Colin Barr. Ireland’s Empire

Throughout much of the English-speaking world, for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the words “Irish” and “Catholic” were practically synonymous, and yet historians have lacked a clear answer as to why this was. While most Irish Protestants migrants—beyond the “Scotch-Irish” of the southern United States—evolved from being “Irish” and “Protestant” to merely “Canadian” or “Australian,” Irish Catholics maintained a strong dual identity. Many theories have sought to explain the phenomenon. Some say it lies in the timing or sheer numbers of those Irish Catholics who migrated abroad. Others have suggested it was their shared sense of oppression that kept them together. Still others point to the role of political leaders in binding them as a constituency. There is undoubtedly some truth to all these theories, yet none have been articulated in a single argument supported by primary source evidence. In his excellent new book, Ireland’s Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the English-Speaking World, 1829–1914, Colin Barr offers one, clear answer: the Roman Catholic Church itself. In Catholic communities all over the world, Irish bishops, priests, and nuns built what Barr calls a “Hiberno-Roman” institution, which “emphasized loyalty to both the papacy and to Ireland, encouraged Irish symbolism and Roman devotions, and insisted on communal cohesion and social separation, especially in education and matrimony” (18). In what Barr admits is a very top-down approach to understanding religion and identity, the book argues that the church’s hierarchy created a sociotheological framework for understanding the world, which ensured that the twin identities of “Irish” and “Catholic” were nurtured and protected with iron discipline.

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