| Summary: | This dissertation is a study of Irish nationalist ideals of masculinity between the years 1884 and 1938. Where the historiography of Irish nationalism conventionally focuses on high-politics or micro-historical studies of political violence, this dissertation instead studies Irish nationalist culture and ideology and at a macro-historical level. Irish nationalism, I argue, should be seen, not just as a movement for national liberation but also as a vehicle for masculine and racial anxieties. On the one hand, Irish nationalism displayed many of the same characteristics and anxieties and engaged in many of the same political projects as other European nationalisms. Yet, Irish nationalism was also a product of Ireland's subaltern position within the British Empire. Whether or not Ireland was a colonial holding of the Empire in the same way as, say, India or Rhodesia, Irish nationalism did operate along a similar ideological rationale as other anti-colonial nationalisms. Anti-colonial nationalists across the British Empire regularly sought to disprove British accusations of national inferiority; this was an inherent element of their attempt to prove that they were capable of national self-rule. Similarly, anti-Irish stereotypes were prevalent in late Victorian Britain and these had a major determining impact on Irish nationalists, who were often markedly anxious to disprove these stereotypes by creating more powerful and respectable national self-images. This dissertation thus defines the push for Irish separatism as a European quasi-colonial nationalism. In this context of European quasi-colonial nationalism, this dissertation argues that Irish nationalism shared a number of important similarities with Zionism. Zionism can also be understood as part of the general history of European nationalist ideologies but was also a concerted attempt to refute widespread stereotypes about Jewish weakness or racial inferiority. As a number of historians have noted, antisemitic stereotypes often focused on Jews' bodies, their language, or their supposedly parasitical occupations. These stereotypes were all, in different ways, accusations about Jewish masculinity, as well as accusations of Jewish racial inferiority and an inability to realise normative political sovereignty. Such stereotypes had a major impact on Zionists, who sought to craft a more respectable and prideful image of Jewish masculinity as part of their political project. If Zionists could prove that Jews were real men, they would implicitly prove that Jews were capable of exercising self-governance. Similarly, the various stereotypes that circulated in Victorian Britain about the Irish (that Irish men were incapable of sobriety, were perennially dirty, or were incapable of real intellectual thought) were all united by the assumption that Irish men were not only incapable of self-rule but also were essentially childlike and in need of British parental supervision. Disproving these stereotypes was always a fundamental aspect of proving that Irish men could be trusted with the responsibility of national sovereignty. In both cases, I argue, the implied assumption was that the Irish or the Jews were not fully `white.' Thus, both national movements sought to demonstrate their properly `white' credentials and to prove that they were `real' men. Zionism and Irish nationalism both began on the (literal and figurative) peripheries of Europe, but both also longed to part of the stable core.
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