the empire in place and then to run it, to
exploit it for various forms of gain or to use it for various ends; those who
opposed it, either morally, ideologically (from various different
standpoints) or who took up arms to overthrow it. Examples of all of these
can be found, although in very unequal proportions, across all those parts
of the world that had a role to play in the history of empire.
The following chapters cannot cover the entire history of British
decolonisation, let alone that of the whole history of the British Empire.
2
Chapter One
They do, however, give an introduction to some of the most important, and
controversial, examples of the ways in which decolonisation came about.
One of these case studies, that of the Falklands, can, in some ways, be
regarded as of relatively little importance in the overall history of the
British Empire. These remote islands, with a population of no more than a
few thousands, are of little strategic or commercial interest, although the
discovery of oil in the waters surrounding the islands may somewhat
change this in the years to come. As Marc Fourches points out, the 1982
war has been compared to “two bald men fighting over a comb”. Yet the
Falklands have rarely been out of the news for long, at least not since the
war broke out in April 1982, an event which took many observers,
including the British government, by surprise. Its impact on the electoral
fortunes of Margaret Thatcher and of the Conservative Party may be
difficult to judge with any precision but it was certainly a significant factor
in their 1983 general election victory. Today, more than thirty years after
the war, the islands are still able to arouse strong reactions in Britain,
particularly in those parts of the popular press which have come to regard
the defence of the Falklands as something of a crusading campaign. This
contrasts starkly with the general indifference towards, and ignorance of,
the islands prior to 1982. In Argentina the Malvinas, as Marc Fourches
points out, are able to raise passions almost to fever point. The rest of the
world tends to look on and wonder why these two countries should allow
such an issue to disrupt what are, outside the Falklands question, perfectly
amicable relations.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the question of Rhodesia, torn between the
white settler regime’s attempts to hold onto a minority government, the
campaign of the black majority to force a handover of power, and the
British government’s largely futile attempts to impose a diplomatic
solution, was high up the political agenda for all those involved. The 1980
agreement, brokered in part by the government of Margaret Thatcher,
constitutes a last example of decolonisation, long after the great majority
of other African and Asian nations had already achieved independence.
However, this agreement, as Raphaële Kilty points out, in many ways
went against the gut feelings of Margaret Thatcher and of large parts of the
Conservative Party at the time. It thus provides an interesting analysis into
how pragmatic considerations, and the recognition of the inevitability of
decolonisation and of majority rule (even if that meant power being placed
in the unwelcome hands of Robert Mugabe), overcame more sentimental
and ideologically inspired considerations. A similar pattern may be
identified in the example of the transfer of Honk Kong, often regarded as
drawing the final curtain on the British Empire. South East Asia, Ireland
Introduction
3
and the Middle East, seen elsewhere in the following chapters, provide
equally controversial examples of decolonisation.
There is very little left of the British Empire today, although as the
following chapters will attempt to show there are still on-going disputes as
to what does, or does not, constitute a colonial situation. The end of the
British Empire does not mean, however, that it has been relegated to some
distant past or that it can be observed from a calmer, and somewhat safer,
distance. More than half a century separates us from the major examples
of decolonisation that began in the immediate post-Second World War
period and which continued up to the 1960s. Despite this, the legacy of the
British Empire is such that it can still arouse heated debate.
The debates around the British Empire are numerous, not all of which
can be dealt with in the following pages. We may begin with the question
as to what precisely the British Empire was. As John Darwin and Ronald
Hyam have argued, it was certainly something of a “hotch-potch”1, a
“global mosaic”2 made up of very varied component parts ranging in size
from India, an Empire in its own right, to various sparsely populated
islands in some of the remotest parts of the world. The territories it
covered operated under numerous different constitutional statuses including
Dominions, Crown Colonies, Protectorates and a host of other often very
particular forms. In terms of culture, religion, ethnicity, economic
development, and in numerous other ways, the British Empire never
approached anything like unity. The attempts to present it, and its far more
loosely based successor, the Commonwealth, as a “family of nations”
united around common interests and a shared history always foundered on
this fundamental diversity and the inevitable conflicts of interests that
resulted from this. The picture becomes even more blurred when we bring
in, as we must, the so-called “informal empire” which spread British
interests, and Britain’s predominant position, beyond the limits of its
formal imperial possessions into Latin America, the Middle East and
China.3 Taken altogether we can prefer to focus on what John Darwin
terms Britain’s “World system” rather than on the formal British Empire
alone.4
Defining the British Empire, or the British “world system”, becomes
still more complex when we consider its various aspects and how it was
made up of a series of different webs and networks. As Ronald Hyam has
argued, it could take on a multitude of different forms. It could be, he
writes, an
“ecological empire, of wheat and daisies, cocoa, bananas, maize, and
cotton transplanted across continents. Sheep were introduced into New
Zealand, and, less happily, rabbits into Australia. There was an empire of
4
Chapter One
sport: everywhere there was football and cricket, horse-racing and golf.
The empire was a web of submarine cables, supplemented by wireless,
telegraphs, and shipping. The empire might become ‘an empire of the
air’… The empire was a set of prostitution-networks. The empire was a
great Muslim power. The empire was a great Christian domain, embracing
the world-wide missionary movement, and the Anglican Communion…
Perhaps above all else, the empire was a field of migration, abounding in
diasporas. There were Scots in the Falkland Islands, Welsh in Patagonia,
Irish in Australia, Arabs around the Indian Ocean, Chinese in British
Columbia. The empire spread Indian communities into fifty-three
countries.”5
The British Empire, therefore, needs to be seen on numerous different
levels. Its multi-dimensional character brings in constitutional, military,
political, social, commercial, cultural and linguistic questions and many
others besides.
In the same way the multiplicity of the actors who played a part in the
history of the British Empire further adds to its complexity. In Britain the
questions of Empire concerned the whole country in one way or another.
From the monarch and the government, to business and individual
migrants, no-one was left entirely untouched.6 The Empire could also take
on a quite different image when seen from the different perspectives of
one particular group, political party, interest group or individual in Britain.
