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Mathieu Billings on Ireland's Exiled Children: America And Robert Schmuhl. Ireland's Exiled Children: America and the Easter Rising. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 232 pp. $29.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-19-022428-8. Reviewed by Mathieu Billings (Notre Dame) Published on H-War (April, 2017) Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air University) Amidst a resurgence of Irish scholarship anti‐ more deeply in the cause of Irish freedom than the cipating the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising, people of the United States” (p. 157). The revolu‐ historians have been slow to reexamine this sub‐ tionary Proclamation of 1916, after all, had recog‐ ject from an American perspective. Indeed, the nized the support of only one other country by documentary film The Irish Rebellion (2016), co- name: America. And millions of its “exiled chil‐ produced by the University of Notre Dame and dren” in the United States, four of which are the aired in the United States on PBS, sought to inspire subjects of this book, funded and energized the an academic audience as much as it aimed to in‐ cause. To be clear, the Rising was orchestrated and form a popular one. Fortunately, Robert Schmuhl carried out in Ireland, not America, a point which has begun to address this lacunae in Ireland’s Ex‐ Schmuhl clearly acknowledges: “it would stretch iled Children, an important book which explores historical accuracy to paint 1916 too brightly in the impact that Irish America had upon the Rising red, white, and blue” (p. 4). Nevertheless, Ireland’s while laying the groundwork for future scholars emigrants and their fellow supporters played an to explore--and reexamine--the political, social, integral part in the popular independence move‐ and cultural connections between Ireland and the ment which began with the Rising and continued United States.[1] through the creation of the Irish Free State in In this concise and well-written monograph, 1922. Schmuhl argues that Irish America played a Schmuhl references not only the personal unique role in the conception, execution, and pub‐ writings and correspondence of influential revolu‐ lic reaction to this seminal event of Irish inde‐ tionaries and politicians; he taps into the deep wa‐ pendence. Quoting a speech delivered by Presid‐ ters of American journalism as well. Unlike in Ire‐ ent Kennedy to the Oireachtas of Ireland in 1963, land, where a lack of contemporary sources have Schmuhl maintains, “No people ever believed continued to challenge historians’ efforts in H-Net Reviews gauging public responses to the event, Americans exile” through the poetry and journalism of Joyce commented frequently on the subject. As Schmuhl Kilmer, whose columns in the New York Times notes, for two straight weeks, beginning on April Magazine depicted the Rising, contrary to the edit‐ 25 and concluding on May 8, prominent newspa‐ orial conclusions of his employer, from a perspect‐ pers such as the New York Times dedicated front- ive sympathetic to the rebels. In the aftermath, page coverage to the Rising. Despite the Times’s Kilmer both influenced and reinforced sentiments initial condemnation of the insurrection, the exe‐ shared by millions that “America’s voice will speak cution of fourteen rebel leaders and the incarcera‐ resolutely and clearly on the side of Ireland” (p. tion of thousands that followed “made the British 68). Although neither Kilmer nor his ancestors look cold-blooded and motivated by revenge came from Ireland, his “adopted ethnic identity” rather than justice” (p. 6). As the Washington Post was Irish (p. 59). “In his mind, as well as in his put it two days after the final executions on May heart,” Schmuhl writes, “he, too, was one of the 12, the gathering of two thousand protestors ‘exiled children’” (p. 46). When America entered triggered in DC what the paper “expected to be‐ the global conflict in 1917, Kilmer enlisted in the come a nation-wide movement in sympathy with “Fighting Sixty-Ninth,” New York’s renowned Ir‐ the Irish revolutionists” (p. 12). Overall, the au‐ ish-American infantry regiment, although he nev‐ thor’s research of newspapers, as well as the per‐ er returned. A German sniper killed him in 1918. sonal correspondence of key participants in Amer‐ Chapter 3 follows the decisions and deliberations ica, marks an important and unique contribution of President Woodrow Wilson, whose “denial of to scholarship on the Rising. exile” contrasted with Kilmer’s romantic legacy. Schmuhl organizes his work into four Unlike Kilmer, Wilson could trace his heritage to chapters, each a biographical essay addressing the Ireland, from where his Ulster Protestant grand‐ preparation, fighting, and aftermath from the per‐ fathers had emigrated during the nineteenth cen‐ spective of Irish American “exiles.” Chapter 1 ex‐ tury. Also unlike Kilmer, Wilson did not sympath‐ plores the “intrigue of exile” through the life of ize with Irish