Russophobia is a paradox in the history of Great Britain. Within the United Kingdom there developed early in the nineteenth century an antipathy toward Russia which soon became the most pronounced and enduring element in the national outlook on the world abroad. The contradictory sequel of nearly three centuries of consistently friendly relations, this hostility found expression in the Crimean War. Yet that singularly inconclusive struggle is the sole conflict directly between the two nations; theirs is a record of peace unique in the bellicose annals of the European great powers.[1]
Fear
of Russian motives and ambitions in Europe was a persistent theme of British
foreign and colonial policies during the nineteenth and early-twentieth
centuries. Yet, with the notable
exception of the Crimean War in the 1850s, there were no hostilities between
the two nations while during the twentieth century it was Russian military
collaboration with Britain and her allies that played a major role in the
defeat of Germany in 1918 and 1945.
Despite this, russophobia, though lacking the stridency of its nineteenth century
predecessor, remains a feature of British public opinion largely because of the
dismemberment of the Soviet Empire and the uncertainty over what Russia’s aims are today.
The 1830s saw increasing tensions between Britain and Russia over the changing and
declining position of the Ottoman Empire in Europe and the Near East. [2]
Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary for much of this period and his foreign
policy reinforced certain specific elements of the ‘national’ character that
were not confined exclusively to the boundaries of Britain but encompassed its
imperial possessions. [3] This was evident in the colonial press that
contained detailed coverage of foreign policy generally drawn from British
newspapers. Foreign policy in the 1830s
was explicitly directed in the interests of liberal causes and patriotic
interests and had broad support across British society. For Britain, preserving the European balance
of power and protecting its international trade, particularly with India, were
key objectives and Russia was perceived as a threat to both. Russian foreign policy was seen in terms of
its desire for westward expansion into Europe something that it sought to
achieve by exploiting weakness within the Ottoman Empire. Russia was also seen as willing to use
aggressive diplomacy and military force to achieve this objective.
Although the Foreign Office sought to play down differences
between Britain and Russia in the mid-1830s, Palmerston came in for
direct and sustained criticism from David Urquhart, a diplomat with experience in Constantinople who sought to
portray Palmerston as a Russian agent. [4] He was
convinced that Russian agents were seeking to undermine Britain and his view
gained significant support among working-class groups in northern England in
1839 and especially 1840. In 1839, while seeking to become a Tory candidate for
Marylebone in London, Urquhart met William Cardo,
Marylebone’s Chartist Convention delegate. Cardo was impressed by
Urquhart introducing him to other
delegates who shared with him ‘a plan for simultaneous outbreaks in the long
nights before Christmas’ in which ‘a Polish emigrant’ directed ‘military
organisation…and was to have command in the mountains of Wales’. Urquhart said that with a few
confidants he toured Chartist centres successfully
dissuading local leaders from taking part in the rebellion.
Urquhart was critical in fanning
fears of Russian aggression and it is possible that these meetings were largely
held to promote his ideas on foreign policy. Russophobia can also be explained by
widespread working-class support for continental nationalist movements. [5]
Cardo, Lowery and Warden formed the core of a Chartist ‘foreign policy’ group and
it gained the support of the Northern
Liberator. [6] Although Urquhart’s claims only surfaced in the 1850s, reference to a meeting between unnamed
Chartists and Urquhart is made in a letter to his friend Pringle
Taylor dated 22 September 1839. Cardo, probably at Urquhart’s instigation, went to Newport ten
days after the rebellion where he was arrested on 15
November and, because no criminal intention could be shown, he was put on the
London mail coach the following day. Local magistrates were clearly puzzled
when Cardo informed them that the rebellion was the result of ‘Russian agency’
and identified Beniowski, who they had never heard of, as the agent. Although
there may have been talk of sending him to Wales because of his military
experience, there is no evidence Beniowski played a direct role in Newport
although there were vague reports of a foreigner on the coalfield in September
and October 1839.