This was even the case within the British government as a whole where
the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office, the Indian Office, as well as all the
other departments dealing with domestic areas that were necessarily also
impacted by imperial affairs, all had their own specific considerations and
objectives. Each of them saw the Empire through its own particular prism.
Lord Curzon, one of the leading British imperialists of his day and
Viceroy of India, wondered in 1905: “If these are the rival angles of vision
of contemporary authorities, what will be the perplexities of the future
historian?”7 This confusion becomes even more evident when we extend
these different perspectives to bring in those of the peoples in the colonies
themselves. Here, as in Britain, there can be no one simple dimension.
Instead we have to take into account the different, often conflicting,
interpretations and ideas as to what the Empire was and what it meant.
Between the white settler communities, each with its own regional
specificities and each divided within itself on lines of class, religion,
profession, origins and occasionally language, the indigenous populations,
and the numerous other diasporas that were spread all around the British
Empire in different directions and ways, there were inevitably and
understandably fundamental differences of opinions. The view from the
“periphery” of Empire is, therefore, no simpler than it is from the
Introduction
5
“metropolitan” perspective. It is important to bear them all in mind and to
recognise that any one-dimensional approach will always be incomplete.
In particular, as Frederick Cooper has emphasised, we need to recognise
that the colonised peoples were not simply subjects but that they were also
agents in the history of empire.8 As such we should avoid focusing too
much on the history of the Empire as seen from Britain, ignoring the roles
played by the colonised, and thus view this history from below as much as
from above.9
As the examples studied in the following chapters will show, there is
also considerable debate as to what actually constitutes a colonial
relationship, on just who were, or are, the colonisers, the colonists and the
colonised. The boundaries and distinctions between them are not always
so easily drawn. The case study of the Falklands, seen in Chapter Six,
raises these important questions and asks how we should regard the
present population living on these islands. We might also see Ireland as
another ambiguous case in point: as a country that was both colonised and
a coloniser, as a “colony at home” but also all the while providing the
British Empire overseas with settlers, administrators and soldiers.10
Beyond these two examples we need more generally to consider the no
less passionate debates around the questions of resistance to colonial rule,
and the coercion of this resistance, as well as the degree of collaboration
between the colonial power and local elites.11
All these questions need to be taken into consideration when we turn to
the decolonisation of the British Empire, when we consider what exactly
we mean by “decolonisation”, and why and how it came about? The
examples taken in this book, those of Ireland, the Middle East, Rhodesia–
Zimbabwe, the Falklands and Hong Kong, give us some important
insights. Taken as the simple transfer of sovereignty from the colonial
power to the newly independent state, decolonisation can, in some ways,
appear as a relatively straightforward process. However, over the past two
decades, it has been increasingly recognised by all schools of imperial
history that decolonisation is about much more than this. Even if we look
at decolonisation in the seemingly simple constitutional terms, it still
cannot be seen as a clear-cut event. Certainly the moment of independence
has often taken on great symbolic significance. Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous
words at the moment of Indian independence still resonate today12, along
with many other examples from across the ex-colonies. We need,
however, to take a more complete view. Indians, and other nations around
the world, quite understandably celebrate such momentous events but the
move from a colonial situation to national independence is rarely so
straightforward, nor is it completed in an instant.
6
Chapter One
As the case studies dealt with here show, decolonisation was often
achieved over a very considerable period, and was done so incrementally,
even if the pace of change, and the ways in which this was achieved,
varied significantly from one example to another. For the Dominions, as in
the case of Australia seen below in Chapter Four, full national
independence came gradually over many decades. The 1931 Statute of
Westminster is rightly considered as a key moment in this process but it
did not mark an end in itself. Indeed, the Statute was not finally ratified by
all the Dominions concerned until several years later. Even then there
remained significant links tying these countries to Britain. There are some
remnants which subsist today, notably through the British monarchy.
Likewise, in Ireland the “War of Independence” fought from 1919 to 1921
did not fully achieve its aim. The Irish Free State, which had the status of a
Dominion, did not fully break away from Britain constitutionally for
several more years. The north of Ireland was never included in this and
remains today an integral part of the United Kingdom. In Britain’s socalled “informal empire”, as exemplified in the Middle East that is the
subject of Chapter Three, Britain’s control was never formalised in an
overtly colonial fashion, no matter how deeply British influence went in
these countries. The process of withdrawing from these situations was, as
Richard Davis underlines, taken only very reluctantly and in the belief that
Britain would continue to be able to play a significant part in these
countries’ affairs once it had accepted to renounce its position as the
mandatory power. From this perspective, the granting of “independence”
to Egypt in 1922 or to Iraq in 1932 certainly did not mean Britain giving
up its role there altogether. Nor did British governments see
decolonisation elsewhere in the Empire as meaning an end of British
influence. The creation of the British Commonwealth, later re-branded
simply as the Commonwealth, was seen by many as a means of continuing
by other means the influence that Britain had previously enjoyed via its
Empire. The Commonwealth, it was hoped, at least by some, would allow
Britain to maintain many of the commercial, political and strategic
advantages that it had enjoyed in its ex-colonies. Although these hopes
have not, over time, been fulfilled some observers have questioned
whether the newly independent states in fact really achieved this position
or whether a form of neo-colonialism did not simply replace the previous,
and more overt, forms of western control. Others have pointed to the ongoing position of economic dependency of many ex-colonies and of the
continuing cultural imperialism of the west.
Given all these complex considerations there can, therefore, be no
simple, or all-encompassing, explanation of how and why decolonisation
Introduction
7
happened. The examples considered in the following pages are no more
than a selection of the far more numerous examples from the history of the
end of the British Empire and of the “British world system”. They do,
however, show the diversity of the patterns in which this process
developed. The literature on these questions is extensive and there are few
signs of any broad consensus emerging between the various interpretations
and explanations given. The variations in the terminology employed in the
different accounts reflect these fundamental divergences as to what
decolonisation meant, or means, and as to how and why it happened. In
some accounts the British Empire was “lost” (accidentally? mislaid? or
seen, euphemistically, as a death?), in others it “fell”, “crumbled”,
“collapsed” or “imploded”; for some writers it was “liquidated” or
“eclipsed” (but by what other body?). For other imperial historians
Britain’s “imperial sunset” was perhaps tinged with a sense of regret at its
passing. The more Anglo-centric interpretations have argued that the
Empire was “unbuilt” and the colonies “given up” by governments in
London (reluctantly and pragmatically, or in a gesture of enlightened
generosity towards the colonies?). In the same light sovereignty was
“transferred” (suggesting an orderly handing over of responsibility).
