Ireland in the Long Nineteenth Century: The Same Sea of Struggle

Foreword

The ‘long nineteenth century’ refers to the immense impact and lasting legacy of the key events spanning from the French Revolution in 1789 until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. This era has proven to be one of the most influential periods of revolutionary change in modern history: the creation of the modern nation state, the birth of modern human rights discourse, and the rise and fall of colonial empires that drew much of the world map as we know it today. By using the experience of one nation as a guiding principle, we can examine the progression of key historical themes of the era, including nationalism, colonialism, industrialisation and revolution. Through 8 episodes, we will establish the influence of tumultuous world events on Irish social, political and artistic movements, as well as exploring the many contributions made by Irish men and women to the era.

Ireland in the Long Nineteenth Century: The Same Sea of Struggle

In the early nineteenth century, an unlikely and unconventional union was formed between two very different cultures seeking to define their own identity. The struggle for self-determination was the animating factor in the formation of Irish identity in the nineteenth century, and south-west across the Atlantic Ocean the same goal was driving a series of rebellions in South America. The Latin world was one of the first regions to stage successful independence movements against European imperialism. It would do so before European colonial practices truly hit their zenith with the "Scramble for Africa" later in the century, and the South American experience would contribute massively to the outbreak of rebellions amongst European civilian populations throughout Europe in 1848 (Hobsbawm, 1988). The South Americans therefore set the tone for one of the essential themes of the nineteenth century: nationalism and its inseparability from the politics of revolution. This article will explore the deep and fundamental connections between Irish and South American rebels fighting in the revolutions of the early 1810s and 1820s and how this link would influence both regions for generations to come.

Although everything from the climate to the language may make Ireland and the South American continent unlikely allies, in many ways the parallels between the two regions are easy to see. From the beginning of the 16th century the continent of South America had been dominated by European imperial powers, principally Spain, while Portugal held the largest territory of Brazil.

Iberian colonialism distinguishes Latin America not only from the rest of the Western Hemisphere but also from the rest of the developing or postcolonial world. Spanish and Portuguese colonialism in the Americas began much earlier than other European incursions elsewhere, lasted much longer, ended a century and a half earlier, and left a much deeper impact. (Moya, 2010, p. 4)

Figure 1: Map showing Spanish and Portuguese territories in South America, 1525-1770 (Philip's, 1999).

The Spanish crown was the dominant political presence in the majority of the continent, extending its commercial operations across the vast continent and stripping it of countless resources for the financial benefit of Spain. The domination of Irish civil life by the British made this an experience common to both cultures, especially in regards to the cornering of imports and exports and the imposition of a foreign language on the indigenous population. The drastic decline in spoken Irish that followed the decimation of the Famine has a parallel in the linguistic uniformity imposed on both the Spanish and Portuguese regions of influence in the New World, which saw over 200 indigenous languages disappear from Brazil alone (Moya, 2010, p. 6). Another common thread was the ubiquity of the Catholic religion. Where the South American region differed from their Irish counterparts was the freedom with which this Catholic supremacy proliferated: unlike Ireland, where the Catholic majority lived as a suppressed underclass beneath the Anglo-Irish Protestant gentry, in South America Catholicism was the religion both of the population at large and also of the elites, imposed as it was by the pro-Catholic Spanish crown over the centuries. As well as this, South America had a great level of racial diversity. The relative homogeneity of society in Ireland was contrasted greatly by the disparities between white, black, mestizo and mulatto populations in South America. These factors of course complicate any comparison of the experience of revolution. Nonetheless, history would prove that the kindred revolutionaries had much to offer one another.

The shared Catholic identity between the two nations had brought the Irish into closer contact with Spain in the mid-16th century, when many Irish territories still retained some independence under their own Catholic Earls. When the British crown broke with the Pope under Henry VIII, they simultaneously expanded their rule over Ireland, reducing Catholic power. The desire to find common religious allies led some Irish to flee to Spain, with some gaining prominence in bureaucratic government positions (Department of Foreign Affairs, 2017, p. 3). Descendants of these Irish immigrants to Spain became some of the first Europeans to settle in the South American colonies. Willam Lamport (latinised as Guillén de Lampart) was one such Irish emigrant to Spain in the 1650s who ended up living in Mexico, where he would take up revolutionary cause with local indigenous peoples. Lamport would eventually be executed as a heretic for his part in indigenous revolutions (Andersen, 2021). The connections between Ireland and the South American states therefore far predate the period of revolutions. This established Hispanic-Irish community is one of the ways the causes of both Irish and South American rebels found themselves in league with one another: it was these established connections throughout latin-dominated American territories that would later allow the likes of Thomas Eyre and John Devereux to channel Irish soldiers into Latin America for the patriot forces (Murray, 2006).

