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The road to Asia, and the Grafton Hotel, Dublin: Ireland in the ‘British world’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Keith Jeffery
Keith Jeffery*
Affiliation:
School of History and Anthropology, Queen’s University of Belfast
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Extract

The title of this essay draws on a quotation from an article reflecting on the 1919–22 ‘crisis of empire’ written by the late J. A. (Jack) Gallagher (one half of Robinson and Gallagher, the finest double act in British imperial historiography). The complete sentence from which the title is derived reads as follows: ‘But for us the road to Asia lies through the swing doors of the Grafton Hotel in Dublin, one of the cover headquarters of the revolutionary Irish Government’. From time to time, alas, even Gallagher (like Homer) nodded, and it has to be said that his typically arresting image of the route to Asia is somewhat occluded by the fact that there is not, and never has been, a Grafton Hotel in Dublin. (He was evidently thinking of the Gresham Hotel.) Yet the underlying point of his image is sound.

Type
Ireland and the British Empire-Commonwealth
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 142 , November 2008 , pp. 243 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2008

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References

1 Posthumously published as Gallagher, John, ‘Nationalisms and the crisis of empire, 1919–1922’in Modern Asian Studies, xv, no. 3 (1981), pp 355-68 (quotation from p.359)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gallagher died in 1980.

2 Even so, Gallagher also got it wrong about the hotel providing a ‘cover headquarters of the revolutionary Irish Government’. That honour belonged primarily to Vaughan’s Hotel, and then to Kirwan’s and Devlin’s pubs.

3 Gallagher, John, The decline, revival and fall of the British Empire, ed. Seal, Anil (Cambridge, 1982), pp 73–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Ibid., p. 73.

5 Gallagher, ‘Nationalisms’, p. 355.

6 The Times, 23 June 1921. The imperial dimension of this speech is discussed in Jeffery, Keith (ed.), ‘An Irish empire’? Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire (Manchester, 1996), pp 6–7.Google Scholar

7 Keith, A. B. (ed.), Speeches and documents on the British dominions, 1918–1931 (London, 1932), p. 62.Google Scholar

8 Reeves, William Pember, The long white cloud (3rd ed., London, 1924), p. 362.Google Scholar

9 Bridge, Carl and Fedorowich, Kent, ‘Mapping the British world’ in Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, xxxi, no. 2 (May 2003), p. 6.Google Scholar

10 In a stimulating discussion of Ulster unionists’ self-perceptions, Ian McBride touches on the extent to which Ulster unionists could regard themselves as ‘Irish’ and ‘British’ simultaneously (‘Ulster and the British problem’ in Richard English and Graham Walker (eds), Unionism in modern Ireland (London, 1996), pp 1–18).

11 As reported in the Orient News (‘an independent British Daily Organ in the Near East’), 26 June 1922 (copy in Harington papers (King’s Liverpool Regiment Collection, Merseyside County Museums, Liverpool), box 1). For Wilson, see Jeffery, Keith, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: a political soldier (Oxford, 2006).Google Scholar

12 Belfast News-Letter, 26 June 1922.

13 SirHarington, Charles, Tim Harington looks back (London, 1940), p. 78Google Scholar. Elsewhere in the book, Harington refers to Ireland as Wilson’s ‘country’ (pp 88, 217).

14 Capt.Hargreaves, R. C., ‘Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson’, Rifle Brigade Chronicle (1922), p. 48.Google Scholar

15 memoirs Vincent, Berkeley, vol. 2, p. 584 (Muckross House Library, Killarney, Co. Kerry, Vincent papers).Google Scholar

16 Lecture notes, 5 Nov. 1913 (Imperial War Museum (I.W.M.), Wilson papers, HHW3/3/33b). The Wilson papers are quoted by permission of the trustees of the Imperial War Museum.

17 Proceedings of Imperial Education Conference, 11–12 June 1919 (H.M.S.O.) (ibid., HHW2/67/90).

18 Hansard 5 (Commons), cliii, col. 514 (12 Apr. 1922).

19 Wilson diary, 23 June 1913 (I.W.M., Wilson papers, HHW1/22).Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 28 Sept. 1915 (ibid., 1/24).

