A case study in what not to do after a successful anti-imperialist revolution.
They had the Russian revolution as a direct model they could’ve emulated, but chose to adopt the liberal path and governmental structures of the country they just fought against.
Their foreign policy is still generally better than most european countries, but they were staunchly in the western camp during the cold war.
Our geography between the UK and the USA makes it almost inevitable our economy will be integrated with theirs…
After the anti-imperialist revolution was the Civil War, which is a misunderstood thing: it was between diehard anti-imperialists and the majority who wanted normalcy. That dialectic remains in the country: the state itself suppresses (socialist) republicanism which remains minority-y.
It’s worth understanding WHY the Free State went the direction it did after independence. It was a desire for normalcy/stability, plus the fact that Churchill and co didn’t really give us a choice: if the Republicans had won the Civil War, Britain would have renewed oppression with redoubled force.
I wish we could figure out some way to have a prosperous economy without depending on FDI. We had the humble beer-and-biscuits economy in my father’s era, and then really prospered when we got FDI from mostly American corporations. The anti-capitalist in me wants to deny it, but there’s no convincing alternative to that economic story (this guy does give a heterodox story but the mainstream loves foreign corporations so much that it wouldn’t be politically possible to disagree publicly).
I agree the history is complicated and I didn’t want to demonize Ireland entirely, as they still are better than most other euro countries.
One thing I’d like to add, is that civil wars following the revolution seems to be the norm, rather than tha exception. It happened with Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam.
Ireland was not in the imperial core, it was a victim British oppression for hundreds of years. Other countries like China, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Russia, all suffered similarly, but adopted a different path than Ireland.
A case study in what not to do after a successful anti-imperialist revolution.
They had the Russian revolution as a direct model they could’ve emulated, but chose to adopt the liberal path and governmental structures of the country they just fought against.
Their foreign policy is still generally better than most european countries, but they were staunchly in the western camp during the cold war.
We let the commies use Shannon in the Cold War…
Our geography between the UK and the USA makes it almost inevitable our economy will be integrated with theirs…
After the anti-imperialist revolution was the Civil War, which is a misunderstood thing: it was between diehard anti-imperialists and the majority who wanted normalcy. That dialectic remains in the country: the state itself suppresses (socialist) republicanism which remains minority-y.
It’s worth understanding WHY the Free State went the direction it did after independence. It was a desire for normalcy/stability, plus the fact that Churchill and co didn’t really give us a choice: if the Republicans had won the Civil War, Britain would have renewed oppression with redoubled force.
I wish we could figure out some way to have a prosperous economy without depending on FDI. We had the humble beer-and-biscuits economy in my father’s era, and then really prospered when we got FDI from mostly American corporations. The anti-capitalist in me wants to deny it, but there’s no convincing alternative to that economic story (this guy does give a heterodox story but the mainstream loves foreign corporations so much that it wouldn’t be politically possible to disagree publicly).
Good article, thx for that.
I agree the history is complicated and I didn’t want to demonize Ireland entirely, as they still are better than most other euro countries.
One thing I’d like to add, is that civil wars following the revolution seems to be the norm, rather than tha exception. It happened with Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam.
Happening in Sudan currently
In all fairness any genuinely liberatory revolution that deep in the imperial core would have been swiftly crushed no?
Ireland was not in the imperial core, it was a victim British oppression for hundreds of years. Other countries like China, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Russia, all suffered similarly, but adopted a different path than Ireland.
I meant more geographically
Cuba is 90 miles from the US, and Korea and China freed themselves from imperial Japan.