When one thinks of the terms ethnic cleansing or genocide usually the following comes to mind:  the Nazi Holocaust; the Turkish massacre of Armenians before, during, and after World War I; Pol Pot and the killing fields of Cambodia in the early 1970s; Serbian ethnic cleansing during the Yugoslav civil war of the 1990s; the Rwandan genocide of 1994; but few people place English policy toward the Irish over a period of centuries in this category. 

One constant in England’s attitude toward the Irish throughout history has been one of subjugation and exploitation, either by out and out extermination and ethnic cleansing, or policies designed to benefit the rich landowners at the expense of the Irish peasantry, and of course the Great Famine of 1845 fostered in large part by England’s laissez-faire economic doctrine that decimated the Irish countryside.  By the late 1870s rural Ireland’s small land holders, again threatened with starvation and eviction began to rise up and fight for their ancestral home.  The story of the land war that ensued between 1879-1882, the major characters involved, Prime Minster William Gladstone’s attempt to bring peace and eventual independence to Ireland, and the assassination of May 6, 1882, that ended that hope is told in Julie Kavanagh’s latest book, THE IRISH ASSASSINS: CONSPIRACY, REVENGE, AND THE PHOENIX PARK MURDERS THAT STUNNED VICTORIAN ENGLAND.

Kavanagh’s effort has a number of key components.  After she provides an overview of Irish-English relations covering centuries she zeroes in on the 1870-1880s period.  It was a time that the Irish were still plagued by poor potato crops and the inhumanity of English property owners and their expectations from tenant farmers.  Certain characters dominate the narrative.  Charles Parnell, a progressive Avondale landowner who supported Irish independence emerges as the leader in Parliament and among the Irish people.  William Gladstone, leader of the Liberal party who returned to the Prime Ministership defeating Benjamin Disraeli and the Conservatives sought to bring peace between the tenants and their landowners by agreeing to improve the plight of the peasantry.  William Forster, Chief Secretary to Gladstone an empathetic man who felt for the Irish people, but with the Irish boycott and in the increased violence by the radical wing of the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s “Invincibles” he turned against reform.  Patrick O’Donnell, an Irish Republican accused of the murder of James Carey who turned out to be an “Invincible” snitch that led to the execution of five Irish Republicans.  Queen Victoria who despised the Irish and did little to ameliorate their situation. Katharine O’Shea, Parnell’s lover who had a deep impact on the thought process of the Irish leader.  Patrick Egan and Patrick Ford who worked from America to raise money for the Irish cause and had profound influence over the Irish cause through their leadership of the Clan na Gael, the American sister of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

The author does a credible job introducing the main characters in the Irish drama recounting their backgrounds and the important roles they would play.  By 1880 the west of Ireland verged on a catastrophe as disease struck the potato crop once again resulting in starvation and hypothermia for the Irish peasants.  According to Kavanaugh the 1880 disaster was worse than the earlier Great Famine reflected in the lives of people in western Ireland who had little to show for their labors.  Many more would emigrate to the United States resulting in the loss of many talented people for Ireland.  Another important aspect of the new decade was that the English government now faced a new generation than those who were “spineless victims” of the Great Famine – now they faced a semi-revolutionary group of young men who led the Land League and instituted a boycott against landlords and anyone who supported them.  In October 1880 Parliament voted to suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus allowing suspects to be imprisoned without trial.  Commonly known as the “Coercion Act” it would fuel Irish violence and move the Invincibles toward further assassinations.

The actions of Parliament and the Irish extremists would make it difficult for Parnell and Gladstone to consummate their agreement, the Kilmainham Treaty in which the Irish leader pledged to work diplomatically with Gladstone for peace and the eventual independence of Ireland.  What followed was planning that resulted in the assassination of Timothy Burke, Secretary to William Gladstone and Frederick Cavendish who replaced Forster as Chief Secretary which ended any hope for peace.

In one of Kavanagh’s best chapters “Coercion in Cottonwool” the author traces the planning and assassination attempts against English officials in great detail.  She introduces the perpetrators and the results of their actions.  She explores their thought processes as well as those of the victims.  It even reached the point that Forster hoped for his own assassination which would put him out of his misery of dealing with the Irish.  Once Parnell and his cohorts are arrested and released from prison and the Phoenix Park murders occur, Kavanaugh details the testimony of Invincible, James Carey, his trial and those he fingered, the revenge murder of Carey by Patrick O’Donnell, and his subsequent conviction.  In all areas Kavanagh offers intricate details which at times can be overwhelming.

A case in point was the relationship between Katharine O’Shea, her husband William, a member of Parliament, and Charles Parnell.  This segment of the book could be written as a historical novel by itself.  William O’Shea sought to be the intermediary between Gladstone and Parnell to enhance his career, so he allowed his own cuckoldom.  Further once Katharine became pregnant, William sought to reassert his husbandly rights, but the child was Parnell’s.  This aspect of the narrative is a bit much.

The book has so many aspects to it that Kavanagh should have been a little clearer in linking them to enhance the reader’s understanding.  With the substantial number of characters, many with their own agenda’s Kavanagh needed to improve how each character and events fit into the larger paradigm of the story which told in two parts.  First, Kavanaugh dissects the policies of Parliament and the Gladstone government and their internal debates that produces the opposition of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Land League.  Second she focuses on the legal drama that resulted from the assassinations and trials that followed.  The book can be confusing at times, and it would have helped if the monograph contained a series of maps that would allow the reader to follow the story from western Ireland, London, Paris, South Africa, and the United States.

