A Nation Once Again? Continuità e discontinuità nel nazionalismo irlandese

Abstract

This essay is a brief overview of the different forms of Irish nationalism (or of nationalism in Ireland), from the Anglo-Norman invasion to the 20th century; from Gaelic proto-nationalism as a reaction to the first Angevin conquest, to the gradual affirmation of a powerful religious element during the Tudor re-conquest and the fast reformulation of identities in the conflicts of the 17th century; from the ironic Protestant colonists’ “Ascendency nationalism”in the 18th century, to the birth of the first form of post-French Revolution, post-Enlightenment modern democratic Republicanism at the end of that century; from the subsequent rise of a new but old constitutional brand to the different epiphanies of those two strands in the following decades, with Unionism as a third possible form. The continuity and discontinuity of the two main “currents” are considered, showing that there was always a continuum between the two.