revolutionaries. Despite his rhetoric‐ John Devoy, a native of County Kildare who was al appeal during election campaigns, and the exiled for treason in 1871. In America, Devoy be‐ counsel of his Irish American secretary Joseph came an ardent Fenian, or Irish revolutionary. For Patrick Tumulty, the president never really re‐ the founder of the Irish Nation (1880) and The garded the Irish Question as anything other than a Gaelic American (1903), only violent insurrection domestic disturbance for Britain. When the Rising would win independence from Britain, as it had in began in 1916, Wilson regarded it as a “great the United States. Devoy not only organized finan‐ shock” (p. 82). When he attended the Paris Peace cial support for the Rising; his leadership in the Conference, he ignored the pro-independence Friends of Irish Freedom advocated for the recog‐ voices for Ireland, despite his rhetoric of self-de‐ nition of a sovereign Ireland at the Paris Peace termination for the people of Poland and Conference in 1919. With the creation of the Irish Czechoslovakia. When the US Senate failed to rati‐ Free State in 1922, he lived long enough to see the fy the Versailles Treaty, Wilson blamed Irish fruits of his decades-long strife and eventually American politicians. Privately, he found the Irish supported Michael Collins and the pro-treaty fac‐ “untrustworthy and uncertain” (p. 100). To be tion during the civil war that followed. Quoting clear, Schmuhl does not attempt to explain wheth‐ the words of P. H. Pearse, signatory of the 1916 er Wilson’s antipathy “could have derived from Proclamation, Schmuhl agrees that Devoy was his Ulster ancestry or his deeply held conviction truly “the greatest of the Fenians” (p. 43). In that hyphenated Americanism had no place in U.S. chapter 2, the author examines the “romance of 2 H-Net Reviews public affairs” (p. 116). Nevertheless, Wilson did the Irish population in the United States, contrib‐ nothing to help the cause of Irish independence. ute? It would also be worth further exploring how In his fourth and final chapter, Schmuhl ex‐ the American experiences of labor advocates such amines the life of Éamon de Valera, an American as James Connolly, who resided in the United Irish participant in the Rising, whose legendary es‐ States from 1902 to 1910 and was executed for cape from the firing squad represents the “myth of having participated in the Rising, as well as James exile.” Born in the United States to a Spanish fath‐ Larkin, who was stateside in 1916, differed from er and an Irish mother, de Valera’s American cit‐ Devoy and de Valera in their outlooks on Irish in‐ izenship has long been regarded as having saved dependence. US historians would like to know him from execution by the British. Untangling de how newspapers outside of the urban northeast Valera’s own accounts from British correspond‐ portrayed the Rising and its aftermath. Did public ence and other scholarly works, Schmuhl con‐ support for Irish independence affected nativism cludes that de Valera’s American birth did little, if and immigration restrictions during the 1920s? anything, to save him from execution. Rather, his Among the most important contributions of late capture and incarceration bought him time. this work, however, is the subtext of a “special re‐ By the time his number came up, public opinion-- lationship” between the people of Ireland and the in Ireland and the United States--had already com‐ United States. Ordinarily attributed to British and pelled the British to halt their reprisals. In light of American cooperation during and after World de Valera’s own documentation, Schmuhl con‐ War II, the term “special relationship” under‐ tends that during the decades that followed, the scores the close diplomatic and military ties that American-born Irishman clung to the narrative, bound the two powers together through the early despite its inaccuracy, in order to “keep the ‘exiled twenty-first century. Yet as Schmuhl points out, in children’ in the United States in his corner--and 1916, “‘the special relationship’ between the his own biography helped strengthen those United Kingdom and the United States didn’t exist transatlantic ties” (p. 148). Not until the summer of yet” (p. 84). In fact, the Easter Rising of 1916 re‐ 1969, by which point de Valera was serving his vealed a social and cultural bond, made visible by second term as the president of Ireland, did he ac‐ the writings of Joyce Kilmer and others journal‐ knowledge that his American birth would not ists, between Ireland and America. Public opinion have saved him. Appropriately, Ireland’s Exiled in the United States, particularly following the ex‐ Children concludes with de Valera, an American- ecution of fourteen rebel leaders and the intern‐ born Irishman, participating in the insurrection ment of nearly two thousand suspected insur‐ that John Devoy, an Irish-born American, had fun‐ gents, reflected a “special relationship” between ded and envisioned.
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