'Our American Aristotle' Henry George and the Republican tradition during the Transatlantic Irish Land War, 1877-1887.
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Date
05/07/2017Item status
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Phemister, Andrew James
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Abstract
This thesis examines the relationship between Henry George and the Irish on both sides
of the Atlantic and, detailing the ideological interaction between George’s republicanism
and Irish nationalism, argues that his uneven appeal reveals the contours of the
construction of Gilded Age Irish-America. The work assesses the functionality and
operation, in both Ireland and the US, of Irish culture as a dynamic but discordant friction
within the Anglophone world. Ireland’s unique geopolitical position and its religious
constitution nurtured an agrarianism that shared its intellectual roots with American
republicanism. This study details how the crisis of Irish land invigorated both traditions
as an effective oppositional culture to the processes of modernity.
The Land War placed Ireland at the centre of a briefly luminous political upheaval that
extended far beyond its own shores and positioned the country as a site of ideological
conflict at a critical juncture in the history of political thought. Irish nationalism helped to
perpetuate a specific aggregation of moral and economic principles, and, in equating
British imperial force with the worst depredations of capital, Irish-Americans tapped into
a powerful seam in American political culture that universalised the struggle of the Irish
tenant farmers. Just as many contemporaries framed Irish politics with the ideals of the
American republic, this thesis argues that Irish politics during the Land War, ever more
interdependent on its diaspora, is better understood in relation to American political
discourse than British.