Discuss how "race difference" was constructed and deployed in the Irish/British struggles

Résumé du document

Ireland is an island situated off the west coast of England. It is the oldest colony of the powerful British Empire. Indeed, the British were attracted by Ireland's fertile lands. Furthermore, this part of their kingdom could be a springboard for the Crown to spread the English hegemony. Therefore, they attempted to colonize the isle of Ireland between 1565 and 1566. This colonization was led among others by Sir Henry Sidney who was nominated "Lord Deputy of Ireland? in 1565. As they arrived and settled in the country, the British perceived the Irish as very different from them. Concepts of race were used to account for Irish differences. Thus, the Englishmen spread a specific vision of the Irish: "the Gaelic Irish were pagans, and this became an accepted tenet of all Englishmen". The English were very particular that did not want to be put into the same category as the inferior and backward people of Ireland.

Extraits

[...] (Palgrave Macmillan Journals, 1995) Linda COLLEY. Britishness and Otherness: An Argument. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992) HICKMAN and WALTER. Deconstructing Whiteness COLLEY. Britishness and Otherness. 316-317. Niall FERGUSON. Empire, How Britain made the Modern World. (London, Penguin Books, 2004), 252-253. David FITZPATRICK. Ireland and the Empire. (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) Jane OHLMEYER. ‘Civilizinge of those Rude Partes': Colonization within Britain and Ireland, 1580s-1640s. [...]

[...] In a general point of view, being English meant being Protestant, speaking English, dressing like English people, drinking tea, etc. The Irish were at the opposite side of this stereotype: they were predominantly Catholic, they spoke Gaelic and had specific customs like transhumance and the way they dressed. Therefore, religion, language and customs were the three major differences between the Irish and the British which led to anti-Irish racism. Firstly, the population in Ireland was predominantly Roman Catholic. Within the European continent, rivalries between Catholics and Protestants often occurred. [...]

[...] (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) CANNY. The Ideology of English Colonization Anti-Irish racism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_racism. CANNY. The Ideology of English Colonization FERGUSON. Empire CANNY. The Ideology of English Colonization. 581. [...]

[...] Indeed, she was convinced that Irish were an unreasonable people and that they, no less than the Scots intruders in Ulster, might be slaughtered by extralegal methods”[14]. Thus racism was an official excuse to justify and legitimize the British colonization of Ireland. To conclude, Britishness was constructed through the race differences. Indeed, the English did not want to be assimilated with their subjects the Irish. That's why they emphasized the fact that the Irish were all the British were not: they were barbarians, pagans, underdeveloped, inhuman, etc. [...]

[...] Secondly, the language was another major difference between the Irish and the British which led to racism. The movie The Wind that Shakes the Barley, which takes place during the Irish war of Independence (1919-1921), shows how the British treated the Irish who spoke Gaelic. Indeed, at the beginning of the movie, one of the main character's friends is killed by Englishmen because he did not want to say his name in English. The British saw the Irish tongue as an insult. [...]