... the Irish were present in the Americas as a result of the Iberian, English and French expeditions beginning in the sixteenth century. The emergence of plantation farming saw Irish-owned plantations and Irish labour in demand, particularly in the Caribbean islands and South America. In the late 1660s there were at least 12,000 Irish indentured servants, transported vagrants and felons in the West Indies, and 10% of the property-holders in Jamaica were of Irish origin. The first Irish settlement in Latin America was established in the Amazon in 1612. Thus the presence of Irish people, either voluntary or forced, was in the main a consequence of another state’s imperial policies in the nineteenth century. (Whelan, Holmes, & Rees, 1994, p. 110)

As colonies of Spain and Portugal, the fate of South America was inevitably intertwined with events in Europe. Continuing his seemingly unstoppable path across the continent, in 1807 Napoleon was granted access by the Bourbon king of Spain to cross his territories to invade Portugal. Fearing this invasion, the Portuguese aristocracy fled across the Atlantic to their prize colony of Brazil. This abdication would have significant effects throughout the South American continent, proving a catalyst for the eventual independence of both the Portuguese and Spanish territories (Moya, 2010).

Figure 2: Mural of Miguel Hidalgo leading the Grito de Dolores march (Mexico City, 1961).

The French presence in Spain eventually led to Napoleon replacing the Spanish monarchy with his own brother, Joseph. Under this rule a series of cortes (parliaments) were held to define the status of Spanish territories in the Americas. These parliaments placed Spanish overseas territories on equal standing with the mainland. However, this equality did not amount to representation for all of the population: Creole communities were not granted full voting rights available to the Spanish-descended peoples, initiating movements of great fervour promoting the idea of independence and self-determination across the Spanish South American colonies, from Mexico to Argentina. "What started as resistance to France" writes Eric Lambert, "developed across the various territories into ‘a full war of independence from Spain" (Lambert, 1969, p. 377).

In Mexico the complex social hierarchy presented an untenable problem to be suppressed in this period of political disorder. Differing political factions and ethinic classifications clamoured for varying levels of self-government, which spread into racial tension and conflict alongside viceregal attempts to suppress protest and maintain the order of imperial control (Eakin, 2016). In September 1810, influential populist priest Miguel Hidalgo proclaimed the need for the Mexican people - of all races and backgrounds - to fight with all necessary violence to seize the land, redistribute it equally, and bring to an end the long period of Spanish control. This speech became known as the "Grito de Dolores" (Cry of Dolores).

At the same time in Paris a young Venezuelan of Spanish descent was studying, surrounded by the political upheaval of the Napoleonic Wars and reading deeply into the works of European political philosophers: Simón Bolivar would take his experiences in France with him as deep inspiration for taking part in the stirring uprisings in his native continent (Arana, 2014). The deteriorating political condition in Spain resulted in a series of demonstrations and violent protests breaking out throughout the Spanish colonies in the years between 1808-1810. Of a wealthy family, Bolivar was an important financial asset bankrolling small insurrections and demonstrations before committing himself to military service in the Venezuelan War of Independence. This outbreak was the first of a series of juntas in these years that steadily deteriorated into a war, with independence formally declared in Caracas on July 5 1811 (Eakin, 2016).

Figure 3: Portrait of Simon Bolivar (Caracas, 1922).

Almost concurrently to the revolutions in South America the Mexican rebellion continued throughout the 1810s. Because the Mexican "nation" as such did not exist, but rather a series of diverse and disparate communities, enclaves and fiefdoms, conflict in the region did not possess the same coherence and organisation of the efforts of Bolivar's South Americans (King, 2014, p. 66). Fighting was infrequent, chaotic and diorganised, complicated by the overlapping feuds between the race and class system that further divided the population. It was not until 1820 that the resistance took a coherent shape. The cry of revolution instigated by Miguel Hidalgo was taken up by Augustín Iturbide, a former Spanish royalist leader who had defected to the patriot cause. Under Iturbide, the Spanish royalist cause in Mexico was brought to a standstill after a decade of funding anti-revolutionary wars across its Latin American territories. With the Spanish forced to negotiate as well as fight, the Mexican cause benefitted from the arrival of a key Irish figure.