Opposed to these views, other historians have chosen to emphasise the
sense of resistance to colonial rule on the part of the colonised peoples
and, in response to this resistance, the determination of various British
governments to employ different forms of repression and force to hold
onto Britain’s colonial power. In these examples decolonisation was
fought for and won, often after a long and bloody struggle; the colonies
thus “escaped” and were “liberated” from the British Empire. Neologisms
such as “disimperialism” and “de-Dominionisation” have also been used
to identify and explain these events. As all these different expressions
show, there is no sign of agreement. The debate between the conflicting
interpretations of these events will, no doubt, go on for some time to come.
Notes
1
John Darwin, The End of the British Empire. The Historical Debate (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1991), 4.
2
Ronald Hyam, Britain’s Declining Empire. The Road to Decolonization, 19181968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3.
3
See, for example, Daniel Silverfarb, Britain’s Informal Empire in the Middle
East. A Case Study of Iraq, 1929-1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)
and Rory Miller, “Informal Empire in Latin America”, in Robin Winks (ed.), The
Oxford History of the British Empire. Volume V: Historiography (London: Oxford
University Press, 1999).
8
4
Chapter One
John Darwin, The Empire Project. The Rise and Fall of the British World-System
1830-1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
5
Hyam, Britain’s Declining Empire, 7-8.
6
The degree to which Britain was affected by its Empire is the subject of one of
the most heated debates in the field of imperial history between those sometimes
described as the “minimalist” historians who argue that British society was not
deeply concerned by Empire and those others, termed “integralists”, who see the
Empire as a fundamental part of British society, of British values, thoughts and
ideas. See Richard Davis, “Perspectives on the End of the British Empire: The
Historiographical Debate”, in La décolonisation de l’empire britannique, Actes du
colloque tenu à l’Université de Strasbourg, 15 décembre 2012 (Rouen: Cercles,
2013). For a more detailed discussion of all these questions see Robin Winks (ed.),
The Oxford History of the British Empire. Volume V: Historiography (London:
Oxford University Press, 1999) and in particular Chapter 34 “Decolonization and
the End of Empire” by John Darwin.
7
Quoted in Glen Balfour Paul, “Britain’s Informal Empire in the Middle East”, in
Judith Brown and William Roger Louis (eds), The Oxford History of the British
Empire. Volume 4. The Twentieth century (London: Oxford University Press,
1999), 490.
8
See Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, Practice
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
9
See the work of the Subaltern Studies group of historians. For example, Ranajit
Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty (eds), Selected Subaltern Studies (London: Oxford
University Press, 1988), Ranajit Guha (ed.), A Subaltern Studies Reader, 19861995 (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), and Vinayak Chaturvedi
(ed.), Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial (London: Verso, 2000).
10
See Chapter Two below, Karine Bigand, “Ireland and the end of Empire”.
11
See Ronald Robinson, “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism:
Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration”, in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe (eds),
Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (Harlow: Longman, 1972). Robinson’s
emphasis on the role played by local collaborative groups has been challenged by
many other historians. See, for example, several of the contributions to The New
Imperial Histories Reader (London: Routledge, 2009) edited by Stephen Howe.
12
He said: “Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny. Now the time has come
when we shall redeem our pledge-not wholly or in full measure-but very
substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will
awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, but rarely in history, when we step
out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long
suppressed, finds utterance.” Speech on the Granting of Indian Independence, 14
August 1947 (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1947nehru1.html).
CHAPTER TWO
IRELAND AND THE END OF THE EMPIRE
KARINE BIGAND
“If we lose Ireland, we have lost the Empire.” (Chief of the Imperial
General Staff, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson to Malcolm Arnold
Robertson, 30 March 1921)
An opponent to Irish Home Rule, the veteran British Conservative
Lord Salisbury, saw the idea of losing Ireland as an open door to Indian
Home Rule and the end of the Empire as a whole. In a much quoted article
published in the Quarterly Review in 1883, he placed developments in
Ireland at the core of imperial politics, suggesting that there would be a
domino effect leading to imperial “disintegration”, should Home Rule be
granted to Ireland.1 The same domino theory was embraced by Irish
Unionists, among them Sir Henry Wilson, whose 1921 prediction suggests
similar fears, three years into the Anglo-Irish War – or Irish War of
Independence. His quote also reveals the dual status of Ireland in the
Empire in the eyes of many, both as part of the metropole but also at the
same time under a colonial-style administration.
