Ireland and America’s Shared History of Rebellion

During the year of the 250th anniversary of American independence, Paul Meany reflects on how the American Declaration ultimately inspired Irish independence.

Ireland and America’s Shared History of Rebellion
Paul Meany
Editor for Intellectual History, Lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org

Paul Meany is the editor for intellectual history at Lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org, a project of the Cato Institute. Most of his work focuses on examining thinkers who predate classical liberalism but still articulate broadly liberal attitudes and principles. He is the host of Portraits of Liberty, a podcast about uncovering and exploring underrated figures throughout history who have argued for a freer world. His writing covers a broad range of topics, including proto-​feminist writers, Classical Greece and Rome’s influence on the American Founding, ancient Chinese philosophy, tyrannicide, and the first argument for basic income.

Penned in 1919, the Irish Declaration of Independence asserted that sovereignty resided with the Irish people and had been unjustly denied for centuries. While the Declaration emerged from Ireland’s own political traditions and grievances, the influence of the American Revolution was unmistakable. The American Revolution gave Irish republicanism an example of how to both militarily and constitutionally overcome an oppressive power.

The American Revolution supplied proof that resistance could succeed. America was, at the time, a peripheral colony that rebelled against a far greater power—and succeeded. For Irish observers, this transformed republican ideas from hopeful abstractions into historical fact.

Though the Irish Revolution of 1798 ultimately failed, the American Revolution nonetheless became a recurring point of reference for Irish radicals throughout the nineteenth century. Irish political societies of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries read Thomas Paine eagerly. The Irish revolutionary Wolfe Tone famously described Paine’s Rights of Man as the “Koran of Belfast.” The American Revolution also provided an example of constitutional self-​creation. The British Whig Horace Walpole commented on the Irish political climate of the late eighteenth century stating, “It is now too publicly known to be disguised any longer, Ireland has much the air of americanising.”

America demonstrated that legitimacy could be claimed by the people themselves, rather than inherited from the crown or parliament. After a failed rebellion in 1803, in a speech before his execution, Irish Republican Robert Emmet proclaimed “I wished to procure for my country the guarantee which Washington procured for America.”

The Irish Declaration of Independence, adopted by Dáil Éireann on January 21, 1919, emerged from a rapidly shifting political and constitutional landscape shaped by rebellion and electoral upheaval. The Easter Rising of 1916, though a military failure, transformed Irish politics by reasserting the principle of national sovereignty in explicit republican terms through the Irish Proclamation. British executions of the Rising’s leaders radicalized public opinion. In the general election of December 1918, Sinn Féin won a decisive majority of Irish seats on an abstentionist platform, rejecting British authority and pledging to establish an independent Irish legislature. When elected representatives convened in Dublin rather than London, they claimed to act as the legitimate government of Ireland.

The 1919 Irish Declaration of Independence, like its American predecessor, grounded political legitimacy in the sovereignty of the people rather than in inherited authority. The Irish and American declarations asserted that there existed a self-​evident right to self-​government. They framed separation from Britain as the lawful recovery of a violated right, justified by historical grievance and sustained popular consent. The leaders of Dáil Éireann drew on the American example: the belief that independence could be constituted through assertion, representation, and public claim, even amid uncertainty and conflict.

During the year of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, the Irish Declaration of Independence can be read not as an echo of America, but as part of a shared Atlantic story of resistance to empire. The American Revolution did not dictate Ireland’s history, but it widened its horizons greatly.