Vol. 11: Bric, Maurice J.

Type: Article

Bric, Maurice J. ‘Ireland, America and the Reassessment of a Special Relationship, 1760-83’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 11 (1996), pp 88-119.

This article discusses the relationship between Ireland and America and themes of “Atlantic Patriotism” born out of the Anglo-American conflict. In the eighteenth century, Irish patriots saw the American Revolution as a “mirror-image” of their own struggle for freedom. Bric looks at traditions of liberty and the patriot political rhetoric transmitted between and shared by the two colonies in the 1760s and 1770s. The writings of Molyneux, Swift, Lucas and Grattan are discussed with reference to both the Catholic struggle and the Patriot movement in Ireland, as well as to political events in America. Bric notes the integration of Irishmen of all traditions into emerging American society during the Revolutionary period and remarks that after 1783, independence led Americans away from the commonwealth inheritance America had shared with Ireland. After 1800, the relationship between Ireland and America would change “almost beyond the recognition of the eighteenth-century patriot”.