Urquhart’s belief that the Chartist March on Newport was
‘fomented by Russian agents’ was dismissed by G. D. H. Cole as ‘the fantasy of
a disordered mind’ but there is no denying that his view of Russian ambitions
gained widespread support and help explain why rumours that Russian agents were
involved in the rebellions in the Canadas in 1837 and 1838 and in Irish
nationalist activities in the 1850s were, despite their eccentric nature, given
credence in governmental and diplomatic circles. Russian possession of Alaska until 1867 gave
this viewpoint added force: was it, like Ireland in relation to Britain, the
backdoor into British North America?
Although Russians may have reached Alaska in 1648, it was not until the
early 1740s that traders established hunting and trading posts and a further
forty years before these settlements became permanent. The Russian-American Company acquired the
monopoly on Alaska’s fur trade in 1799 and was expected to establish new
settlements and establish an expanded colonisation programme. [7]
The Russian hold on Alaska was limited to coastal locations and from the 1820s
its economic position was weakened by competition from the Hudson’s Bay Company
and from American trappers. It never
posed a viable military threat to British North America and at its height
Russian Alaska contained barely 700 Russians.
Yet there were Russians on the American mainland and this was sufficient
to rouse russophobic fears and those fears could easily give way to rumour. [8]
The second Canadian rebellion occurred in November 1838 with the attack in Lower Canada that was defeated at Odelltown and an assault on Prescott in Upper Canada. At the same time, rumours of the implication of the Russian government’s involvement began to circulate. The Morning Herald of New York published an article on 12 November suggesting that the Russians were favourably disposed to the revolutionaries who were trying to overthrow the British Empire.[9] It also suggested that Russia wanted to create discord along the Canadian-American frontier sufficient to provoke was between the United States and Britain so upsetting its diplomatic involvement in Eastern Europe. The rumours circulated widely in North American newspapers and President Martin Van Buren told Henry Fox, British minister in Washington that he had heard that Russia wanted to finance the rebellions. [10]
On 24 November 1838, the declaration of a prisoner John Bratish Eliovith,[11] known as the Baron Fratellin fed the suspicions of the British government.[12] He claimed that an agent of the Russian consul in New York promised to provide him with 5,000 rifles and a sum of $5,000 increasing to $25,000 should the rebellions prove to be a success. Fratellin added that Mrs Kielchen, the wife of the Russian consul from Boston, was living in Montreal and openly plotting with the Frères Chasseurs.[13] On 26 November, following these allegations, the Montreal police force searched her residence and found that the consul was with her. [14] He was immediately placed under arrest and all his papers were seized.[15]
Following this Henry Fox asked the journalist and lawyer Stewart Derbishire to carry out a rigorous examination of the issue.[16] Derbishire had already reported to Durham in May 1838 that the habitants had ‘no practical grievances’, that it was ‘the malaria of political agitation’ which had produced the rebellion.[17] The malaria, he felt, was still active but his constant warnings during 1838 and 1839 to Durham, Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur of Upper Canada, and Sir John Colborne gave him a reputation as an alarmist. Although Arthur was impressed by Derbishire, Colborne warned that he was ‘very credulous’ and should not be encouraged. He submitted his report to Fox on 20 July 1839 concluding that, on the basis of the available evidence that the Russians were engaged in a criminal conspiracy against the British Crown and were seeking to create disaffection with Britain in Lower Canada.
Derbishire’s conclusions brought together the context of the events in Canada and the somewhat tense relations between the British and Russians with reports, generally based on unsubstantiated assertions, of Russian intrigue. According to his report, Von Schoultz and Charles Hindenlang,[18] two of the main European rebels involved in events in November 1838 were actually Russian officers who organised the rebel troops in Canada while Russian agents in New York provided the necessary funds. [19] Derbishire also concluded that exile in France provided Papineau with the opportunity to approach the Russian government and that the arrest of the Russian consul from Boston was irrefutable proof of the Russian plot.[20] Although he repeated many of the assertions in Derbishire’s report and came to the same conclusions about the existence of Russian intrigue, Preston was more circumspect recognising difficulties with the available evidence: for instance, ‘the belief prevailed…’, ‘he is reported to have stated…’, ‘this man’s alleged further statement…’, and ‘alleged fact’.