21 See draft memorandum by Wilson, c. Oct. 1917 (I.W.M., Wilson papers, HHW3/13/25) on which the original ‘English’ has been changed throughout to ‘British’ for the final version: ‘The present state of the War and the future prospects and future action to be taken’, 20 Oct. 1917 (T.N.A., CAB/27/8 WP61).

22 Martin, Ged, The Cambridge Union and Ireland (Edinburgh, 2000), pp 76, 303 n. 4Google Scholar. The observer was Hensley Henson. It has to be said, however, that Buchan gives no indication of this idiosyncratic opinion in his memoir, Memory hold-the-door (London, 1941).

23 Merritt, Douglas, Sculpture in Bristol (Bristol, 2002), p. 41Google Scholar. According to The Times, 27 June 1932, the bishop urged those present ‘to think with pride and gratitude of the man by whom, more than by any other single Englishman, the burden of the Great war was carried’.

24 Keith, A. B., The governments of the British Empire (London, 1936), pp 33-4.Google Scholar

25 Belfast News-Letter, 20 Jan. 1922.

26 Wilson diary, 22 Nov. 1919 (I.W.M., Wilson papers, HHW1/28).Google Scholar

27 ‘British military liabilities’, 15 June 1920 (T.N.A., CAB/24/107, C.P. 1467). Emphasis as in original.

28 Wilson diary, 15 July 1920 (I.W.M., Wilson papers, HHW1/29). Emphasis as in original.Google Scholar

29 ‘The situation in Mesopotamia’, 10 Dec. 1920 (T.N.A., CAB/24/116, C.P. 2275).

30 For an attempt to do so, see Jeffery, Keith, The British army and the crisis of empire (Manchester, 1984).Google Scholar

31 Townshend, Charles, The British campaign in Ireland, 1919–21: the development of political and military policies (Oxford, 1975), pp 44, 175.Google Scholar

32 An omission rectified, however, in Townshend’s excellent Britain’s civil wars: counterinsurgency in the twentieth century (London, 1986)Google Scholar, wherein Ireland is precisely located within the British imperial context.

33 Jackson, Alvin, Ireland, 1798–1998 (Oxford, 1999), p. 253.Google Scholar

34 Hopkinson, Michael, The Irish War of Independence (Dublin, 2002)Google Scholar. Despite the evidence of his own work, Hopkinson seems aware of its deficiencies. In a review of the literature on the Anglo-Irish War, he has asserted that for the most part ‘there is often still too narrow a focus’ (Hopkinson, , ‘Negotiation: the Anglo-Irish war and the revolution’ in Augusteijn, Joost (ed.), The Irish revolution (Basingtoke, 2002), p. 123).Google Scholar

35 Matthews, Kevin, Fatal influence: the impact of Ireland on British politics, 1920–1925 (Dublin, 2004).Google Scholar

36 Ibid., p. 23.

37 Ibid., p. 2.

38 This contention is fundamental to the analysis in, for example, Jeffery, , The British army and the crisis of empire, and is discussed in the introduction to Jeffery, (ed.), ‘An Irish empire’?, pp 1–24.Google Scholar

39 Hancock, W. K., Smuts: the fields of force, 1919–1950 (Cambridge, 1968), p. 5.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., p. 49; idem, Smuts: the sanguine years, 1870–1919 (Cambridge, 1962), p. 547.

