Colonialism in John Bulls Other Island - Thesis Example

Colonialism in John Bull’s Other Island Introduction George Bernard Shaw has been long regarded as one of Ireland’s exceptional public scholars, a reputation proven correct by his comedy play about Ireland John Bull’s Other Island, which illustrates the association of Ireland with imperial Britain. In this comedy play, Shaw depicts historically based conflicts emanating from associations between individuals authorized by their British citizenship, and individuals moderated by their Irish citizenship (Kiberd 1997). Per se, it is a very good relic of the relationship between Ireland and Britain, and with its related prologues and theses, a vigorous intervention in a political domain inherently domestic and absolutely colonial (Grene 1999). Importantly for this essay, John Bull’s Other Island not only works as a comedy play but a reference for the analysis of colonialism in Irish and British history. In re-creating people, places, and issues generated among the competitions of a colonial history, Shaw cultivates cultural objects as a renewable public asset. As decades pass by, Irish drama goes back repeatedly to the theatrical substance of John Bull’s Other Island, revising what the comedy play of Shaw situates as primitive scenes. On the one hand, such revisions try to promote the unspoiled records of the national state; on the other hand, to reveal and disparage the continuous presence of oppression and exploitation in Independent Ireland, as the process of decolonization is suspended for an indefinite period and colonialism metamorphoses into neo-colonialism (Jennings 2010). This essay discusses the theory of colonialism in Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island. But before discussing the main point it is important to provide first an overview of the Irish and British colonial history which is the major issue portrayed in the play. An Overview of the Irish and British Colonial History Like anywhere else, nationalism in Ireland has its fabricated past. In 1921, Darrell Figgis clarified why Independent Ireland would develop into a completely distinct constituent of the Commonwealth of Nations. Ireland was a very old society and a native land (Jennings 2010, 296): … it was she who, when in the eighth and ninth centuries Europe fell into decay after the barbarian in-roads, re-established and rebuilt European civilization, sending her scholars with her books into every part of the continent of ruin. It was her missionaries indeed, who first brought Christianity to England, and her scholars who taught the first English poet his letters. Before the name of England was heard, the name of Ireland was known and respected. She possessed an intricate, if uncomplicated national polity when the neighboring island was peopled by distinct and scattered populations of conquerors. By virtue of these ancient dignities she was accorded international rank long after England had risen to nationhood, and when invasion had brought her national polity to ruin and silenced the voice of poet and scholar. Thus, John Bull’s Other Island has, evidently, a basis of truth. In the 5th century, Christianity appears to have expanded to Ireland, even though the country was outside the Roman Empire; and, despite of the Ostmen—Danish settlers—invasion, Latin culture did not totally disappear (Murray 2000). According to Shaffer (2005), there were well-known Irish scholars in the 9th century who documented the rich colonial history of British and Ireland. In actual fact, though, English invasion of Ireland expanded merely over the country’s south-eastern and eastern coastal lands. The limits of this English colony were vague or inexact, because they relied on the power relations between greedy Irish rulers and covetous Anglo-Norman aristocrats (Jeffery 1996). Henry II, through the Treaty of Windsor, acknowledged Rory O’Connor in 1175 as the highest overseer of the lands unoccupied by the Normans, and a devotee of the English ruler, as well. The agreement was not viable because O’Connor failed to justify his assertion. In truth the agreement was taken for granted, and after O’Connor’s demise there was no charade of a highest overseer or any other absolute sovereign beyond the colony (Brockington 2009). Then again, according to Jennings (2010) the colony underwent a process of feudalization throughout King John’s rule and encompassed a sizeable portion of Ireland’s territories. In fact, the colony thrived under the Norman regime and was recognized as the ‘land of peace’ (p. 297), while the other parts of the state was the ‘land of war’ (p. 297). Ireland’s political dilemma was originally caused by the English’s partial occupation of the country. Even though the Irish had experienced the golden age of civilization during the Celtic period, the Norse and Danish occupations and civil conflict, and especially the fact that the churches of Ireland were disconnected from the Roman Empire, intensified in 1066 Ireland’s backwardness in relation to England’s southern territories (Carter & McRae 