Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies Nations Diasporas Identities
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Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies Volume 4: Issue 1 Nations Diasporas Identities AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen JOURNAL OF IRISH AND SCOTTISH STUDIES Volume 4, Issue 1 Autumn 2010 Nations, Diasporas, Identities Published by the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen in association with The universities of the The Irish-Scottish Academic Initiative ISSN 1753-2396 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies General Editor: Cairns Craig Issue Editor: Brad Patterson Associate Editor: Michael Brown Editorial Advisory Board: Fran Brearton, Queen’s University, Belfast Eleanor Bell, University of Strathclyde Ewen Cameron, University of Edinburgh Sean Connolly, Queen’s University, Belfast Patrick Crotty, University of Aberdeen David Dickson, Trinity College, Dublin T. M. Devine, University of Edinburgh David Dumville, University of Aberdeen Aaron Kelly, University of Edinburgh Edna Longley, Queen’s University, Belfast Peter Mackay, Queen’s University, Belfast Shane Alcobia-Murphy, University of Aberdeen Ian Campbell Ross, Trinity College, Dublin Graham Walker, Queen’s University, Belfast International Advisory Board: Don Akenson, Queen’s University, Kingston Tom Brooking, University of Otago Keith Dixon, Université Lumière Lyon 2 Luke Gibbons, Notre Dame Marjorie Howes, Boston College H. Gustav Klaus, University of Rostock Peter Kuch, University of Otago Graeme Morton, University of Guelph Brad Patterson, Victoria University, Wellington Matthew Wickman, Brigham Young David Wilson, University of Toronto The Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies is a peer reviewed journal published twice yearly in autumn and spring by the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. An electronic reviews section is available on the AHRC Centre’s website at: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/issjournal.shtml Editorial correspondence, including manuscripts for submission, should be addressed to The Editors, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, Humanity Manse, 19 College Bounds, University of Aberdeen, AB24 3UG or emailed to: [email protected] Subscription information can be found on www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/publications Cover image: William McTaggart, The Sailing of the Emigrant Ship, 1895. Oil on canvas. Copyright National Gallery of Scotland. CONTENTS Editorial v Ever more ‘Diaspora’: Advances and Alarums 1 Donald Harman Akenson Translating Nations: Botany, Organicism and Diaspora 17 Cairns Craig Memory, Place and Diaspora: Locating Identity in Colonial 47 Space Lindsay Proudfoot & Dianne Hall Homeless Minds, Imagined Nations, Peripheral Visions: 65 Hugh MacDiarmid and Allan Curnow Andrew Blaikie Scotland’s Feminine Nationalism: 79 Some Distant Views of Jane Porter Graeme Morton ‘Irishness’ on the New Zealand Stage, 1850-1930 99 Peter Kuch Migration, Identity and Print Culture: Sir David Henry and the Kinleith Paper Mill 119 David Finkelstein & Sydney Shep Michael Davitt’s Pacific World 131 Malcolm Campbell Settlement, Conflict and Continuity: Irish Protestant Migrants on New Zealand’s Pakeha Frontier, 1870-1900 145 Gerard Horn ‘It is curious how keenly allied in character are the Scotch Highlander and the Maori’: Encounters in a New Zealand Colonial Settlement 163 Brad Patterson Getting Massey: The Limavady Statue Stoush and the Politics of Space in Northern Ireland 185 Ewan Morris ‘In habits, in character, in fact [in] everything except language ... like the Norwegians’: New Zealand’s Shetland Migrants 199 Rebecca Lenihan Notes on Contributors 223 EDITORIAL A field of developing scholarly interest from the 1970s, Irish-Scottish Studies have thrived over the past decade. The immediate catalysts have been a subject of some debate, but there is general agreement that influences beyond the academy have been critical. Political and economic events have begun to radically reshape the cultural identities of Ireland and Scotland. In Ireland the transient dynamism of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy helped transform one of Europe’s poorest countries to one of its most advanced. In Northern Ireland the peace process has reconfigured not only future relations between religious communities, but also the cultural landscapes of those communities. And in Scotland, devolution has been accompanied by what has been described as a cultural renaissance. At the hub of the emerging discipline since 1999 has been the University of Aberdeen’s Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, also since 2001 host of the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies. First under the direction of Professor