After the Armistice

Empire, Endgame and Aftermath

Michael J. K. Walsh, Andrekos Varnava, Michael J. K. Walsh, Andrekos Varnava

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032005638
• eBook ISBN: 9781000389975
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'Asia

A century after the Armistice and the associated peace agreements that formally ended the Great War, many issues pertaining to the UK and its empire are yet to be satisfactorily resolved. Accordingly, this volume presents a multi-disciplinary approach to better understanding the post-Armistice Empire across a broad spectrum of disciplines, geographies and chronologies. Through the lens of diplomatic, social, cultural, historical and economic analysis, the chapters engage with the histories of Lagos and Tonga, Cyprus and China, as well as more obvious geographies of empire such as Ireland, India and Australia. Though globally diverse, and encompassing much of the post-Armistice century, the studies are nevertheless united by three common themes: the interrogation of that transitionary 'moment' after the Armistice that lingered well beyond the final Treaty of Lausanne in 1924; the utilisation of new research methods and avenues of enquiry to compliment extant debates concerning the legacies of colonialism and nationalism; and the common leitmotif of the British Empire in all its political and cultural complexity. The centenary of the Armistice offers a timely occasion on which to present these studies.

Part I

Imperial endgames

2 Imperial Coercion in Ireland and India 1919–21

Insights for Irish Australians

Stephanie James

‘India’s case is, in fact, Ireland’s case. The ‘rebels’ in both countries are fighting for freedom and self-determination.’¹

Introduction

In November 1921, James Vincent (J. V.) O’Loghlin compared India and Ireland in his regular column in Adelaide’s Irish Catholic newspaper, the Southern Cross. His comment followed rioting in Bombay associated with the visit of the Prince of Wales. O’Loghlin, the founder, first editor and long-term director of the Southern Cross, had argued that most Indians feared and hated British rule and that neither ‘British officialism’ or ‘press propaganda’ could camouflage popular hostility.

He emphasised the consequences of foreign rule for India, prevented from making its own laws and subject to those made by the British government in India ‘in which she has no representation’. O’Loghlin’s identification of the parallels between India and Ireland exemplified an important insight about the circumstances confronting the two colonies. In both, Britain was exerting military coercion to reassert control. For Irish Australian readers, similar items in Irish Catholic newspapers magnified the opportunities available for deeper understanding of the empire in the years following the Great War. Before and during the Great War, Australian understanding or engagement with imperial issues beyond the relationship between Ireland and/or Australia and England was limited. The consequences of the war, in particular the Versailles ‘peace’ conference and treaty-making processes, highlighted the somewhat less-desirable features of the British Empire. This challenged those features as opposed to those which had inspired large forces from both Ireland and India, as well as Australia, to volunteer from 1914 onwards.

Constituting around 25 per cent of Australia’s population in 1911, first- and second-generation Irish Australians had limited recognition of some very basic similarities between Ireland and India. For example, that an appointed viceroy was at the apex of British rule in India and Ireland and that for both colonies membership of the British Empire involved tight, oppressive power and coercive control. Moreover, probably few people in Australia or Britain realised, that as moves for Irish home rule from the 1880s unfolded, well-educated Indian bureaucrats and professional classes found that this clarified a comparative paradigm of possible pathways for their countries’ fight for independence. Somehow, for most Irish Australians, intense focus on the imperial centre resulted in the regular exclusion of drawing meaningful and obvious correlations between the consistently coercive treatment and experience of these two colonies at the periphery of the empire.

Figure 2.1 Masthead from the Adelaide Southern Cross.

Source: (Image courtesy of the Southern Cross, Adelaide)