It was not until 1937 that the question of Russian involvement in the rebellions was subjected to detailed analysis. Stavrianos considered the available evidence, or rather lack of it pointing to the inadequacies of Derbishire’s conclusions. He demonstrated, for instance, that Von Schoultz, who had fled to the United States after the Polish revolution of 1831 and Hindenlang who sought refuge in New York by 1838 were, in fact, simply revolutionaries not Russian agents and that they simply wanted to help the Canadian people to break free from British domination.[21] He also suggested that if Russia had really controlled certain rebel activities that agents of Canada and the United States would have informed their superiors of this. As there is no known correspondence at this level, it is impossible to confirm the charges against the Russian government. President Van Buren’s hint to Fox, something that had some credence given the tense diplomatic relations between Russia and Britain may have been an attempt to divert the British government’s attention and was not entirely unfounded. If successful, it could have given the Chasseurs far greater freedom of action.[22]
It is difficult to see what benefit Russian support for the rebels could have achieved. The second rebellion in November 1838 had been disastrous largely because it lacked support among French-Canadians and where there was support, it was without effective military organisation imploding when faced by better trained militia and regular British troops. However, Bodisco, the Russian minister in Washington, toyed with the idea of aiding the rebellion and did meet Papineau, O’Callaghan and Robert Nelson in his home on 10 December 1838 that he reported in a letter addressed to count Nesselrode. Papineau sought political support but it was clear that Russia did not wish to intervene in the conflict despite the sympathy of the Russian consul for the Canadian cause. [23] Nesselrode’s response to Bodisco made it very clear that under no circumstances should he become embroiled in the rebellions.[24] Although rumours of such meetings were widely known at the time, they were officially denied by authorities in Canada, Russia and Britain.[25]
The idea of an alliance between the Russian government and the Canadian rebels is difficult to maintain. The Patriotes openly supported the independence of Poland from Russia and often drew parallels between the Russian system of government and the British colonial system when denouncing the abuses of the latter. Despite the arrest of the Russian consul in Montreal, no incriminating evidence was found. His wife’s visit to Montreal was to collect her two daughters who attended school there though he planned to leave his son Peter to finish his schooling. [26] It is clear why the rumours of Russian involvement were taken seriously in Canada and in London especially after the Kielchen affair and Van Buren’s unfounded insinuations but it is clear that the rumours were never translated into practice.
Concerns about Russian intrigues resurfaced in the 1850s when tension between Britain and Russia led to war in the Crimea. This was, for instance, evident in the widespread coverage of the conflict in the Australia press from late 1853.[27] War in the Crimea finally broke out in March 1854 and when news reached the colonies two months later, it raised the question of their vulnerability to Russian attack. [28] A Russian naval presence in the Pacific led Australians to realise that they needed British protection. Individuals who had, the previous year, raised the possibility of a republic now reminded Britain of her obligations to protect Australia if Russia decided to make sorties into the southern Pacific. [29] On this occasion, Edward Hawksley, editor of the People’s Advocate, misjudged the colonial mood when he wrote that the war:
…will be a great stroke in our favour and we cannot doubt that our people will take advantage if it… [it will be] the signal for us to demand our freedom.[30]
In
the newly established colony of Victoria, the Argus that had threatened independence in 1852 now attacked Britain
for leaving ‘the greatest of her colonial possessions’ and its gold defenceless
against a Russian onslaught. [31]
Fear of war and perhaps more importantly the threat to Australian trade, for
the moment, ended any imminent possibility of a republic.
