A forgotten 'greater Ireland': The transatlantic development of Irish nationalism, 1848-1882

Abstract

This dissertation explores the relationship between nationalism and globalization. Today, amidst increasing levels of global displacement and deterritorialization, nationalism not only remains the most important political force in the world, but is in fact experiencing a resurgence. Unfortunately however, the theorizing of nationalism remains largely incapable of explaining why this should be so. I argue that the problem lies in the fact that nationalism is both a historical and a geographical phenomenon, yet only the construction of nationalist temporal narratives has been problematized, whereas comparative analysis of nationalist spatial narratives remains scarce. This dissertation seeks to rectify this failing by focussing on extra-territorial dimensions of nationalism, and in particular the transatlantic development of Irish nationalism, 1848-1882. In this task, it draws on the Irish nationalist press and the personal correspondence of key political actors to illuminate the manner in which numerous narratives of Irish nationalism were forged out of a web of communication between the globally dispersed Irish diaspora. I argue that a number of creative extra-territorial interventions were made in the development of Irish nationalism; interventions since marginalized in the dominant narrative of Irish nationalism. Through an analysis of the transatlantic development of Irish nationalism in the nineteenth century, this dissertation locates a number of these marginal sites to reveal the underlying hybridity of the historical narrative, thus opening up the possibility for more spatially complex models of nationalist identity formation.