Fenian Ghosts: The Spectre of Irish Republicanism in Ethnic Relations in Newfoundland

• Main Author: Keough, Willeen G.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Edinburgh University Press 2020
• Subjects: The Spectre; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474459037.003.0009

By charting various manifestations of Irish republican sympathy in Newfoundland from the late eighteenth century into the early twentieth century, this chapter highlights the historical memory of grievance among the Newfoundland Irish. The Fenian scare of the late 1860s in Port de Grave, Conception Bay provides the starting point for a wide-ranging survey that extends from elite concern over Ribbonism among early Irish Catholic settlers in the Avalon Peninsula to sympathy for the 1916 rebellion among their descendants. The chapter argues that while most Newfoundland Irish were not explicitly republican, expressions of sympathy with the goals of Irish republican movements reveal that many were not supporters of the British Empire.