The question of the constitutional status of Ireland as part of the United
Kingdom or as a colony has been a favourite theme with historians,
especially of the early modern period.2 From its inception in 1541, the
Kingdom of Ireland was at the interface between metropole and colony, in
the sense that the Crown’s Irish policy was closer to that implemented in
its colonies than in the rest of England, later Great Britain. For instance,
plantation policies were experimented from the 1550s to the midseventeenth century as a way to “pacify” Ireland through the settlement of
“loyal” subjects from England and Scotland. Early modern historians
consider that Ireland was used as a laboratory for the colonial enterprise in
North America and the Caribbean, sometimes with settlers testing their
luck in Ireland before moving on across the Atlantic. From the end of the
seventeenth century, a non-indigenous community, the Protestant
10
Chapter Two
Ascendancy, controlled the political sphere and land-ownership across
Ireland, while the Catholic majority was subject to discriminatory penal
laws until its political emancipation in 1829. Before Irish representation
was transferred to Westminster with the 1800 Act of Union, the Irish
Parliament was subordinate to the London Parliament, except in the last
two decades of its existence. After Ireland became an integral part of the
United Kingdom under the terms of the 1800 Act of Union, a LordGovernor was maintained in Dublin, whereas no similar authority was
kept in Edinburgh after the 1707 Act of Union between England and
Scotland. Indeed, colonial-style administration in Ireland later served as a
model for the Vice-Royalty of India introduced in 1876. Further emulation
from the British colonial experience in Ireland can be seen in the fact that
from 1907 all officers in colonial police forces had to attend training with
the Royal Irish Constabulary in Dublin.3 As Irish nationalism developed in
the nineteenth century it clearly and directly assimilated British rule in
Ireland to imperialism or colonialism elsewhere in the world. Likewise,
parallels may be drawn between the Easter rising of 1916 and
contemporary instances of imperial unrest in Nigeria, India, South Africa
and Egypt.4
Yet for all its colonial experience and the anti-imperialist stance of
Irish nationalists, Ireland was also an integral part of the metropole and
indeed Irish men and women often took an active part in shaping the
Empire as migrants, soldiers, colonial administrators and missionaries.5
Migration from Ireland gave the white dominions of Canada, Australia and
New Zealand large parts of their populations and issues or divisions
pertaining to Irish politics, for example the Orange Order or Ancient
Hibernian Order lodges, the pro- or anti-Home Rule demonstrations,
migrated with the people. Irish regiments were for many years part of the
colonial administration in India. At times they challenged the imperial
order as in the case of the Connaught Rangers mutiny in 19216; at other
times they enforced it, sometimes brutally, when, for example, Brigadier
Reginald Dyer, born in India to Irish Protestant parents, ordered his troops
to shoot civilian protesters at Amritsar in 1919.7 Irishmen also frequently
occupied positions in the colonial civil service. The example of Tipperaryborn Michael O’Dwyer, the sixth son in a Catholic family of fourteen, who
was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab in 1912, is a case in
point. Likewise, Irish missionaries from all persuasions were very active in
Africa, notably in Nigeria.
This rapid sketch of Ireland’s involvement in the Empire shows its
unusual position as historically both a part of the metropole and yet one
that was ruled as a colony. It also points to Ireland’s dual role within the
Ireland and the End of the Empire
11
Empire as both builder and challenger of the imperial project. Historian
Alvin Jackson summarized Ireland’s relation to the Empire in the
following words:
“Ireland was simultaneously a bulwark of the Empire and a mine within its
walls. Irish people were simultaneously major participants in the Empire
and a significant source of subversion. For the Irish the Empire was both
an agent of liberation and of oppression. It provided both the path to social
advancement and the shackles of incarceration”.8
This chapter will examine what repercussions Ireland’s trajectory to
independence had on the Empire and on the broader decolonisation
process. It will look at the rippling effect and constitutional impact of the
creation of the Irish Free State and show how, paradoxically, Ireland acted
as a source of inspiration and sometimes as a support for nationalist as
well as loyalist movements across the Empire.
Ireland and the Empire: connections and interdependence
The events that defined Ireland’s road to independence are deeply
enmeshed in the imperial context and a mutual influence can be observed
between Ireland and the Empire. The strong Irish contingent and the
circulation of news across the Empire meant that the debate over Home
Rule was exported to those countries with large Irish communities. Proand anti-Home Rule demonstrations took place in Canada, Australia and
New Zealand, with similar tensions between opponents and partisans in
these countries as in Ireland itself.9 As already mentioned, the 1916 Easter
rising in Ireland occurred alongside other instances of imperial unrest.
John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, pleaded with
Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, for a pardon to be granted to Irish rebels
similar to those that had been granted to Afrikaner rebels in 1914, arguing
that “the precedent of Botha’s treatment of the rebels in South Africa is the
only wise and safe one to go”.10 Yet the Royal Commission on the Irish
rebellion, chaired by Lord Harding, then the Vice-Roy of India, decided
against this, possibly for fear of further contagion across the Empire. In
December 1919, a cartoon by New Zealand-born David Low shocked the
British audience by depicting what the cartoonist saw as the common fate
of India and Ireland under the British colonial yoke. Published in the
Liberal evening paper The Star with the caption “Progress to Liberty –
Amritsar style”, the cartoon shows two men, wearing respectively a hat
marked ‘Ireland’ and an Indian turban, crawling on their stomachs under
12
Chapter Two
the command of a fearsome British officer holding his sword out.11 David
Low later recalled the row raised by the obvious reference to the Amritsar
“crawling order” in the context of the Anglo-Irish war: “This was a
cartoon so far removed from the customary pleasantries that it shocked.