By the early 1850s, calls for Repeal and devolution had been
largely discredited as the dominant form of Irish nationalism. It no longer seemed
possible that demands for peaceful change could quickly deliver greater Irish
autonomy. The approach, advocated
forcefully by John Mitchel, that Ireland could only achieve autonomy
through physical-force appeared also to have been defeated in 1848.[32] A
combination of often disillusioned migrants fleeing the Famine, the arrival of
escaped leaders of the 1848 rising, the nativist reaction across North
America and Britain’s foreign difficulties especially the revival of mistrust of
Russia and then France, historically regarded as
Ireland’s opportunity, ensured that anti-British feeling and the goal of Irish
independence did not disappear and, by the mid-1850s, created conditions in
which radical, republican nationalism revived and sought Russian
support. [33]
In the early 1850s, the United States and especially New York became a magnet for
political exiles and for those Young Irelanders who had been released or had
escaped from Van Diemen’s Land. [34]
They revitalised Irish-American nationalism and led between 1848 and
1857 to the formation of organisations such as the Silent Friends, the
Irishmen’s Civil and Military Republican Union, the Irish Emigrant Aid Society
and especially the Emmet Memorial Association, all of which intended to send
military aid to Ireland in one form or another. The
Young Irelanders, including John
O’Mahony, [35]
Michael Doheny, Thomas Francis Meagher and John Mitchel were seen as political martyrs and feted as
heroes on their arrival in the republic.
Through their varied propaganda efforts, they sought to sustain a
revolutionary nationalism grounded in an almost
pathological hatred of England.
John Mitchel became the leading
republican ideologue after his arrival in the United States in 1853 through the Citizen, his newspaper that first
appeared in New York early the following year.[36]
His rhetoric was splenetic; his cause Irish independence; his method,
physical-force. Mitchel was prepared to condemn
Britain’s empire as often as possible and to spell out to Irish-Americans their responsibility to
liberate their native country from British dominion. Shortly after the
publication of the Citizen, on 13
April 1854 Mitchel helped to establish the
Irishmen’s Civil and Military Republican Union.
The group was open to members of militia companies as well as other
Irish societies and organisations and sought to raise funds to aid other
nationalist groups struggling for Irish independence.
With the outbreak of the Crimean War in March 1854, Mitchel went from New York to Washington to meet Baron
Stockl, the Russian minister to seek funds from Russia for an Irish revolution. [37] Stockl recognised and Mitchel admitted that
it was Mitchel’s hatred to England and love of Ireland rather than his love for
Russia that motivated the request for support.
Mitchel argued that the Irish in Ireland and the United States were ready to attack
England and could do so with Russian aid.
Ireland needed munitions as well as the diversion that Russia could
provide. Although Stockl admitted that England could be attacked through
Ireland but he questioned how, with the Baltic and Black Seas blockaded by
English and French navies, Russia could transport arms to Ireland. [38]
The Irishmen’s Civil and Military Republican Union did not long survive this
setback and Mitchell concluded that revolution in Ireland was, at least in the
short-term, no longer possible and this, in part, explains his later suspicions
of some Irish-American nationalist groups especially their use of
secret tactics.
Unlike Mitchel, John O’Mahony escaped abroad after the
collapse of the attempted rising
in 1848 initially to Paris leaving France for
the United States in December 1853. Although the immediate needs of the
Irish-American population tended to overshadow the distant
utopia of an independent Ireland, Irish America proved a fertile source of support for
conspiratorial associations committed to providing an expeditionary force of
liberators for Ireland. The Irish
Military and Civil Association, founded in New York in February 1855 succeeded
Mitchel’s organisation as the leading Irish-American revolutionary society. Its
military branch, known as the Emmet Monument Association, was organised into
companies of single men who drilled in preparation for the invasion of Ireland
and was led by O’Mahony and Michael Doheny. Its goal was to erect a monument honouring
Robert Emmet who had been executed after an abortive rebellion in 1803.
The Association spread quickly
throughout the major cities of the Union and it was composed of more than three
thousand men in New York City alone.
