Notes 1 Redeeming Ireland: The Historical Problem and a Model for Cultural Analysis 1. Rev. Joseph Murphy, Catholic curate, at Enniscorthy Demonstration, county Wexford, October 26, 1879 ( Freeman’s Journal , October 27, 1879). 2. I borrow this term from Catherine Bell (1992, 83–85), who synthesizes Kenneth Burridge’s notion of redemptive process and Antonio Gramsci’s hegemony concept. I take Bell’s conceptualization to mean that subordinate groups appropriate from the dominant hegemonic structure elements that help them either negotiate with or resist dominant power. My conceptu- alization is somewhat different. By redemptive hegemony, I mean a coun- terhegemonic formation that seeks to redeem power from the dominant structure. 3. “Home Rule” would give the Irish power to make domestic decisions only and was to be achieved through parliamentary consent. Radical national- ists, advocating complete separation from Great Britain, were prepared to use violence and physical force if necessary to attain it. 4. “Gallican” refers to the Catholic Church in France that enunciated in its principles of 1682 limited autonomy from Rome, especially in matters con- cerning the well- being of French Catholics. 5. The Franchise Act of 1850 gave farmers with a £12 valuation of their land the right to vote: “With a twelve- pound valuation franchise in the counties after 1850, the proportion of farmers constituting the public political class of the Irish countryside grew significantly to about a third by 1866 and probably nearer to two-fifths by the time of Parnell’s first electoral successes of the early 1880s” (Hoppen 1984, 91). 6. This term refers to the privileged land- owning class in Ireland, whose mem- bers were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy. 7. Despite the movement’s stated nonsectarian nature, Protestant farmers in the north were put off by the Irish Catholic Church’s involvement, in the same way that its nationalist component alienated tenant farmers loyal to Britain. See Thompson (1985) and Wright (1996). 8. The previous failed movements, to be discussed in chapter 2 , include the Repeal movement and Young Ireland movement (1840s), Catholic 238 Notes Education movement (1840s), Tenant Right movement (1850s and 1870s), Fenian movement (1860s), Amnesty movement (1868), and Home Rule movement (1870s). 9. Some notable studies that tackle the issue of political alliance in historical movements are Voss (1993), Gould (1995), and Ansell (2001). 10. See Bew (1979, 217–224) for his critique of various explanations of the INLL alliance. 11. The terms “articulation” and “articulatory practices” have a specific meaning in discourse analysis. According to Laclau and Mouffe, articu- lation is “any practice establishing a relation among [symbolic] elements such that their identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice” (1985, 105). Sewell expresses this process of articulation more plainly: “In the case of discourses, articulation implies an attachment of ‘joint- ing’ of distinct discourses to one another” (2005, 339). My use of the terms will indicate a joining of discursive elements resulting in discursive transformation. 12. See for example, Kane (1991), Emirbayer and Goodwin (1994), Sewell (1992, 1994 and 1999), Biernacki (1995), and Hall (2000 and 2003). 13. See Alexander (1988b) and Kane (1991) for discussions of the “autonomy of culture” concept; Rambo and Chan (1990) for original conceptualization of “culture structure”; and Sewell (1996a) on the semicoherence of cultural systems. 14. The natural events were bad weather and poor harvest; social structural “events” consisted of landlord refusal of rent reductions, evictions, and government inaction to aid farmers; and movement events included pro- test organization and demonstrations by tenant farmer defense clubs, and encouragement from Irish American organizations and what is called the “New Departure” (the latter is discussed in chapter 2). 15. Randall Collins’s (2004) conceptualization and discussion of “enchained” ritual events and “ritual enchainment” helped me in my thinking about “path dependence” of ritual events, and is similar to my idea of networked ritual events. Although, as I discuss, my theory about how and why sym- bolic construction occurs in ritual and ritualistic events differs from that of Collins. 16. According to Mahoney, “self- reinforcing sequences are characterized by processes of reproduction that reinforce early events” (2000, 526; italics in original). 17. Sewell is drawing on and reconceptualizing Marshall Sahlins’s concept of “structure of conjuncture” as specified in Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom (1981). Sahlins’s seminal work is also important in the analysis of cultural transformation in, and undetermined outcomes of, ritual events. 18. While the literature on ritual, ritual action, and ritual processes is vast, work that has influenced my thinking includes (but is not limited to): Durkheim (1965), Turner (1969), Bourdieu (1977), Sahlins (1981), Alexander (1988c), Notes 239 Bell (1992), Hunt (1984, 1988), Roth (1995), Sewell (1996b, 2005), and Collins (2004). 