More people of Irish descent live in the United States than in Ireland. A century ago, the people of the Irish diaspora provided much of the impetus for their homeland's independence. Today, the predicament of Northern Ireland, which has recently deteriorated after a year and half of cease-fire, engages the sympathies of many Irish-Americans.
Conditioned by a cold-war attitude favoring the democratic unity of divided peoples, and informed by America's own history with Britain, sympathies on the U.S. side of the Atlantic tend to favor unification for Ireland. The American imagination likes to embrace the image of a Northern Ireland held against its will inside an evil empire. In this image, the South sits by in frustration, unable to significantly assist its Northern neighbors by diplomacy or force.
Many Irish are suspicious, even hostile, to this kind of perspective on their country. To them, Americans who favor outright unification are naive, pig-headed, and historically ignorant about the Irish political situation.
Historically, Ulster is the Texas of Ireland. Fiesty, truculent, and proud, it has always had a separatist mentality. The present division of Ireland reflects age-old boundaries. The six counties of Northern Ireland correspond roughly to one of the five ancient provinces, Ulster, the maverick in legend. When the Industrial Revolution hit, the South lagged behind economically, and the North's partnership with England expanded. Following the Anglo-Irish war of 1916-1922, the six northernmost counties voluntarily opted out of Ireland altogether. Affiliation with the British Empire was the new expression of Ulster's age-old hostility to the South.
The Republic of Ireland's Constitution, written decades ago by violently anti-British revolutionaries, still claims the six counties, but the South has relinquished these claims in practice. Today, the IRA and Sinn Fein, both Republican organizations, are highly stigmatized by most Irish people. No longer inclined to determine its course only in opposition to Britain, the Republic of Ireland is burying hatchets and taking its own place equal with Britain among European nations.
As the gap with Britain closes, one is opening between the Irish and their cousins abroad. Ireland would prefer to discard its image as the war-torn wee Catholic country that thousands of Irish-Americans visit every year to find their roots. For Irish-Americans, this means the explosion of images now generations old.
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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