Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2024

The Defenders’ Republic of the United States of France and Ireland: an Atlantic Heterotopia

Résumé

In their oaths and catechisms, the Defenders, a secret society in late 18th-century Ireland, swore allegiance to the “United States of France and Ireland”, casting their struggle in a resolutely Atlantic framework. Despite this evidence, the prevalent (revisionist) historiography has depicted the Defenders as backward-looking, parochial in their outlook, sectarian, and unable to understand the references they were wielding (contrary to their allies from 1795-6, the United Irishmen, presented as heirs of the Enlightenment). This dismissal echoes the anti-Catholic prejudices the Defenders have suffered from the Protestant liberal historiography of the 19th century, which itself was drawn from the damnatio memoriae they had endured in the wake of the “Rebellion” of 1798. Recognizing that the Defenders were the heirs of a long chain of popular protest, it is necessary to rescue their agency from the enormous condescension of posterity and to uncover the meaning of their political language. They belie the idea that only revolutions which were non- or even anti-Catholic could succeed. From the interstices of colonized Ireland, and of the Atlantic world, in port-cities, in taverns and fairs, in revolutionary banquets and onboard ships, the Defenders wove a powerful language of emancipation, equality, and freedom, mixing Catholic, Masonic, revolutionary, and republican references. They dreamed of the “United States of France and Ireland”, an Atlantic heterotopia (Michel Foucault) which could have been.

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Dates et versions

hal-04814962 , version 1 (02-12-2024)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04814962 , version 1

Citer

Mathieu Ferradou. The Defenders’ Republic of the United States of France and Ireland: an Atlantic Heterotopia. From the Interstices: : Geographies, Identities, Solidarities, and Institutions in France, the Francophone World, and Beyond, Society for French Historical Studies, Mar 2024, Hempstead, NY 11549, United States. ⟨hal-04814962⟩
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