Like Mitchel, its leaders entered into secret
negotiations with the representatives of Russia in Washington and New York to launch an
invasion of Ireland but Russia’s
defeat in the Crimean War ended any hopes of assistance from their new
ally. [39] Whether there was ‘a large element of fantasy
in their talk of launching an invasion of Ireland’, O’Mahony believed that there was the ‘strongest hopes’
of Russian aid. [40] Negotiations certainly went further than Patriote appeals for Russian help in 1837-1838 but with no
greater success than Mitchel’s earlier attempt. In the aftermath of this failure, the Emmet
Monument Association too was dissolved but its leaders first formed a permanent committee,
consisting of thirteen men, representatives of the several divisions of the
Association with the power to revive the organisation if necessary at a later
date. After two years, the committee concluded that it was time to prepare for
a new Irish revolutionary movement.
After the Crimean War, Russia pursued cautious and well-calculated foreign
policies until a further Balkan crisis almost caused war in the late
1870s. The 1856 Treaty of Paris, signed
at the end of the Crimean War, had demilitarised the Black Sea and during the
1860s and 1870s Russian foreign policy sought to regain their naval
access. Russia viewed Britain and
Austria-Hungary as opposed to that goal, so foreign policy concentrated on good
relations with France, Prussia and the United States.
This, and the need to sell Alaska to the United States in order to
provide much-needed funds to develop its interests in the Far East, may explain
why there is no evidence of any Russian involvement in the Fenian incursions into Canada in 1866, 1870 and
1871. Russian attitudes to Britain also
contributed to this stance. Although
Russian expansion into Central Asia continued in the 1860s with the conquest of
the Bukhoro Khanate in 1868, the territories directly bordering Afghanistan and
Persia were left nominally independent to avoid alarming British India. [41]
Russian diplomatic and military
interests subsequently returned to Central Asia, where Russia had quelled a series of uprisings in the
1870s, and Russia incorporated hitherto independent emirates into the empire.
Britain renewed its concerns in 1881 when Russian troops occupied Turkmen lands
on the Persian and Afghan borders and almost erupted into open warfare after
the capture of Merv in 1884. This made
the North-West Rebellion led by Louis Riel in 1885, important to Russia
and, like the rebellions in 1837 and 1838, it was widely covered in the
strictly censored Russia press. One
Russian magazine referred to Riel as Canada’s Garibaldi and suggested that the
almost simultaneous events in the Sudan with General George Gordon’s death at
Khartoum, China and Canada were shaking the entire British Empire with Canada
singled out as Britain’s ‘Achilles heel’. [42]
One thing missing from previous discussion of the Russian dimension in the rebellions of 1837 and 1838 is how the fleeting links between rebels and diplomats fitted into Russian foreign policy and particularly how the logic of putting Britain’s imperial possessions under pressure linked to Russia’s broadly continentalist ambitions. Destabilising British power in Canada or in Ireland could have strengthened Russian status within the European Concert. When this is taken into account, Papineau’s plea for Russian political support in 1838 and the attempts by John Mitchel and John O’Mahony to obtain Russian aid for rebellion in Ireland during the Crimean War can be seen in a new, less eccentric light. In both 1838 and in the 1850s, it was particular circumstances that resulted in a diplomatic dead-end. By 1838, Russian diplomats rightly surmised that there was no realistic prospect of Patriotes raising a further rebellion in Lower Canada while defeat in the Crimean War meant that there was no longer any reason to support rebellion in Ireland. Rumour of Russian support for rebellion in Canada was rather more than contemporaries admitted or historians have recognised.
[1] J. H. Gleason, The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain: A Study
of the Interaction of Policy and Opinion, (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press), 1950, p. 1.
[2] K. Charles Webster, The Foreign Policy of Palmerston, 1830-1841: Britain, the Liberal
Movement and the Eastern Question, 2 Vols. (London: G. Bell & Sons),
1951, Vol. 1, pp. 259-320, and Vol. 2, pp. 527-777, remains the most detailed
analysis. For a more recent account see,
Brown David, Palmerston: A Biography,
(Yale University Press), 2010.
[3] David Brown, Palmerston and the Politics of Foreign Policy, 1846-55, (Manchester:
Manchester University Press), 2002, pp. 3-4.
[4] On Urquhart, see the elegant essay by A. J.