While many of the Irish who later partook in Bolivar’s independence movements in South America were involved in direct combat, the experience across Latin America in the late 1810s and early 1820s was notable in the context of the nineteenth century for featuring Irish Catholics in positions of political power. Given the established connection between Ireland and Spain, the high-level bureaucracy organising and maintaining the Spanish Empire featured a consequently high number of Irish and Irish-descended figures. In Juan O’Donojú, a Seville-born Irishman of high rank in the Spanish court, this connection saw its first true political manifestation.

Figure 4: Illustration of Juan O'Donjú meeting Augustin Iturbide to sign a peace treaty (Mexico City, n.d.).

O’Donojú was the Viceroy of the Spanish government in Mexico, and in August 1821 he was sent to Mexico City to establish a negotiated peace to the troubled territory. At the time of his arrival the Mexican independence movement had been fighting for over a decade. While those in Spain felt no need to surrender to this cause, O’Donojú was of a pragmatic view that the empire needed to modernise and adapt to changing political realities. In July 1821 he entered negotiations with Iturbide on the "Plan of Iguala", which far from being a settlement on how this heretofore Spanish territory would agree to an altered subject status, instead outlined the terms of Mexico’s effective independence. While in their own country Irishmen (particularly Irish Catholics) were frozen out even from voting, in the Latin American arena they operated as high-level decision-makers directly affecting the political process and the course of history for entire nations.

By 1813 Simon Bolivar had been assumed leadership of the Venezuelan resistance movement. The conflict spread over a vast territory at the north point of the South American continent, involving lands that encompass present-day Colombia, Ecuador and Panama as well as Venezuela. One thing that Bolivar and the revolutionaries required was men, ideally militarily-trained and ideologically opposed to empire. At this time in Europe a large percentage of the British Army at this time was still comprised of Irish men, fresh from action against the French in the Napoleonic Wars. While the problem of Irish identity remained in development, there was no shortage of republican sentiment at this time, stemming from the political agitation of Daniel O’Connell.

Certainly for some there was the attraction of El Dorado; certainly there was the excitement of walking the streets of London or Dublin or attending the theatres in the gorgeous uniforms of the various regiments…. But there were others, dedicated men who had read tales of the oppressed and decided to give a hand. There were others, too, who had nothing better to do and simply went. (Lambert, 1969, p. 391)

The established Irish community in South America therefore presented itself as a potential source of recruits for Bolivar’s manifold revolutions (Murray, 2006). From 1816 Bolivar accepted propositions from Thomas Eyre of Galway and John Devereux of Wexford to raise a force of Irish troops to support the conflict. Devereux falsely presented himself as an Officer of the Irish army, and was to be paid a sum of $175 per man he smuggled into Venezuela (Murray, 2006). This force was originally intended to comprise up to 5,000 men. The first of these men arrived in Isla Margarita on the Colombian coast in December 1819, with the remainder joining in Spring 1820. The recruits ultimately totalled closer to 2,000 men. This number was divided into the Irish Legion and the Hibernia Regiment. Amongst this detail were some of the most influential Irish military campaigners of the nineteenth century, who would go on to have lasting influence on the eventual victory of Bolivar’s campaign.

Figure 5: Photograph of Francis Burdett O'Connor (Tarija, Colombia, 1860).

The shared revolutionary threads of Ireland and of Bolivar’s forces came together in Francis Burdett O’Connor. Francis’ father Roger had been arrested in 1798 for taking part in the ill-fated United Irishmen Rebellion, while his uncle Arthur O’Connor was deported to France for his leadership of the same organisation. The O’Connor family were of the wealthy land-owning Protestant class, cementing the impression of his participation being based on genuine liberal beliefs and convictions of revolutionary ideals (Murray, 2006). O’Connor arrived in Venezuela with the Irish Legion in 1819 and took part in many of the key battles in the ultimate victory over Spanish forces, and was injured for the cause in Riohacha in 1819. As a result of his performances in campaigns in Venezuela O’Connor was promoted continuously by Bolivar, with whom he had a close relationship. He was appointed Chief of Staff of the United Army of Liberation in Peru in 1824, and would serve as aide-de-camp to Antonio José de Sucre, later first president of Bolivia (Murray, 2006).

Another of the arrivals in 1819 in the Irish Legion was Corkman Daniel Florence O’Leary, who would in time go on to become a close aide-de-camp to Simon Bolivar. O’Leary was only a teenager when he made the voyage to the New World, distinguishing himself in the campaigns crossing the Andes mountains. By the early 1820s O’Leary was working closely with Simon Bolivar following the death of General Anzoateguí. O’Leary’s prominence in the Andes crossing and especially the campaign in La Gamarra saw him promoted to Anzoateguí’s position, a rank he never relinquished during a lasting association with "The Liberator" (McNerney Jr, 1966).

