Abstract
France, but particularly Paris, has long loomed large in Irish history, from the foundation of the Irish College by Irish Catholic clergymen in the late sixteenth century, to the inspiration it gave Wolfe Tone and other Irish revolutionaries during the 1790s, to its role as a refuge for Irish artists such as Gonne and Beckett in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Paris, Capital of Irish Culture: France, Ireland and the Republic, 1798-1916, which is edited by the leading French expert on Ireland, Pierre Joannon, and the Director of the University of Notre Dame Global Gateway in Dublin, Kevin Whelan, is a welcome contribution to the growing focus within Irish historiography on transnational aspects of Irish history. With this book, Joannon and Whelan draw together a broad range of essays exploring the city’s relationship with Ireland, which emerged from two paired conferences held in Dublin and Paris in September and October 2016. In doing so, they explore the Irish community in Paris during Ireland’s ‘long nineteenth century’ between the 1798 and 1916 rebellions, as well as broader transnational links between the two locales in the period.
The book’s first chapter, by Pierre Joannon, serves as a broad overview of Ireland’s relationship with Paris in the period the book covers. Many of the themes touched on by the wide-ranging chapter – such as the personal relationship with Paris of towering figures in the Irish nationalist pantheon like Wolfe Tone, Daniel O’Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell – are discussed in greater detail by later authors in the collection, but Joannon ably introduces these subjects to the reader. Kevin Whelan’s chapter also covers a lengthy period and begins by discussing the emergence of a sizeable Irish community in the city in the early seventeenth century, contextualising these Irish refugees within the broader history of religious expulsions in early modern Europe. He traces the activities of Irish clergymen, merchants and soldiers in pre-revolutionary France, arguing that educated Irish Catholics had a less parochial attitude than Irish Protestant elites did in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Irish scholars had to contend with preserving their identity and language in a country where many educated people knew little about Ireland and realised the necessity of asserting their Irishness to their fellow compatriots. The Irish population in Paris declined from the late eighteenth century onwards, as anti-Catholic restrictions eased at home and the United States emerged as the leading destination for Irish emigrants. Nonetheless, Whelan outlines how the city continued to attract political and artistic exiles from Ireland, attracted by its global reputation as a revolutionary and cultural centre.
A number of the book’s chapters trace the city’s place in the Irish nationalist imagination. Sylvie Kleinman’s article on Wolfe Tone’s mission to France notes the influence his diaries had on subsequent generations of Irish nationalists. Thomas Bartlett, meanwhile, explores Irish nationalist attitude towards Napoleon Bonaparte during and after his coming to prominence in the 1790s. While some of the reputed links between Napoleon and Ireland are tenuous – Bartlett rightly treating with scepticism the popular claim that Napoleon’s horse Marengo was bought at the Ballinasloe horse fair – Tone and other Irish revolutionaries did have several meetings with Napoleon, who went on to become a legendary figure in Ireland. Bartlett makes good use of resources such as the National Folklore Collection in UCD and the Bureau of Military History to trace the continuing fascination Irish nationalists had with ‘Boney’ into the twentieth century.
The book also examines how the French perceived Ireland. Seamus Deane’s analysis of Ireland’s place in the nineteenth century French thought is an important reminder that republicanism was not the only ideology which connected Ireland and France in the early nineteenth century. France’s Catholics, repulsed by the anticlerical violence of France’s 1832 revolution, increasingly came to idealise Irish Catholicism as a resounding counterpoint to continental anticlericalism. Laurent Colantonio, meanwhile, focuses on a figure idealised by a diverse range of constituencies in France from the 1820s onwards – Daniel O’Connell. As a prominent Catholic leader who eschewed revolutionary politics, O’Connell was strongly admired by French Catholics traumatised by their own country’s history of revolutionary violence. Colantonio argues, however, that French republicans also admired O’Connell and that he alienated both groups, for differing reasons, with his leadership of the Repeal campaign in the 1840s. The book’s remaining chapters broadly discuss the Irish diaspora in nineteenth-century Paris, as well as Franco-Irish connections in the early twentieth century. Janick Julienne discusses John Patrick Leonard, a central figure of Paris’s nineteenth-century Irish colony. Pierre Ranger discusses Irish diplomats in Paris during the War of Independence, who were denied entry into the Parish Peace Conference; many of Sinn Féin representatives in Paris went on to become prominent figures in politics and diplomacy. Justin Dolan Strover compares wartime destruction in both Dublin and Paris, Pierre Joannon and Phyllis Gaffney discuss two French observers of the War of Independence, Ludovic Naudeau and Roger Chauviré, in their two chapters, while Barry McCrea concludes the volume with a discussion of Joyce and Proust.
The book makes able use of illustrations, including historic maps of the city, sketches and cartoons from Parisian publications dealing with Ireland. Many of these illustrations – such as that from an 1848 biography of O’Connell by Joséphine-Marie-Anne Maillot, a grandmother of Charles de Gaulle and the source of de Gaulle’s enduring fascination with O’Connell – come from Pierre Joannon’s own collection. The book does contain some minor typographical and factual mistakes which have slipped through the editorial process – Ho Chi Minh was not, as Ranger appears to suggest, Chinese (p. 189).
There are a number of Parisian-Irish connections in the period which are arguably underplayed by the book, such as the curious lack of emphasis on Irish responses to the Paris Commune. Dolan Strover does draw attention to the research of Donal Fallon, who has traced the Commune’s role in inspiring James Connolly during the lead-up to the 1916 Rising. The Irish clergy and newspapers such as the Freeman’s Journal frequently invoked the execution of Archbishop Darboy of Paris during the Commune in their condemnation of the Fenians, however, and this is worthy of greater examination. Other examples of underexplored areas hinted at by the book include Irish responses to the Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s, as well as the influence of French religious orders on Ireland. John Charles McQuaid, a future Archbishop of Dublin and a member of the French Holy Ghost Order, was profoundly influenced by French Catholicism and remained a staunch Francophile throughout his life. Nonetheless, this book is admirable in its breath and range of perspectives from a broad array of scholars.
In conclusion, this book is a welcome addition to our understandings of both France and Ireland in the period between 1798 and 1916, and Joannon and Whelan are to be congratulated for producing such a diverse and interesting collection of essays. As they note in the conclusion, the Franco-Irish relationship is more important than ever in the context of a post-Brexit Europe, and this book serves as a valuable examination of the multifaceted nature of this vital relationship over the last two centuries.