For some days sizzling letters poured in”.12 The Anglo-Irish war that
lasted from 1919 to 1921 saw the Irish Republican Army develop guerrilla
tactics that inspired other nationalist movements and which seriously
worried colonial administrators across the British Empire. In October
1920, the Secretary of State for India and Liberal politician, Edwin
Montagu, expressed his fears that “a campaign comparable to the Sinn
Féin campaign in Ireland would be almost impossible to deal with except
by punishment and revenge, certainly not by prevention”.13
The 1920 Government of Ireland Act partitioned Ireland by creating
two new jurisdictions, Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, both with
separate devolved institutions within the United Kingdom. Partition was
embraced by Ulster unionists as it guaranteed that Northern Ireland would
remain part of the United Kingdom but it was rejected as being too little,
too late by southern nationalists. By mid-1921, and after a bloody year on
both sides, both the Sinn Féin leadership of the IRA and the British
government were more amenable to negotiations. A truce was declared on
11 July 1921, a few weeks after the Northern Irish Parliament was
inaugurated. Negotiations between the government and Sinn Féin started in
October of the same year. They resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty that saw
the creation of a self-governing dominion – the Irish Free State – in the
twenty-six southern counties. Again, the Irish and imperial contexts
overlapped during those years. The inauguration of the Northern Irish
Parliament on 22 June coincided with the opening of the Imperial
conference three days earlier. The existing dominions were in favour of a
rapid solution to the Irish deadlock as it created tensions within their own
Irish communities. Among those present, Jan Christian Smuts, the
representative of South Africa, was pivotal in softening the British
position, persuading George V to offer dominion status to Southern
Ireland and convincing Eamon de Valera to accept the offer. Smuts
considered that the British government should not allow colonial situations
to deteriorate for too long, as these would be potentially dangerous for the
rest of the Empire. A month before the Imperial conference, he declared:
“Unless Dominion status is settled soon in a way which will satisfy the
legitimate aspirations of these young nations, we must look for separatist
movements in the Commonwealth … The warning against always being
too late in coming to a proper settlement, which the example of Ireland
Ireland and the End of the Empire
13
gives to the whole Commonwealth, is one which we can only neglect at
our own peril.”14
Likewise, on a visit to Dublin, he advised the President of the Dáil, Eamon
de Valera, against unrealistic demands, among them that for an Irish
republic, warning him that: “The British people will never give you this
choice. You are next door to them”.15
The loss of Ireland led the British coalition government to adopt more
repressive policies against nationalist leaders across the Empire. In India,
although Montagu was committed to a negotiated solution with nationalists
and gradual self-government, as shown in the 1919 Government of India
Act, pressure from the Conservative side of the coalition government led
to Gandhi being arrested in 1922. Likewise, the radical Egyptian leader,
Saad Zaghlul, was deported to the Seychelles in December 1921. Within
the Irish Free State, the constitutional settlement of the Anglo-Irish Treaty
was not consensual, since it led to civil war between the partisans and
opponents of the new status. The dominion status offered to Ireland during
the peace negotiations entailed an oath of allegiance to the Crown,
membership of the Commonwealth and a defence agreement. As such, it
was not the preferred option of the Irish delegation which sought to
achieve – albeit in vain – an “external association” status, where Ireland
would be an independent republic, freely associated with the Commonwealth.
Despite the initial failure to achieve broad independence, the subsequent
participation of Ireland in imperial conferences led to an extended
definition of constitutional independence for dominions and members of
the Commonwealth.16 Ireland attended the Imperial conferences of 1926,
1929 and 1930, each of which saw greater independence being granted to
the dominions. Using the provisions of the newly voted Statute of
Westminster, which repealed the British Parliament’s right to legislate for
the dominions, de Valera was able to pass legislation “to chip away at the
powers of the Crown in the internal affairs in Ireland”.17 As the head of the
Irish government from 1932, he first rid the 1922 Irish constitution of the
oath of allegiance to the Crown, before introducing a new constitution in
1937 which made Ireland a republic in all but name. Ireland’s neutrality
during the Second World War – referred to as “the Emergency” in Ireland
– was a clear sign of the independence it was able to acquire by lobbying
for a more sovereign status for the dominions. In 1949, Ireland officially
declared itself a Republic and was in the position to enter a free
association with the Commonwealth, thereby achieving the “external
association” status it had campaigned for in 1921. It chose to leave the
Commonwealth instead and has remained a non-member ever since.
14
Chapter Two
Conversely, the “external association” status was what the newly created
Indian Republic opted for, by choosing to join the Commonwealth.
Links between the Irish and imperial contexts stretched beyond the
constitutional status of the dominions, further underlining the colonial
dimension of the Irish case. Partition, first experimented in Ireland, was
later used again as a template to solve controversial and conflicting
colonial circumstances in India in 1947 and in Palestine in 1948.18 The
fact that the same policy was repeated, and that it led to long-lasting
disputes in all three instances, points to the inability of the British officials
to take the full measure of the nationalist movements and grasp their
representative character.19 Deirdre McMahon describes “the pervasive
belief in political and military circles that the troubles were being caused
by a minority of malcontents and that once they were under control, the
cowed moderate majority would emerge”.20 This was true of other later
situations, like the crisis in Cyprus in 1956 for instance. Just as the
specificities of local situations seemed to be barely taken into consideration,
with similar policies being implemented in several territories, there was
also a basic similarity in the ways in which various nationalist risings were
treated. It is interesting to note that the notorious Black and Tans, many of
whom were First World War veterans, were sent to join the British
gendarmerie in Palestine and the British Air Forces in Iraq after they were
disbanded in Ireland.21
Irish nationalist influence abroad: the case of India
The links between Irish nationalism and other nationalist movements
across the Empire were long-established. Irish history was known
throughout the Empire thanks to its long and eventually successful
struggle for independence, going as far back as 1798, as well as to the
large Irish Diaspora. Irish nationalists influenced other nationalists across
the Empire and were also themselves deeply influenced by these other
independence movements, in particular the Boers. Three of the 1916
leaders had been active members of the Irish Transvaal Committee which
was created in 1899. Arthur Griffith, the founding father of Sinn Féin,
spent some time in South Africa in the 1890s, while IRA commander
Michael Collins made no secret of his admiration for the Boers. Fuelled by
the Boer example, Irish nationalism in turn influenced other indigenous
movements, in particular Indian nationalism. Griffith drew many parallels
between Ireland and India in the papers he published and, conversely,
early Sinn Féin was a source of interest for the young Jawaharlal Nehru
who, aged 18, visited Dublin in 1907. He wrote to his father: “Have you
Ireland and the End of the Empire
15
heard of Sinn Féin in Ireland? It is a most interesting movement and
resembles very closely the so-called Extremist movement in India. Their
policy is not to beg for favours but to wrest them”.22 Over the years, ties
between Ireland and India grew stronger and multi-tiered, showing serious
cross-fertilisation at work. Links could be indirect and fuelled by Irish
nationalist writings published in India in translation form.23 In 1930 for
instance, the Chittatong armoury in Bengal was raided by a self-styled
Indian Republican Army, inspired by their reading of Patrick Pearse.24 But
many of the links were more immediate, developing either in Europe or in
the United States. A series of associations and leagues in Europe
facilitated contact. For instance, the Indian-Irish Independence League was
created in 1932 “to help by every means possible to secure the complete
national, social and economic independence of the people of India and
Ireland”.25 Among other things, it facilitated the transport of Indian
activists to Europe – for instance the future Congress Party president
Subhas Chandra Bose was in Ireland for two weeks in 1936 on what was
described as a “mini-state-visit”.26 The Comintern-backed League against
Imperialism and the Anti-Imperialist Vigilance Association were other
bodies where Indo-Irish connections developed in the 1920s and 1930s. In
the United States, de Valera addressed the India Freedom dinner of the
Friends of Freedom of India in 1920. In a speech entitled “Our cause is a
common cause”, he pointed to the shared fate of both countries:
“We of Ireland and you of India must each of us endeavour, both as
separate peoples and in combination, to rid ourselves of the vampire that is
fattening on our blood and we must never allow ourselves to forget to what
weapon it was by which Washington rid his country of this same vampire.