2001). It was hence simpler for the English and the Normans to unite than it was for the Irish and the Normans to come together. Furthermore, the Anglo-Norman protectorate was established a century after the Norman invasion of England; and at some point in that century Norman productivity had accomplished a great deal to improve England’s condition (Carter & McRae 2001). According to Donoghue (1988), the disparities between Irish and Anglo-Norman conditions were hence quite huge as to build a structure similar to the caste division. The integration process finally did happen even though there was an extensive transitional phase where in a dividing line may form between the ‘native Irish’ or ‘common Irish’ and ‘Anglo-Irish’ (Jennings 2010, 298). Ireland experienced too many difficulties not only due to the huge chasm between the Irish and the Anglo-Normans but also due to the unruly Irish beyond the King’s peace, or the Statutes of 1297’s so-called ‘Irish felons’. The people of Ireland, whether beyond or inside the King’s peace, were ruled by their traditional codes, even though the King’s summons govern the entire colony and the privilege to be controlled by English edicts was normally awarded as a permission or license to Irishmen (Jennings 2010, 298). Such law differences, alongside the presence of ‘Irish felons’ beyond the King’s peace, created the need to differentiate between ‘Irish’ and ‘English’, just like the differentiation between ‘English’ and ‘Norman’ directly after the Conquest in England (Jeffery 1996). According to Heal (2005), there was an aspect of authority or control or even disapproval in the differentiation in both instances; however, the differentiation survived more briefly in England than in Ireland because English rule did not reach outside the Pale—a part of Ireland; and unluckily it was revealed in documents which may be cited by the 19th-century Irish separatists who integrated themselves to the 14th-century ‘Irish’ and considered the 19th-century English as liable for the 14th-century ‘English’ in Ireland (p. 159). The discovery that several constituents of the Irish Nationalist party definitely had, and almost all of them maybe had, Anglo-Irish forebears, was evidently, immaterial. The English, in the denunciation of Irish nationalists, are claimed to have displayed ‘their’ disdain for the Irish in the 1366 Statutes of Kilkenny and the Statutes of 1297 (McCord, Purdue, & Purdue 2007). Obviously, the English nationalist would answer that, although it would possibly have been more sensible if these remarks had been unwritten, the papers illustrate how surprisingly the Irish have prospered since ‘they’ occupied the country (McCord et al. 2007). The disagreement endures. Regardless how the Statutes of Kilkenny were understood, the core origin was the collapse of the Anglo-Irish colony due to Ireland’s defeat over the Scottish forces led by Edmund Bruce in 1315. The Scottish invasion was in reprisal for the attacks of Edward I against Scotland, and a sizeable portion of Ireland was severely ruined before the Scottish forces were overpowered in 1318 (Pierce 2000). The consequence of this and later episodes was that by 1314 a significant portion of the colony was freed from the English regime. The course of action was not an Irish intrusion. Several of the English landlords denounced their commitment and, apart from a racial sense, became citizens of Ireland. The Statutes of Kilkenny were a strategy of Duke of Clarence and son of Edward III, Lionel, to stop the persistent disintegration of the colony. The attempt was a failure (Jennings 2010). Richard II exerted another effort, yet he was forced to go back to England to protect his kingship against Henry of Lancaster. The collapse of the colony accelerated during the Wars of the Roses. Successfully the English regime expanded merely to Dublin, Kildare, Louth, and Meath, the land named Pale was excavated in 1454 (Jennings 2010). According to Richards (2004), because there was unstable rule within the Pale and outside it were tribal conflicts, the situation of Ireland kept on collapsing. The unsuccessful attempts of the English kings to protect their Irish ancestry and Pale’s unstable administration resulted in a continuous rift between the English regime and the Anglo-Irish. The two candidates to the kingship of England, Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel, were both given patronage in Ireland (Sternlicht 2004). Henry VII had encountered unbearable problems in England to pay a great deal of attention to Ireland, yet he assigned Sir Edward Poynings in 1494 to work out the problems. Since the 13th century Parliaments had been convened in Ireland. In actual fact they were Anglo-Irish for, just like in England, they were assemblies of landlords. In the 5th century, the term ‘Anglo-Irish’ does not racially imply ‘English’. Because Richard de Clare, the Earl of Pembroke, also known as ‘Strongbow’, tied the knot with the daughter of Dermot MacMurrough—King of Leinster, also known as the person who requested the presence of England in Ireland—there