19. This is Sewell’s conceptualization of ritual (2005, 252). Most of this quote— and Sewell’s conceptualization, as he acknowledges— is derived from Catherine Bell (1992, 140–141). 20. This section on symbolic meaning is derived from Kane (1997, 255–257). 21. For related but differently focused discussions of this double interpretation, see Alexander (1988a, 314) and Sahlins (1981, 68–70). 22. The conceptualizations in the following two paragraphs are derived largely from LaClau and Mouffe (1985, 93–148). 23. The following conceptualizations draw on Brubaker (1996). 24. However, see Miller (1985, 119–121) for discussion of how the semantic structure of the Irish language continued to influence “an Irish worldview which emphasized dependence and passivity.” 25. This draws on Swidler’s concept (1986), though I use it in a somewhat dif- ferent way. 26. See Berezin (1997, 21–23) for a discussion of hierarchies of identity. 27. Boycotting, one of the most important forms of modern collective action, acquired its name from an event of the Land War. Captain Charles Boycott, the agent and largest tenant of the Earl of Erne in County Mayo, experienced a complete embargo as a result of what was perceived as unfair treatment, including evictions, of other tenants. For two months in the autumn of 1880, Captain Boycott was unable to hire labor to work his farm. No mer- chant in all of southern Mayo would sell goods and services to the Boycott family, and mail and telegraph services were cut to his house. This event is discussed in chapter 4 . 28. In addition to verbal documentation, a number of newspapers and weekly magazines—such as the Illustrated London News , the Irish American , and United Ireland — provided rich visual imagery of the Land War. For discus- sions of the role of imagery in the construction of Irish political conscious- ness, see Moran (1999) and McBride (1999). 29. On the political role of newspapers in later nineteenth- century Ireland, see Loughlin (1991, 221–241), Legg (1999), and Kane (2003, 40–61). For dis- cussions of newspaper reading as a form of ritual and discursive participa- tion, see Andersen (1983) and Jacobs (1996). 2 Historical Antecedents to the Irish Land War 1. Paraphrased from William Sewell (2005, 83). 2. This term is borrowed from Dan Slater and Erica Simmons, “Informative Regress: Critical Antecedents in Comparative Politics,” Comparative Political Studies , July 2010, though not used in the full theoretical or methodological sense. 3. See also Elliot (1978), Donnelly (1980), and Miller (1983). 240 Notes 4. Opposition and resistance to tithes had long been the focus of secret rural society activity. 5. Clark reports that the emergence of the Tithe War can be traced to a parish near the Kilkenny- Carlow border in the province of Munster, where a local priest began an agitation to reduce the tithe composition (1979, 92). 6. Parliament enacted legislation through the 1830s that first reduced the bur- den of tithes and then converted tithes into rent charges. 7. See MacDonagh (1989e, 222–225) for a discussion of the Tithe War. 8. These Lalor quotes are from letters in the journal Irish Felon , 1847–1848, and cited in Davitt (1904, 59–60). 9. For these movements, see Lee (1973), Donnelly (1977, 1978, 1983), Beames (1983, 1987), Garvin (1987b). 10. Feingold notes that due to Lalor’s death in 1849, his proposal for “merging the national and land reform issues into a single political movement aimed at the liberation of both Ireland and the tenant- farmer . [was] relegated . to the library shelf until, in 1878 [Michael] Davitt presented it in a new form,” (1984, 54), ostensibly the basis of the “new departure.” 11. Located in county Meath, the site contains a number of ancient monuments, and according to Irish historical myth was the seat of the Irish high king. 12. For an excellent description and analysis of the ceremonial form of Repeal monster meetings, which would be reproduced during the Land War, see Owens (1999a, 242–269). 13. One of the most storied of Irish battles, the 1041 “Battle of Clontarf” pit- ted Irish High King Brian Boru (of Munster) against an alliance between Leinster and Viking forces, long situated in Dublin. In literary accounts, the battle at Clontarf represents a struggle for the sovereignty of Ireland. 14. This term is used metaphorically, as by law the Irish could not possess guns and they were exceedingly difficult to obtain, a condition that severely limited radical separatist efforts at least until late in the nine- teenth century. 15. D. S. Jones maintains that graziers generally held over two hundred acres, with four hundred being about the average. I am lowering this figure as per Solow and Feingold, because the higher proportion of grassland to crops per- mits the assumption that farmers in this group derived most of the income from livestock.