Our cause is a common cause.”27
The way Ireland engaged with radical nationalists evolved over time
and reveals different tactics as to its role in the Empire. As shown by the
above quote, associating the Indian and Irish causes was a way for Ireland
to be identified as an oppressed people at a time when, in the early 1920s,
it had not yet fully achieved its independence. Irish nationalists also
funded Indian radical movements in the United States but did not get
anything much in return apart from symbolic gifts – de Valera on a visit to
the United States received a tricolour and a sword from the Gadar Party,
which Sinn Féin helped to fund.28 From 1922 onwards, waning funds and
the immediate priority of the Civil War meant that Irish involvement in
Indian nationalism was less visible. In the 1930s however, as Ireland was
acquiring more and more autonomy as a sovereign dominion, it
endeavoured to promote itself as a facilitator of Indian nationalism.29
16
Chapter Two
Indian activists who were denied access to Britain could nevertheless enter
Europe on Irish visas. They could also avail of the printing facilities in
Ireland when censorship restricted the spread of nationalist propaganda in
the United Kingdom. There was also an Indo-Irish Free Trade shop in
Dublin that sold goods directly sourced in India, having circumvented the
British imperial tariffs.30 Likewise, the Irish republican press encouraged
Indian nationalists to demand full independence rather than settle for
dominion status. An article entitled “Ireland, a warning to India”,
published in An Phoblacht in 1932, argued that:
“We have often counselled the Indian people to take warning by the fate of
Ireland. We repeat that counsel now. Let the disastrous Anglo-Irish Treaty
serve as a reminder to India to avoid the mistake our people made in 1921.
If India is wise, she will refuse to discuss any assessment or any
constitution with Britain. She will deny the claim of Britain to have any
part, however small, in the framing of a constitution for India.”31
Such Indo-Irish connections did not go unnoticed by the Indian Police
Intelligence which, by 1932, was making notes of any Indian activists seen
in libraries reading or borrowing books on Irish history or discussing the
lessons of Irish nationalism in public places.32 The fear among British
officials was that India was going to follow the Irish revolutionary road.
The British trade commissioner in Dublin, William Peters, commented on
de Valera’s friendship with Vathalbhai Patel, the President of the Indian
Legislative Assembly from 1925 to 1930, by saying that “it rather
emphasizes the fact that many of us have urged that the Congress Party are
largely founding themselves on the methods by which the Irish Free State
secured political independence from Great Britain”.33 Lord Zetland,
Secretary of State for India, speaking at an Irish Situation Committee
meeting in 1936 made a similar remark:
“For many years past the revolutionary element in India had taken Ireland
as their model, and when in 1921 it had appeared that the Irish extremists,
as the reward of their resort to violence, were being given the substance of
their demands, Indian opinion had been greatly affected.”34
Yet such fears may have been unfounded, since it is to be noted that
Ireland’s links were not with mainstream Indian nationalists but with
rather more radical characters. Both Bose and Patel grew to be strong
opponents of Gandhi and Nehru, both of whom shunned revolutionary
methods. In their speeches, the two fathers of Indian independence
sometimes referred to Ireland but it was more lip service than the sign of
Ireland and the End of the Empire
17
any real partnership.35 After 1932 and de Valera’s return to power, Irish
connections with Indian nationalism were more a case of Irish republicans
staging themselves as champions of self-government, thereby furthering
their own anti-Irish Free State cause36 rather than actually helping
mainstream Indian nationalism on the road it had chosen for the country.
Ulster resistance to indigenous self-government
and loyalist movements in Africa
The influence of the Irish example of the road to independence was not
limited to nationalist circles. Indeed, just as the struggle for Irish
independence stimulated other nationalist movement, so the determination
of Ulster Protestants to remain part of the Empire was inspirational for
other British communities across the Empire. A similar echo existed
between Northern Ireland and some parts of the Empire as that between
nationalist movements in Ireland and elsewhere in the Empire. As already
mentioned, the question of Home Rule divided Irish communities across
the Empire to the point that the dominions’ governments got involved in
looking for a negotiated way out of the Anglo-Irish war. But this issue
reached beyond the limits of the Irish Diaspora. For instance, Rudyard
Kipling, who had famously supported the British cause in the Boer War
and whom George Orwell called “the prophet of British imperialism”37,
published a poem in April 1912, just as the third Home Rule Bill was
being introduced in Westminster. Entitled “Ulster”, its third stanza fully
expressed the sense of betrayal felt by Ulster unionists and later by other
communities loyal to the Crown at the mention of indigenous selfgovernment in the countries where they lived. The poem was also a
reminder of Kipling’s own distrust of the Liberal party’s colonial policies:
“The blood our fathers spilt,
Our love, our toils, our pains
Are counted us for guilt
And only bind our chains –
Before an Empire's eyes
The traitor claims his price.
What need of further lies?
We are the sacrifice.”38
Solidarity between partisans of the Empire was not a one-way matter.
In 1920, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, who had ordered his troops to
shoot at Amritsar the previous year, was expelled from the army. In a
debate in the House of Commons, Edward Carson, the leading Irish
18
Chapter Two
unionist, took his defence against the Secretary of State for War, Winston
Churchill, on the basis that “to break a man under the circumstances of this
case is un-English.”39 Loyalty to the Crown and Britain was widespread
among the white settler communities in the Empire, many of which were
of Protestant Irish stock. As more equality of rights was being introduced
and as the voices of minorities or indigenous populations were being
increasingly taken into account, Ulster became a beacon of resistance for
white settler populations in several African countries. In Kenya for
instance, talks were organised in 1921 about giving equal rights to Indians.