P. Taylor, ‘Dissenting Rivals: Urquhart and Cobden’, in his The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy 1792-1939, (London:
H. Hamilton), 1957, pp. 37-61. Shannon, Richard, ‘David Urquhart and the Foreign Affairs Committees’ in P. Hollis,
ed., Pressure from Without in early
Victorian England, (London: Edward Arnold), 1974, pp. 239-261, and Miles Taylor, ‘The old radicalism and the
new: David Urquhart and the politics of opposition, 1832-1867’ in Eugenio F. Biagini, and Alastair J.
Reid, eds., Currents
of radicalism: popular radicalism, organised labour and party politics in
Britain, 1850-1914, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1991, pp.
23-43, are useful essays. See also, Gertrude Robinson, David Urquhart: Victorian Knight Errant, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), 1920.
[5] Geoffrey Claeys, Imperial Sceptics: British Critics of Empire 1850-1920, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press), 2010, pp. 25-26.
[6] Joan Hugman, ‘A Small Drop of
Ink: Tyneside Chartism and the Northern
Liberator, in Owen R. Ashton, Robert Fyson and Stephen Roberts, eds., The Chartist Legacy, (London: Merlin Press), 1999,
pp. 24-44.
[7] Ilya Vinkovetsky, Russian
America: An Overseas Colony of a Continental Empire, 1804-1867, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press), 2011, pp. 6-73, is a recent study of its development and
demise.
[8] For a contemporary view of Russian intrigues
see, T. R. Preston Three Years’ Residence
in Canada from 1837 to 1839, 2 Vols. (London: Richard Bentley), 1840, Vol.
1, pp. 229-244. Preston concluded that,
given ‘Russia’s alleged intrigues in British India, a
strong degree of plausibility, to say the least, must be attached to the actual
prevalence of similar alleged intrigues in British America.’ He also commented: ‘…various suspicious circumstances
transpired, calculated to leave but little moral doubt—positive proof being, of
course, in such cases almost impossible—of Russia having individually lent
herself to aid the schemes of those who were plotting and endeavouring to wrest
the Canadian provinces from British sway.’
[9] L. S. Stavrianos,
‘The rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, Canadian Historical Review, Vol. 18, (1937), p. 367.
[10] Stavrianos, ‘The
rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, p. 368.
[11] Alain Messier, Dictionnaire
encyclopédique et historique des patriotes 1837-1838, (Montréal: Guérin), 2002.p. 195.
Fratellin was an adventurer who passed for a gentleman and a baron of
Hungarian origin; arrested in November 1838, he was imprisoned in Montreal from
November 1838 to March 1839.
[12] Archives
nationales du Québec: E17, Ministère de la Justice, Evénements de 1837-1838. His first deposition (2958) dated 24 November
1838, printed in Georges Aubin and Nicole Martin-Verenka, eds., Insurrection: Examens volontaires, Vol.
2: 1838-1839, (Montréal: Lux),
2007, pp. 177-179; a second deposition (2961) dated 13 December 1838, printed
pp. 179-180.
[13] Stavrianos, ‘The
rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, p. 371.
[14] Ibid, p. 368.
[15] Russian archival documents on Canada: diplomatic correspondence from
America, 1812-1841, (Ottawa: Centre for Research on Canadian-Russian
Relations), 1997, p. 8. See also, Joseph
L. Black, The Peasant Kingdom: Canada in
the 19th-Century Russian Imagination, (Newcastle, Ontario: Penumbra Press),
2001, pp. 75-77.
[16] Michael S. Cross, ‘Stewart Derbishire’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vol.
9, pp. 201-202.
[17] Norah Story, ‘Stewart Derbishire’s report to
Lord Durham on
Lower Canada, 1838’, Canadian
Historical Review, Vol. 28, (1937), pp. 48-62
[18] Hindenlang wrote two letters to Fratellin
just before his execution on 15 February 1839.
[19] Stavrianos, ‘The
rumour of Russian intrigue in the rebellion of 1837’, pp. 368-369.
