"The use of Irish by Protestant missions in 19th c. Ireland: a multifaceted paradox"

Résumé En

Though previous work on Protestant missions in Ireland have tackled both the issue of the Bible controversy and imperialism, the question of the Irish language has been overlooked. Hence, the “Second Reformation” attempts at converting Catholics have been studied as English enterprises, thus not really paying attention to the different paradoxes of the use of the national language by Irish protestant societies that started their work long before the Great Irish Famine and the controversy of Souperism. Indeed, the use of the Irish language has always raised controversy, but quite paradoxically, the fears it aroused were not solely protestant, they were shared by Catholics too, since at that time they did not consider the language as intrinsically linked to national identity. While the promotion of Irish is now associated with nationalist demands, in the 19th century, the first to promote the language were not only protestant but Evangelicals who defended both their Irish identity and their loyalty to the British state. Therefore, the society they founded, “The Irish Society for promoting the education of the native Irish through the means of their own language,” presented a multifaceted paradox that I propose to examine. First, I will show how they chose to advocate their Anglican identity while adopting a form of linguistic dissent. Second, I will demonstrate how their use of Irish was opposed by Daniel O’Connell and contributed to the Catholic Association’s alliance with the priests. Finally, I argue that it was their use of Irish and the Irish Bible in schools that initiated the controversy over souperism long before the Famine, and not the distribution of soup.