White settlers rapidly organised their resistance, standing ready to take up
arms against Britain to defend the Empire and their own privileged
position in it. Declarations proclaiming their loyalty to the Crown as well
as their determination to defend their position and using the phraseology
of the Ulster Unionist Covenant – “at all costs” and by “all necessary
means” – were widely circulated.40 Brigadier-General Philip Wheatley, a
former Indian army officer and a leader of the settler community in Kenya,
reflected on the similarities with the Ulster situation in a letter to his father
in 1921:
“It is a sad reflection on English political life but it is unfortunately a true
one that for many years past any English government has yielded to force
… The problem before us in many aspects resembles that of the Ulster
people … Both communities are fighting to remain in the British Empire
and to maintain its integrity.”41
Similarly, white settlers’ fraternity organisations mushroomed in South
Africa and Rhodesia, their names proclaiming their loyalty and patriotism
in a way reminiscent of the Ulster Volunteer Force or the Ulster Defence
Association: the ‘British Patriotic Union’, the ‘Daughters of Empire’, the
‘Flag Vigilance Committee’, the ‘Union Jack Legion’, the ‘Sons of
England Patriotic and Benevolent Society’, or the ‘New Guard or the
Empire Group’.42 All these groups shared the feeling of having been
abandoned by Britain and that Britain was abdicating from the Empire. In
Southern Rhodesia in 1922, white settlers resisted the British
government’s plan to incorporate the region into the Union of South
Africa. The Sons of England Patriotic and Benevolent Society deplored,
once again, the un-English turn things were taking:
“The Imperial Government, as indicated in the case of Ulster, seems rather
to enjoy putting pressure on a small loyal English community to surrender
its inheritance and its liberties to the majority disposal of a much bigger
[community] that is – well – not so English and not so loyal.”43
Ireland and the End of the Empire
19
Such references to Ulster continued as decolonisation progressed in
these areas. As early as 1942 the Empire historian Reginald Coupland
commented on the Indian situation that “the old-standing quarrel between
Catholics and Protestants in Ulster has certain similar features with the
Hindu-Muslim quarrel in India”.44 Indeed, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader
of the Muslim League, drew a parallel between the situation of Muslims in
India and Protestants in Ireland and rather than lobby for a minority status
within a wider Indian federation, fully embraced partition along the same
lines as the Northern Irish model.45 Speaking to his party in April 1943, he
declared:
“The Irish Nationalist Leader, Redman [sic], met Carson, Ulster leader,
and told him, ‘Look here, can’t we come to some settlement? Why do you
want to separate from Ireland? Mind you, there is not one-millionth part of
the differences between the people of Ulster and Ireland’. What was
Carson’s reply? ‘I do not want to be ruled by you’. My reply to Mr Gandhi
is, ‘I do not want to be ruled by you’.”46
In 1948, the Natal British settlers objected to the Nationalist Afrikaner
Party’s plan to create a Republic in South Africa. An anti-Republican
League was created, which issued a ‘Natal Covenant’ styled after the
Ulster Covenant of 1912. The demand for a South African Republic was
dropped. British settlers, however, no longer objected to this proposal
when it was revived in 1960. Southern Rhodesian settlers were more
resilient. As talks on decolonisation started in the early 1960s, the white
governing elite asked for the colony to become part of the United
Kingdom along the same lines as Northern Ireland, rather than be given its
independence.47 Claims of loyalty to the Crown and to what they saw as
the British motherland did not, however, sway the British government. In
1965, rather than accept the impending negotiated independence that
would have involved majority rule and equal indigenous rights, Southern
Rhodesia issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United
Kingdom, maintaining a white-only government until 1978. Again the
connection with Northern Ireland was underlined, both in Parliament and
by The Irish Times:
“[The Rhodesian] claim of unswerving allegiance to the British Crown,
genuine or not, cannot in context be considered as other than an attempt to
salvage sympathy in Britain. Bonar Law and his friends presented the
Ulster crisis to their Unionist followers in the same light that Mr Smith [the
leader of the Rhodesian government] sees the prospect of Rhodesia with a
negro majority.”48
20
Chapter Two
The Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence received some
support in Northern Ireland as Rhodesians were seen to have been pushed
into secession to protect their British identity. Interestingly, a debate later
took place in Northern Ireland on the opportunity of a similar declaration,
following the suspension of the Stormont Parliament in 1972.49 This was
yet another example of the constant echo existing between Ireland and the
rest of the Empire. To King George V’s remark at the opening of the
Northern Irish Parliament in June 1921 that “everything that touches
Ireland finds an echo in the remotest part of the Empire”50 one may add:
“and vice-versa”.
Conclusion
Ireland’s dual status within the Empire as part of the metropole with a
colonial-style administration, but also as both a builder and challenger of
it, coloured the impact its independence had on the rest of the Empire.
Before and after 1922, Ireland was both an example to emulate or to avoid.
While Irish nationalism genuinely influenced other independence movements,
Ireland also used its connections with other parts of the Empire to promote
its own cause and role, first as a victim of British imperialism then as a
facilitator for other indigenous movements. Similarly, nationalist groups
were familiar with the long Irish struggle for independence and made
references to it to promote their own cause, whether they genuinely
wanted to emulate the Irish route to independence or were merely paying it
lip service. Resistance to Irish independence, mostly personified by Ulster
unionists, also served as a symbolic and rhetorical point of reference for
other British communities across the Empire, who shared the same deep
allegiance to the British Crown, and the same sense of being on a
civilizing mission and siege mentality with regards to the surrounding
majority. Ironically, by the 1960s, by which time decolonisation was
already well underway, Northern Ireland remained, possibly with
Rhodesia, an anachronistic model within the Commonwealth. This
anomaly was picked up on by cartoonist Michael Cummings in March
1971, as the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, unable to contain the
escalating IRA violence without further intervention from the British
government, had just resigned. A cartoon published in The Sunday Express
shows British Prime Minister Edward Heath and Home Secretary Reginald
Maudling leaning over an unfolded map of Ulster on which the figurine of
a British soldier stands, a clear reference to the military support that the
government was about to send to Northern Ireland. On the wall behind
them, posters show cheerful soldiers leaving former British colonies such
Ireland and the End of the Empire
21
as India, Cyprus, Kenya, Malaya. The caption, pronounced by Prime
Minister Heath, says a great deal about the unusual status of Northern
Ireland in the early 1970s: “What was so marvellous about the rest of the
British Commonwealth is was that we could always leave it”51
(Cummings, 1971).