Irish Australians, especially the Catholic majority, had limited access to sources presenting Irish news, something of continuing importance for many. The tendency to distrust secular press coverage of Irish affairs was widespread and longstanding. Thus, the Irish Catholic newspapers which existed in all capital cities provided a more reliable conduit for many. One function of these newspapers was to inform readers about Ireland at both religious and political levels. India was often included in items relating to both aspects. The Southern Cross, for example, regularly discussed India as a missionary destination, and the consequent growth of Catholicism, in the pre-1914 decades.² Sometimes natural disasters like crop failure or famine were featured, seeking reader’s generosity;³ details of potential Catholic appointments to high imperial positions were also frequent.⁴ As an imperial possession, India also attracted attention, with British inadequacies often highlighted;⁵ the tone usually differed when Irish officials or regiments were involved.⁶ Points of comparison between Ireland and India were typically examined under headings such as ‘Sisters in Misfortune’,⁷ but articles describing elements of British policy in India (famine due to level of food exports) and Egypt (barbaric flogging and execution of murderers of British officers) were directly linked to policy in Ireland.⁸ That force, or coercion, was frequently used to restore control in both colonies was recognised. The term ‘coercion’ would have been understood by many Irish Australians as specifically applying to a series of legal measures introduced in Ireland between 1833 (the Suppression of Disturbances Act) and 1887 (the Criminal Law and Procedure Act). These Acts empowered official restrictions, such as curfews and detention without trial, to prevent or limit disturbances in nominated districts; the 1887 Act remained in force and was used during the early years of the War of Independence.⁹ Defining intimidation and conspiracy, it gave magistrates great power in proclaimed districts and facilitated the banning of subversive organisations.¹⁰

There were both formal and informal connections between Ireland and India. Formally some links of great significance reached back to the nineteenth century. Notably, individuals closely associated with the Indian National Congress (founded in 1885) personified these connections. Dadabhai Naorog, a founder, and later Congress President in 1886, 1893 and 1906, was the first Indian to seek election to Westminster.¹¹ In 1894, Irishman and Quaker Alfred Webb (a Westminster MP, 1890–95) presided at the tenth National Congress; his role reflected strong and direct peripheral imperial bonds. More informally, the two countries also shared other tactics, for example, India’s early twentieth-century adoption of a boycott of British goods. Originally a weapon used against British landowners in the Irish Land Wars of the 1880s, its extension and use in India demonstrates the vulnerability of imperial control when, at the periphery, countries were applying lessons learnt elsewhere in the empire.¹²

Westminster had been the scene of many nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debates about Indian affairs. Prominent Irish MPs familiar to Irish Australians as visitors, writers or officials in Irish Nationalist organisations, such as Michael Davitt¹³ and Webb,¹⁴ were vocal parliamentary participants – such items were not always reported in Australia’s Irish Catholic press.¹⁵ It took events following the 1916 Dublin Easter Rising and Britain’s immediate responses and, longer term, what emerged following the Versailles settlement, as well as episodes of violence in Ireland and India from 1919, to fully enlighten Ireland and its diaspora communities about the shared similarities between the ‘Emerald Isle’ and India. The war and its legacies inserted a new lens into the framework available to Irish Australians in advancing their understanding of what it was about the imperial structure that placed Ireland and India side by side, despite basic differences, in struggles with London. In this process, Irish Catholic newspapers played a decisive role.

This chapter has three main sections. The first explores the international context, focusing specifically on the backdrop to and impact of World War One in both India and Ireland. The second briefly clarifies the contours of post-war coercion in both countries. The greatest part of this chapter, however, demonstrates how three of Australia’s Irish Catholic newspapers, along with their editors and commentators, informed and enlightened readers about the emerging parallels between these imperial associates through an examination of items published between 1919 and 1921. All three papers were weekly publications and existed as official Church organs. The Melbourne Advocate, established in 1868; the aforementioned Southern Cross, founded in 1889, and Sydney’s Catholic Press, dating from 1895, all demonstrate the development of a more nuanced understanding of parallels between Ireland and India in the post-war years.

Figure 2.2 Masthead from the Melbourne Advocate.

Source: (Image Courtesy of MDHC Archdiocese of Melbourne).

Figure 2.3 Masthead from the Sydney Catholic Press.

Source: (Image courtesy of the Sydney Catholic Weekly).

Figure 2.4 Heading from ‘Currente Calamo’ Column.

Source: (Image courtesy of the Southern Cross, Adelaide).

Editors during the years under discussion were all laymen, not clerics, and were experienced newspapermen: Irishman Tighe Ryan in Sydney¹⁶ and Irish Australians Thomas Shorthill and Frederick Martin Koerner in Melbourne¹⁷ and Adelaide respectively.¹⁸ The Southern Cross also featured a weekly commentary column – ‘Currente Calamo’ – penned by founding editor, J. V. O’Loghlin; his material consistently included discussion of imperial issues.¹⁹

The association between colonial issues and both World War One and the complex Versa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Imperial endgames
• Part II Cultural aftermaths
• Part III Coda