[20] Ibid, p. 369. Preston, Three Years’ Residence in Canada from 1837 to 1839, pp. 233-234,
suggested that Papineau had
gone to Paris to make it easier for him to be conveyed ‘in a quiet way’ to St.
Petersburg to meet Tsar Nicholas II.
[21] Stavrianos, p.
369.
[22] Ibid, p. 370.
[23] T. H. Leduc,
‘That Rumour of Russian Intrigue in 1837’, Canadian Historical Review,
Vol. 23, (1942), p. 399.
[24] Ibid, p. 400.
[25] Tishkov, V. A., ‘Rossiia I vosstanie
1837-1838’, Amerikanski ezhegodnik,
(Nauka), 1977, pp. 283-299.
[26] Black, The
Peasant Kingdom: Canada in the 19th-Century Russian Imagination, p. 75.
[27] Between October 1853 and April 1854, the Sydney Morning Herald, for instance,
published 141 articles on Russia and
Turkey, many based on newspaper reports from London.
[28] ‘The Declaration of War’, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 June 1854, p.
3.
[29] For instance, ‘How should Sydney be
defended?’, Sydney Morning Herald, 1
October 1853, p. 3. See also John D. Grainger,
The First Pacific War: Britain and Russia,
1854-1856, (Woodbridge: Boydell),
2008.
[30] People’s Advocate, 31 December 1853.
[31] ‘A Russian Fleet; Destination
Unknown’, Argus, 19 May 1854, p. 4.
[32] On Young Ireland and
the failed 1848 rebellion in Ireland see, Christine
Kinealy, Repeal and Revolution: 1848 in
Ireland, (Manchester: Manchester University Press),
2009, and Richard Brown, Famines, Fenians and Freedom, (Southampton: Clio Publishing), 2011,
pp. 187-200, 210-218.
[33] Fenianism was an umbrella term
that generally referred to the IRB, founded in Dublin in 1858, the Fenians Brotherhood established
in the United States and then Canada and finally the Clan-na-Gael, initially formed
in 1867. The term ‘Fenian’, widely used in nationalist and
anti-nationalist rhetoric after 1858, encompassed those Irish organisations
committed to ‘physical force nationalism’.
[34] For the ‘men of ‘48’ and their experience in
Van Diemen’s Land, see Brown,
Richard, Famine, Fenians and Freedom, pp. 494-504.
[35] Desmond Ryan, ‘John O’Mahony’, in T. W. Moody, ed., The Fenian Movement, (Blackrock: Mercier Press),
1968, pp. 63-76, provides a good summary of his life.
[36] Bryan P. McGovern, John Mitchel: Irish Nationalist, Southern Secessionist, (Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press), 2009, is particularly useful on the ambiguities of his exile
in the United States.
See also William, Dillon, Life of
John Mitchel, 2 Vols. (London: K. Paul,
Trench & Co.), 1888, and O’Hegarty, Patrick, S., John Mitchel: An appreciation, with some account of young Ireland, (Dublin: P. S. Maunsel &
Co.), 1917, pp. 119-124.
[37] McGovern, John Mitchel: Irish Nationalist, Southern Secessionist, p. 105.
[38] His account of the
meeting is contained in Mitchel to James Cantwell, 1 March 1855, reprinted in Thomas
Connors, ‘Letters of John Mitchel, 1848-1869’, Analecta Hibernica, Vol. 37, (1998), pp. 287, 289-305, at p. 298.
[39] Joseph Denieffe, A Personal
Narrative of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood giving a faithful report of
the principal events between 1855 and 1867, (New York: The Gael Publishing
Co.), 1906, pp. vii-x, provides an account of the Emmet Association.
[40] Brian Jenkins, Irish Nationalism and the British State:
From Repeal to Revolutionary Nationalism, (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s
University Press), 2006, p. 257.
[41] Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy,
1860-1914, (London: Berg), 1987, pp. 86-101, 186-187.
[42] ‘Epizod iz vozstaniia v Kanade’, Vokrug sveta, no. 20, (1885), p.
306. For the reference to Garibaldi, see
ibid, no. 45, (1885), p. 716.
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