If we pause for a moment to consider O’Leary’s military career up to this point, we must allow that he had come far in the period of four years since his arrival in a strange land with a strange language. An eager but inexperienced cornet of eighteen when he arrived, he now appears as a battle-hardened lieutenant colonel in an army which has scaled many mountains and crossed many plains in their unceasing struggle to bring freedom to that area which later became known as Gran Colombia. (McNerney, 1966, p. 298)

McNerney places particular emphasis on O’Leary’s youth at this time, placing it in the context of the conflict being a "young man’s war", with other leaders including Bolivar himself being under 40 at this time. The first generation of young leaders influenced by the political and ideological upheavals of the French Revolutionary period throughout Europe (including O’Leary and O’Connor who grew up in the aftermath of the Wolfe Tone-led United Irishmen rebellion in 1798, and Bolivar who was educated in Paris) brought to their causes the Romantic ideals of the period in which they were raised, illustrating the immense legacy of the French Revolution on subsequent generations of political development (McNerney, 1966, p. 298).

Figure 6: Bust of Daniel Florence O'Leary in FitzGerald's Park, Cork (2010).

The Venezuelan War of Independence officially ended in 1823 with the surrender of the final Royalist forces at Puerto Cabello on October 9. Bolivar’s military engagements—and therefore O’Leary’s—continued in the other conflicts in Nueva Granada (present day territories primarily in Colombia, Panama and Ecuador) and in Peru. O’Leary would stay in significant political positions in the newly independent states of Colombia and Venezuela. Simon Bolivar passed away in 1830 from Tuberculosis and in the subsequent years O’Leary moved primarily into government roles and focused on producing his own memoirs and a written account of the revolutions, chosen especially by Bolivar for the task as a result of his proven rhetorical skills (McNerney, 1966, p. 307). O'Leary remains today a hugely admired patriotic hero in the legend of South American independence, a key figure alongside Bolivar's leadership. His remains are held in the National Pantheon in Caracas, Venezuela.

Immigrants of this type (O’Leary) are most valuable to the country, who can make full use of their talents and capabilities. Such was, on a higher and more glorious plane, the case with the illustrious O’Leary, who came here to be part in the hazardous and gallant enterprise of contributing to the independence of Spanish America.

- Cristobal Mendoza, President of the Bolivarian Society of Venezuela, 1952. (McNerney, 1966, p. 310)

The contribution of every important figure in the storied connection between Irish and South American revolutionary history would deserve a more dedicated series of its own. The historiography of South American independence can be accused of a fixation on the role of Simon Bolivar, to the detriment of other great leaders such as de Sucre, or José de San Martin who led the movement from the south in Argentina. consequently the story of the Irish Brigade takes precedence in records, but the contribution of Irishman William Brown to the inauguration of the Argentine Navy is necessarily neglected despite its integral role in sustaining a two-front war against the Spanish Empire (Department of Foreign Affairs, 2017, p. 38). Equally, prominent Irish-descendant figures like Bernardo O'Higgins (the first leader of independent Chile) have been superseded by those Irish who chose due to the circumstances of their home country to take part in the direct conflicts in South America.

Figure 5: Guayaquil Conference between Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin in 1822 (Collignon, 1843).

The Irish-Mexican connection would resurface a generation later in 1846. At a time when many Irish were beginning to contribute to the growing influx of European immigration to the United States, their new home was in a state of war with neighbouring Mexico. The war was triggered by the 1845 annexation of Texas by the United States at a time when the territory belonged to Mexico. This conflict escalated into a state of war that would last between 1846 to 1848. Among the American troops were regiments comprised of this influx of foreign men, hailing from Ireland, Scotland, Germany and the Scandinavian states. St. Patrick's Batallion was one such unit, led by John Riley of Galway, who had emigrated to the United States to escape the deprivations of his home country in the 1840s.