Tom Devine, then Professor Cairns Craig, Aberdeen, in close association with other institutions and individuals, has stimulated and fostered vital new research. While arguably the initial focus was on historical and literary/language questions, and the concern largely with interactions in and between Ireland and Scotland, welcome developments over the past decade have been a widening of disciplinary interests and a major extension of the geographic reach of Irish-Scottish Studies. The latter is of considerable significance. Paralleling, in some instances almost certainly stimulated by, cultural initiatives in the home countries, many people throughout the world have become increasingly conscious, and assertive, of their Irish and Scottish antecedents and identities – as evidenced by Tartan Day celebrations in the United States and Canada, or by St. Patrick’s Day commemorations in Australia and New Zealand. This should not surprise. A case can be made that people comprised the most substantial export of Ireland and Scotland in the long nineteenth century, they being consistently among the top three European countries contributing to the unprecedented migration flows to the New Worlds. Possibly reflecting, in some instances endeavouring to tap, the popular enthusiasm, vi Editorial tertiary institutions in a number of recipient countries have exhibited a growing willingness to develop relevant study and research programmes, nowhere more so than in New Zealand, the most distant destination for Irish and Scots. Hence the establishment of the Irish-Scottish Studies Programme at Victoria University of Wellington’s Stout Research Centre (2003) and the University of Otago’s Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies (2008). When it was resolved in 2006 that a major international conference should be held focusing on the relationships between the home countries and their diasporas, and that it should be held in a recipient country, New Zealand was thus a logical choice of venue. Organised by Victoria University’s Irish-Scottish Studies Programme in association with Aberdeen’s AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, the conference, under the rubric ‘Nations : Diasporas : Identities’, was held in Wellington over 27 – 30 March 2008. In total forty-four papers were presented, and the occasion attracted nearly 100 delegates. The chosen theme was indicative of a number of issues currently exercising the minds of researchers. For instance, do identifiable diasporic groups have any continuing relationship with the identities of the nations to which they are attached? Are national identities themselves being transformed, being effected in any significant way, by feedback from their diasporas? Are alternative ‘national’ identities developing which may claim to express the same national past but in fact envisage it in quite different ways? Should the notion of the ‘nation’ be extended to encompass its diasporas? What is a national history, for that matter a national culture, in a world of highly mobile populations? Just who qualifies as Irish or Scottish? It would be going too far to suggest that any of these questions were conclusively answered; indeed the debates threw up even more questions and conundrums. Even so, a range of constructive viewpoints were expressed, with new lines of inquiry being suggested. An important outcome was a proposal that the conference be the first of series, the next being scheduled for Toronto in 2010. The papers included in this issue are offered as a sampler of the kinds of issues and topics addressed. There are contributions from both leading scholars and several new faces; the contributions are drawn from at least five disciplines; in approach the contributions range from the reflective and theoretical to the manifestly empirical. Several ‘old campaigners’ lead off. Stressing the need for caution in employing the concept of diaspora, Donald Harman Akenson traces how it has evolved and achieved wide currency as an idea over the past half century. While conceding the concept has been ‘a Editorial vii useful one for Irish and Scottish historians, and for historians of the neo- Europes where migrants from Ireland and Scotland settled’, he points to some of the ways it can, and sometimes has, been misappropriated or twisted by special interest groups. Cairns Craig, while in part covering similar ground, adopts a different tack. In a wide-ranging think-piece he subjects traditional conceptions of the nation to scrutiny. He suggests that by bringing theories of the nation together with the analysis of diaspora it may be possible to reformulate our conceptions of both: ‘in the experience of exchanging cultures which characterizes the experience of the migrant, there may be an alternative way of understanding the fundamental processes of the nation itself’. Lindsay