This book examines the mechanisms of the Irish revolutionary Fenian Brotherhood in the early years of its existence. Drawing on a wide range of material from places as diverse as Rome and Toronto it seeks to set the Fenian struggle within the context of competing church and state influence in mid-nineteenth century Irish society. It is particularly strong on the transatlantic comparative dimensions of church, state and Fenian activity, and demonstrates how the Fenians managed to change, forever, the terms of Irish political and social debate.

What does it mean to be Irish? Are the predicates Catholic and Irish so inextricably linked that it is impossible to have one and not the other? Does the process of secularization in modern times mean that Catholicism is no longer a touchstone of what it means to be Irish? Indeed was such a paradigm ever true? These are among the fundamental issues addressed in this work which examines whether distinct identity formation can be traced over time. The book delineates the course of historical developments which complicated the process of identity formation in the Irish context, when by turns...