(Patrick O’Donnell was executed in London on December 17th, 1885, for the murder of James Carey) 

The subject matter is of the utmost importance because of its impact on Irish-English relations for the century that followed.  It is a story that needed to be told and I praise Kavanagh’s effort, particularly her integration of primary materials whose personal excerpts allows the reader to understand the positions of the major characters.  But overall, though parts of the book read as a page turner, other parts are slow to develop and can tax the reader.

P.S.  Julie Kavanagh’s work was personally satisfying as she noticed the work of her father, a noted journalist who had researched the O’Donnell trial for a number of years.

(Thomas Francis Meagher during the Civil War)

Biography is an exceptional art form especially when a unique life story is represented.  In the case of Thomas Francis Meagher, author Timothy Egan, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the New York Times has unearthed a somewhat obscure, but remarkable historical figure, who impacted the course of Irish history in a remarkable way.  Meagher, a man who like a cat seemed to have had nine lives left Ireland in 1848 after being arrested and tried for treason by the British government.  He was imprisoned in a remote area of Australia where he escaped in 1852 and landed in New York City where he stood against the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic Know Nothing Party and later led an Irish brigade against the south during the Civil War.  If that was not enough for one lifetime, he concluded his astonishing career as the territorial governor of Montana.

Egan’s THE IMMORTAL IRISHMAN: THE IRISH REVOLUTIONARY WHO BECAME AN AMERICAN HERO presents a wonderful narrative about a man who seems to be everywhere.  Though Meagher had reached hero status among the Irish people, he seemed to encounter enemies everywhere he turned.  The British saw him as a fugitive, politicians in the United States viewed him as an abolitionist, vigilantes in Montana felt he was a traitor.  Meagher was a man who escaped death repeatedly.  He escaped the English gallows, Tasmanian sharks missed their opportunity as he swam away from Australia, and survived the Battle of Bull Run.  But in 1867 when he was trying to organize a democratic government in the Montana territory, was his fall from a Mississippi steam boat an accident, or did his luck finally run out when he may have been pushed.

“Digging for potatoes” from the London Illustrated News, 1849: “‘Searching for Potatoes’ is one of the those occupations of those who cannot obtain outdoor relief. It is gleaning in a potato field, and how few are left after the potatoes are dug, must be known to everyone whohas ever seen the field cleared. What the people were digging and hunting for, like dogs after truffles, I could not imagine, till I went into the field, and then I found them patiently turning over the whole ground, in the hopes of finding the few potatoes the owner might not have overlooked. Gleaning ina potato field seems something like shearing hogs, but it is theonly means by which the gleaners could hope to geta meal.”

Egan has created a somewhat literary approach to his subject as he constantly weaves his and other Irish poets and their work throughout his story.  The author tells a tale encompassing the plight of the Irish throughout their enslavement by the British culminating in the Great Famine of the 1840s.  At a time when the potato blight led to the starvation and immigration of millions of Irish poor, the British government exported the Irish crops that could have fed their people overseas for profit.  The lassaiz-faire trade policy was a death knell for the Irish people that even brought certain British officials to admit they were engaged in genocide.  The overt ethnic cleansing of the Irish people led men like Thomas Francis Meagher to stand up against this holocaust and organize a revolt against the London government.  The slow limiting of civil rights through penal laws and the presence of the British navy and soldiers made it impossible for the “Young Ireland” movement for Irish independence to have any chance for success.

Meagher himself did not come from a poor family.  His father was a Member of Parliament, he himself attended Stonyhurst where the “tried to squeeze the Irish out of him,” and grew up in a mansion in Waterford.  Meagher quickly gained a reputation as a debater and his reputation as an orator preceded him everywhere.  Egan reviews the other 19^th century historical figures who worked for Irish independence as the potato famine spread.  The author does a wonderful job providing the reader a feel for the disastrous blight that ravaged Ireland and the English government’s complicity in its catastrophic results.  For London, the blight presented an opportunity to populate Canada and Australia which were in dire need of cheap labor, and at the same time solve their Irish problem.  As Egan discusses Meagher’s situation he weaves in the story of the founding and development of Australia, and with the presence of the Irish down under Australia’s independence was eventually achieved!

(Meagher and his wife Libby dubbed this cabin as the governor’s mansion when the Irish hero was became acting governor of the Montana territory after the Civil War)

Once he arrived in New York City, Meagher was greeted as a hero and his popularity presented Egan with the opportunity to develop the history of that city, where one in four people were Irish.  To make a living Meagher went on a series of speaking tours and argued that he did not oppose slavery because it was the law of the land, what he opposed was breaking up the union.  After Fort Sumter and secession, Meagher changed his mind, as he realized that the plight of southern slaves and Irish peasants were one and the same.  Meagher’s irresistible story continues as he went against the majority opinion of his own people to fight against slavery as he helped lead an Irish brigade against the Confederate at Bull Run, that later in the war brought the union general, William Tecumseh Sherman, who hated Meagher, to heap praise on the Irish for their bravery in battle.

In times of peace, Meagher could not maintain his level of popularity and his life went into decline.  During his life Meagher witnessed much too much of the underside of history.  Eventually the price to be paid was a later life where he was plagued by alcoholism, financial issues, and loneliness.  He ended his career as the Secretary of the Montana Territory and tried to bring law and order to a very unruly area.  It was because of this governmental service that Meagher died, not by falling off a riverboat while drunk, but as Egan argues, was captured by Montana vigilantes and thrown off the ship’s deck to his death.  As Egan tells his story we see an imperfect protagonist, but one who never backed away from a fight and never turned away from his core principles.  THE IMMORTAL IRISHMAN is an exceptional work of history, even though at times Egan’s prose can be become somewhat flowery, a need for more specific citations, and a few minor historical errors.  But overall, the work of Timothy Egan is exceptional, as he turns a sound historical work into something that reads like a well thought out novel.