Notes
1
Lord Robert, Marquess of Salisbury, “Disintegration”. Quarterly Review. 156
(July-October), 1883. Reproduced in Paul Smith (ed.), Lord Salisbury on Politics:
a Selection from his Articles in the Quarterly Review, 1860-1883 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1972), 335-376.
2
See, for example, Jane Ohlmeyer, “A Laboratory for Empire? Early Modern
Ireland and English Imperialism”, in Kevin Kenny (ed.), Ireland and the British
Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 26-60.
3
See Keith Jeffery (ed.), “An Irish Empire?” Aspects of Ireland and the British
Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 10.
4
Deirdre McMahon, “Ireland and the Empire-Commonwealth, 1900-1948”, in
Judith Brown and William Roger Louis (eds), The Oxford History of the British
Empire. Volume IV: The Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999), 141.
5
See Kevin Kenny, “The Irish in the Empire”, in Kevin Kenny (ed.), Ireland and
the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 90-122.
6
Michael Silvestri, “Nationalism, Empire and Memory: the Connaught Rangers
mutiny, June 1920”. History Ireland 18, no.4 (2010), 26-29. Keith Jeffery, “The
Irish military tradition and the British Empire”, in Keith Jeffery (ed.), “An Irish
Empire?” Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1996), 94-122.
7
Pierce A. Grace, “The Amritsar massacre, 1919: the Irish connection”. History
Ireland 18, no.4 (2010), 24-25. Derek Sayer, “British reaction to the Amritsar
Massacre, 1919-1920”, Past and Present 131 (1991), 130-64.
8
Alvin Jackson, “Ireland, the Union, and the Empire, 1800-1960”, in Kevin Kenny
(ed.), Ireland and the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),
123.
9
McMahon, “Ireland and the Empire-Commonwealth, 1900-1948”, 148-49.
10
Deirdre McMahon, “Ireland, the Empire and the Commonwealth”, in Kevin
Kenny (ed.), Ireland and the British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2004), 200.
11
David Low, The Star, 16 December 1919. British Cartoon Archive
(http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/LSE6183).
12
David Low, Low’s Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956), 98.
13
McMahon, “Ireland and the Empire-Commonwealth, 1900-1948”, 146.
14
Jeffery, “An Irish Empire?” Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire, 7.
15
McMahon, “Ireland, the Empire and the Commonwealth”, 208.
22
16
Chapter Two
McMahon, “Ireland, the Empire and the Commonwealth”, 210-12.
McMahon, “Ireland, the Empire and the Commonwealth”, 212.
18
William Roger Louis, The Ends of British Imperialism. The Scramble for
Empire, Suez and Decolonization (London: IB Tauris, 2006), 391-410.
19
McMahon, “Ireland and the Empire-Commonwealth, 1900-1948, 143.
20
McMahon, “Ireland, the Empire and the Commonwealth”, 206.
21
Jeffery, “An Irish Empire?” Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire, 10.
22
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empires, 1875-1914 (New York: Vintage Books,
1989), 272.
23
Kate O’Malley, “Ireland, India and empire: Indo-Irish separatist political links
and perceived threats to the British Empire”, in Tadhg Foley and Maureen
O’Connor (eds), Ireland and India. Colonies, Culture and Empire (Dublin: Irish
Academic Press, 2006), 205.
24
Michael Silvestri, “‘315 million of India with Ireland to the last’: Irish and
Indian nationalists in North America”. in Tadhg Foley and Maureen O’Connor
(eds), Ireland and India. Colonies, Culture and Empire (Dublin: Irish Academic
Press, 2006), 253.
25
Kate O’Malley, Ireland, India and Empire. Indo-Irish radical connections,
1919-1964 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 77.
26
Mihir Bose, Raj, Secrets, Revolution: A Life of Subhas Chandra Bose (Norwich:
Grice Chapman Publishing, 2004), 125.
27
Silvestri, “‘315 million of India with Ireland to the last”, 250.
28
Silvestri, “‘315 million of India with Ireland to the last”, 249.
29
Kate O’Malley, “Learning the tricks of the imperial secession trade: Irish and
Indian nationalism in the ’30s and ’40s”. History Ireland 18, no.4 (2010), 32-35.
30
Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin, “‘Ireland a warning to India’: Anti-imperialist
solidarity in the Irish Free State”, in Tadhg Foley and Maureen O’Connor (eds),
Ireland and India. Colonies, Culture and Empire (Dublin; Irish Academic Press,
2006), 275.
31
Ní Bheacháin, “‘Ireland a warning to India’”, 269.
32
O’Malley, “Ireland, India and empire”, 230.
33
O’Malley, “Ireland, India and empire”, 227.
34
O’Malley, “Ireland, India and empire”, 225.
35
T.G. Fraser, “Ireland and India”, in Keith Jeffery (ed.), “An Irish Empire?”
Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1996), 92.
36
O’Malley, “Learning the tricks of the imperial secession trade”.
37
George Orwell, “Rudyard Kipling”, Horizon (February 1942).
38
Rudyard Kipling, “Ulster”, in The Years Between (London: Methuen, 1919).
39
Edward Carson, “Speech to the House of Commons, Hunter’s Committee on
Punjab disturbances, 8 July 1920”
(http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1920/jul/08/army-council-andgeneral-dyer#column_1719).
17