The St. Patrick's battalion was comprised mostly of Irish Catholic immigrants. Despite having emigrated due to the economic and religious divides plaguing Ireland, many of the arriving Irish found similar power structures present in the military structure of the US Army. Discrimination against first-generation immigrants was common, and Anglo-Saxon Protestant groups often dominated the higher officer classes (Department of Foreign Affairs, 2017, p. 10). Many Irish in the US Army felt a kinship with the Mexican cause, seeing an unjust war of invasion against a fellow Catholic country attempting to establish a post-colonial identity. In 1846 the squadron defected from the American cause, choosing to join the Mexican opposition in fighting against the annexation of the Texan territories. They were not unusual in this decision; the American-Mexican war had the highest rate of desertion of any foreign engagement by the US military, with as many as 10,800 United States officers potentially deserting the cause throughout only three years of conflict (King, 2014, p. 66). Nonetheless the defection of primarily Catholic battalions like St Patrick's ultimately contributed to the growing Nativist, anti-immigration sentiment developing in the US in response to the period of mass immigration.

Figure 8: Irish President Michael D. Higgins (right) on a visit to Mexico City in front of San Patricio's memorial plaque (2013).

These deserters adopted the moniker of the Battalón de San Patricios and under Riley would become an adept military force. They comprised just over two hundred men and served in several battles throughout the course of the war. The majority of the men were killed in 1847 at Churubusco and Contreras, the final battles withholding American troops from entering Mexico City. The defensive effort finally failed, with 50 of the 72 deserters captured executed. Riley was whipped, branded and imprisoned for the remainder of the war. Praised for heroism, the Battalón de San Patricios commemorated today throughout Mexico and Ireland on September 18, the anniversary of the Mexican-American war.

Of all the different factions to represent Ireland across the Latin American world, Francis Burdett O’Connor’s stance on revolutionary participation leaves little doubt as to the eventual aspiration of bringing the rebellion from South America back home to Ireland. O’Connor’s is perhaps the most explicit of the extant writings of Irish rebels in Latin America:

I have come to South America to practise the art of war in order that I might use my new-found skills in the liberation of Ireland from British rule. - Frances Burdett O’Connor in a letter to Simon Bolivar (Department of Foreign Affairs, 2017, p. 4)

Despite living the rest of his life in Bolivia—where he was named military governor of the region of Tarija—O'Connor maintained correspondence with his family at home, many of whom remained closely affiliated with Republican causes like O'Connor's father and uncle before him. O'Connor never did return to complete any material revolution in Ireland, fostering instead an interest in the improvement of social and economic conditions via correspondence (Hunter, 1826).

The legacy of Irish revolutionaries in Latin America continued well beyond the early-nineteenth century. At the turn of the century, as the European imperial project which had so enveloped the South American continent reached unprecedented levels of influence in Africa, there persisted in the depths of the Amazon massive levels of exploitation by harvesting projects owned by foreign companies. In The Putamayo Journal (1913) Irish diplomat Roger Casement documented these extreme conditions of forced labour, debt, and cruelty imposed on local tribes along the Putamayo River in Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. Alongside his work exposing similar abuses in the Congo Basin in Africa, Casement's work in the Amazon represents one of the great humanitarian contributions of the early twentieth century.

Figure 9: Che Guevara has become an international symbol of rebellion and protest (1968).

Descending from the Lynch family who settled in Buenos Aires in the 1740s, Ernesto Guevara Lynch moved his family to Rosario, Argentina in the early 1910s, and here in 1928 would be born his first child, Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Famed as perhaps the most iconic revolutionary in global history, Che Guevara would continue the legacy of his ancestors in the Communist revolutions throughout Latin America in the 20th century, most famously in Cuba in 1959, overthrowing General Batista in the coup that would see Fidel Castro take control of the island. The Irish heritage of the famous revolutionary was something of great importance both to himself and to his family, with his father declaring in a rare interview that the "first and most important" thing to know about his son's activities was that "the blood of Irish rebels flowed through his veins" (Department of Foreign Affairs, 2017, p. 22). Che Guevara was executed for seditious activities in Bolivia in 1967, almost exactly 150 years after the arrival of Simon Bolivar’s Irish Battalion who first liberated the country (Anderson, 2010).

The Irish participation in the Latin American revolutions encapsulate many of the pertinent themes of this period of the nation's history. It was the latest in a long string of revolutions which helped form the republican identity, fuelling the military experince and the ideological beliefs of rebels at home in Ireland. Equally, it was a significant factor in the growing trend of emigration which has become a staple of modern Irish history. While the Famine of the 1840s instigated the most famous and enduring diaspora of the Irish community in the United States, over 20 years earlier a small but committed group of Irish rebels had set up camp in the South American continent. This group were not forced by starvation or persecution but followed instead the opportunity to fight for ideals which were denied them in their homeland, ideals which arose in the words of Irish President Michael D. Higgins in 2017 from the "same sea of struggle" which surrounds Ireland and the Latin American world (Áras an Uachtaráin, 2017, p. 40).

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