41 The political diaries of C. P. Scott, 1911–28, ed. Wilson, Trevor (London, 1970), p. 288Google Scholar. Sinha is an interesting example of colonial representation. Ennobled, he sat in the House of Lords and served as under-secretary of state for India from January 1919 to September 1920. He contradicts the assertion that there was ‘an absolute refusal of the British political system, unlike the French, to allow any kind of colonial representation in its own parliament’ (Howe, Stephen, Ireland and empire: colonial legacies in Irish history and culture (Oxford, 2000), p. 65).Google Scholar

42 Gallagher, ‘Nationalisms’, p. 367. Recent scholarship has begun valuably to explore these parallels; see, for example, O’Malley, Kate, Ireland, India and empire (Manchester, 2008).Google Scholar

43 Cabinet memorandum by Edwin Montagu, 15 Oct. 1920 (T.N.A., CAB/24/112, C.P. 1987).

44 Montagu to Reading, 4 Nov. 1921 (quoted in Gallagher, ‘Nationalisms’, p. 367).

45 ’It sufficed that I in life could find/Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind/Of correlated pattern in the game.’ (Nabokov, Vladimir, Pale fire (Corgi pbk ed., London, 1964), p. 67, Lines 811–13).Google Scholar

46 Fisher to Lloyd George, 28 Oct. 1921 (House of Lords Record Office, Lloyd George papers, F/16/7/72).

47 Diary of Sir Maurice Hankey, 3 Jan. 1921 (Churchill College Archives Centre, Hankey papers, HNKY1/5).

48 Wilson diary, 10 May 1920 (I.W.M., Wilson papers, HHW1/29)Google Scholar. Macready claimed afterwards that he had come to London ‘to consult with Henry Wilson’ (SirMacready, Nevil, Annals of an active life (2 vols, London, 1924), ii, 459).Google Scholar

49 Wilson diary, 11 May 1920 (I.W.M., Wilson papers, HHW1/29); Cabinet meeting, 11 May 1920 (T.N.A., CAB/23/21/29(20) appendix A).Google Scholar

50 Wilson diary, 11 May 1920 (I.W.M., Wilson papers, HHW1/29).Google Scholar

51 Ibid., 13 May 1920 (ibid.).

52 Ibid., 12 May 1920 (ibid.).

53 Of which a superior example is Breffny, Brian de (ed.), The Irish world: the history and cultural achievements of the Irish people (London, 1977).Google Scholar

54 Jeffery (ed.), ‘An Irish empire’?, p. 17.

55 Kevin Kenny, ‘The Irish in the Empire’ in idem (ed.), Ireland and the British Empire (Oxford, 2004), p. 90.

56 Colvin, Ian, The life of General Dyer (Edinburgh, new ed. 1931), p. 1Google Scholar. See also Collett, Nigel, The butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer (London, 2005), pp 1–29.Google Scholar

57 Kenny, ‘The Irish in the Empire’, p. 91.

58 Hansard 5 (Commons), cxxxi, cols 1726, 1728 (8 July 1920).

59 Lloyd George to Worthington-Evans, 6 Apr. 1921 (House of Lords Record Office, Lloyd George papers, F/16/3/16).Google Scholar

60 Wilson diary, 6 Apr. 1921 (I.W.M., Wilson papers, HHW1/30).Google Scholar

61 George, Lloyd to Worthington-Evans, 6 Apr. 1921 (House of Lords Record Office, Lloyd George papers, F/16/3/16).Google Scholar

62 Shaw, George Bernard, The matter with Ireland (London, 1962), pp 232-4Google Scholar. In 1914–15 French had been commander of the British Expeditionary Force in France, and had subsequently taken the title ‘Viscount French of Ypres and High Lake’ (County Roscommon).

63 The Times, 5 Mar. 1920. See also Hansard 5 (Commons), cxxvi, cols 723–4 (4 Mar. 1920).

64 Jones, Thomas, Whitehall diary, ed. Middlemas, Keith (3 vols, London, 1971), iii, 33.Google Scholar

65 Hansard 5 (Lords), xli, col. 263 (19 July 1920).

66 A version of this essay was delivered as an inaugural lecture as professor of British history at Queen’s University Belfast on 26 January 2006. Other versions have been given at the ‘Broadening the British World’ conference, University of Auckland, 14 July 2005, and the ‘Ireland and empire’ workshop, University of Leeds, 11 March 2006. I am very grateful to friends and colleagues for their comments and discussion on its subject matter on those, and other, occasions.