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The glorious 12th
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FrancieBrady wrote: »And there it is!
:D
My job has me 'stuck' in front of 3 screens every day mattser. Writing this post was a 10 sec distraction.
You have the screen in the bookies and two phones? Yes Francie, you are well known by now. Even though you do not vote Sinn Fein and never have, according to yourself, how come you defend their position 24/7?0 -
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FrancieBrady wrote: »And up onto the high moral ground goes the poster who came onto the thread to ask 'whatabout Sean Russell', who had been discussed and finished with pages ago. :rolleyes:
He was last seen giving whataboutery regarding Nuns and Churchill 0 -
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Firstly, there is a difference between India and Ireland. India was a colony and always remained one. Ireland was a home country and was seen as such. With the Act of Union in 1800, that position of Ireland was copperfastened. India never got that status.
Secondly, the argument about willing participants would also apply to England, Wales and Scotland, as they all had similar democratic arrangements in place at the time.
That being said, both your view and mine, while mutually incompatible, are legitimate interpretations of events from several centuries ago for which there is no hard and fast evidence. We don't have opinion polls from the 17th century.
No offence Blanch but I think the reason you've avoided my question on how the Irish were regarded is because you can't answer it without realising your argument is pretty weak.
The Irish were thought of as an inferior race as evident by the pictures below depicting a member of the Young Ireland Party and an anthropological depiction of the Irish phenotype. Anthropologists were sent to Ireland to examine the question of how an "inferior race" could live so close to England. Attempts were made to distinguish the average Irish man from an English or Scottish person by suggesting he was of African lineage. Hopefully this was before out of Africa theory.
A lot of the anti-Irish sentiment that arose in Britain goes hand in hand with colonial propaganda. If you want to justify colonising somewhere they would do well to suggest that the people they’re colonising need civilising.
Dr. Mary Hickman of the University of London will give a better introduction than I can.Dr Mary Hickman, director of the Irish Studies Centre at the University of London, says in her book, Religion, Class and Identity, that since the Anglo-Norman invasion in the 12th century the English have tried to justify their attacks on Ireland by racism. She said yesterday: "Many people assume that current English hostility or discrimination towards the Irish is the result of events in Northern Ireland so they see it as regrettable but understandable."
Dr Hickman, who is conducting a nationwide study of discrimination against the Irish for the Equal Opportunities Commission, argues that Ireland is important to the security of England and successive generations have tried to justify invasion and colonisation by stereotyping the Irish as wild and uncivilised.The Pope sanctioned the Anglo-Norman invasion on the grounds that Ireland was alleged to be only nominally Christian. Dr Hickman says: "The evidence for dominating Ireland has involved lengthy discussions on the Irish national character directly linked to notions about the Celts as a "race" or the Irish as a nation.
The emphasis prior to the 16th century was on the paganism, superstition and barbarism of the Irish. Before then, Dr Hickman says, the caricature concentrated on their wildness and savagery.
From the reign of Elizabeth 1, the English began systematically to colonise Ireland and the stereotype became more detailed: in particular the notion of the Irish as "stupid" became common. "Most of this was designed to show how English rule could be used to benefit the Irish," says Dr Hickman.
An anonymous contemporary of Shakespeare included a very ignorant and wild Irishman in the play Sir John Oldcastle, based partly, scholars think on MacMorris in Henry V.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, the stereotype changed: the half- human savage became a figure of contempt. In the 19th century more details of the stereotype, such as idleness and drinking, were filled in.
English attitudes to the Irish are closely connected to anti-Catholicism. Dr Hickman's book points out that a separate system of Roman Catholic schools grew up because of the hostility of English working class parents to having their children educated alongside Irish children. It was not the case that the Catholics insisted on their own schools.
These views were also expressed in laws. The penal laws or more specifically the popery laws discriminated against Irish Catholics who made up ~90% of the population in terms of housing, education and right to land. Since the acts were introduced a reduction in Catholic land ownership occurred.
Catholic land holdings:
1688: 25% of land
1704: 14% of land
1776: 5% of land
Some might say that this was a class thing, but they’re only partly right. The upper classes in Ireland were generally Protestant Anglo-Irish. The working classes were Catholic. Hence the distinction was made between Anglo and Hibernian as opposed to upper and lower classes.0 -
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