Anti‐Machiavel: Three Ulster nationalists of the age of de Valera∗

This paper was written as a British Academy Research Fellow at the School of Politics, Queen's University Belfast and delivered at the 1997 PSA Conference. I thank those who discussed it. For related themes see Patrick Maume, The Long Gestation: Irish Nationalist Political Culture 1891–1918. Dublin, 1999.

Abstract

The idealised official self‐image of de Valera's Ireland drew on elements of the nationalist tradition which emphasised Catholicism and cultural authenticity at the expense of political activism and the post‐Machiavellian view of the state, and looked back to an idealised Gaelic‐medieval agrarian society. The article tries to place this tradition in historical context by examining its role in the careers and ideas of three intellectuals, Eoin MacNeill, Louis J. Walsh and Aodh de Blacam. It can be seen as a reaction against the social changes of nineteenth‐century Ireland and the shortcomings of British liberal policy among sections of the nascent catholic professional class. But, though capable of attracting fervent and idealistic adherents and stimulating some valid criticisms of Ireland under the Union, it contained too much fantasy and self‐interested obfuscation to survive the responsibilities of self‐government. The choice of three Ulster exponents also allows some examination of their attempts to reconcile this project with the existence of a protestant and unionist community in Ulster.

Notes

This paper was written as a British Academy Research Fellow at the School of Politics, Queen's University Belfast and delivered at the 1997 PSA Conference. I thank those who discussed it. For related themes see Patrick Maume, The Long Gestation: Irish Nationalist Political Culture 1891–1918. Dublin, 1999.