Irish Rebel, Imperial Reformer: Charles Gavan Duffy and the British

Thursday, March 14, 2019

In the wake of the 1916 Easter Rising the dominant narrative treats Ireland as a colonized nation oppressed by the British Empire that only found freedom through the sacrifice of the Easter rebels and the War of Independence. However, a more nuanced picture has emerged of Ireland’s complex relationship with the British Empire.

In honor of Irish-America Heritage Month, Dr. Sean Farrell will explore Ireland’s complex identity as both a colonized nation of the British Empire and its role as a colonizer abroad. Farrell charts the career of Charles Duffy, one of the most prominent Irish nationalists of the nineteenth century - editor, politician, intellectual, and dissident—illustrates the complex relationship between nationalism and imperialism, the two most powerful forces that created the modern world.

Sean Farrell is Associate Professor of History at Northern Illinois University. A former president of the American Conference for Irish Studies, he is the author of a number of book and articles on nineteenth-century Irish history, most notably the award-winning Rituals and Riots: Sectarian Violence and Political Culture in Modern Ulster, 1784-1886 (Lexington, 2000). He is currently working on a biography of the Irish nationalist leader, Charles Gavan Duffy, tentatively entitled Charles Gavan Duffy: A Nineteenth-Century Irish Life.

Image: Charles Gavan Duffy, 1880 from Wikimedia Commons.