had been continuous inter-marriage, which was attested by the Statutes of Kilkenny (Kiberd 1997). Despite of the entrance of settlers from Britain, a distinct Anglo-Irish population, with insights and knowledge more akin to Ireland than England, had emerged. In fact, Ireland’s Parliament in 1460 had ratified statutes designating as Ireland’s Lieutenant Richard, Duke of York, even though he had been dishonored in England (Kiberd 1997). Evidently, as stated by Jeffery (1996), this was an event in the clash between Lancaster and York; however, it suggests, as does the patronage received by the candidates under Henry VII, that an aggressive and motivated viceroy could exercise Ireland’s Parliament at his own disposal. Struggles of such kinds had hence continued for a decade, and the people of Ireland endured too many hardships. They may have endured a lot more difficulties from the treaty, which included the confiscated of every land of the Irish rulers, a portion of the lands of the secondary rulers, and a portion of those who had opposed or defamed the English Parliament (Brockington 2009). Consequently, it is stated that a huge portion of Ireland’s territories was exchanged. Mostly, the new landlords were English Protestants. In several generations the Irish and subordinate landlords intermarried, which made the latter Irish, and quite frequently Roman Catholics. The bigger landlords were usually absentees; however, those who chose to stay in Ireland were converted into a Protestant class (Heal 2005). Simply put, the hierarchy of religion was also a class hierarchy. But how does George Bernard Shaw, in his John Bull’s Other Island, illustrate this colonial struggle between Ireland and England? How did the playwright apply the concept of ‘colonialism’ to portray Ireland’s colonial heritage? The Theory of Colonialism in Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island The bond of Ireland and its citizens to modernity has taken place, largely, as a component of Ireland’s colonial position. The colonial ambitions of the British generated in Ireland a moderated sense of modernity, expressed, mostly, both as a vital prospect and a physical or material inconvenience (Cave & Levitas 2007). Although segregation from the majority had disastrous economic impacts, it appeared to provide benefits at the domain of cultural vigor and decisive awareness. The literary description of Yeats, “We Irish… thrown upon this filthy modern tide” (Donoghue 1988, 4), understands tersely this vague stance: the sense of material and intuitive clashing motivates a pursuit for standpoints besides those ordered by modernity. For the 19th-century Irish nationalist campaigns, other sites, where in one may work on history beyond a simple ‘other’ to a subordinate past, were to be located by cultural ways. Supremacy produces intuitive senses of being different from one’s self: “to be is to be like; to be like is to be like the oppressor” (Freire 2000, 48). As a result, during the colonial times, and, in the latter part of the 19th century, deeply so, Ireland experienced a chain of efforts by those who opposed colonialism ‘to speak a true word’ (Freire 2000, 88). According to Luckhurst (2006), the issue of ‘genuineness’ became a major element in staging Ireland and its people, either in open places of armed rebellion, or in the stages of English-speaking societies. To express an individual’s membership to the Irish society was to verify for national spectators his/her idea of being other than the kingdom dictates one to be, which is then an important move toward the creation of anti-colonial awareness. Furthermore, it was to demand opportunity among a wider body politic for the suggestion that colonial traditions are basically damaging of the integrity of those under them (Murray 2000). In the first case, the second premise demands that this individuals’ integrity be recognized, and is helpful in founding anti-colonial campaigns for state independence (Luckhurst 2006). As claimed by Freire (2000), it relates as well to the ‘dehumanized’ tyrants created in the metropolitan area by the empire’s ways. Primarily, Britain and Ireland, in current Irish Studies are concepts. Irish Studies cross-examines concepts of Britain and of Ireland, as components of dystopian fears and utopian hopes, revealing ties where in they challenge and harmonize each other. These concepts are mediated in processes of analysis and illustration, private and public, satellite and metropolis. Irish experiences and understandings of Ireland’s tragedy in, and once, the British Empire give evidence to conflicts widespread among subjugated citizens between pacifists and revolutionist sides of postcolonial aspirations. The revolutionist idea of Britain as trespasser is embedded in the expression, ‘the British presence in Ireland’ (Jeffery 1996, 40). The pacifists idea of Britain as fellow nation brings about discourses about ‘Irish-British’ or ‘British-Irish’ connections. Henry Joy McCracken of Stewart Parker raises a major query for revolutionists: “So what if the English do bequeath us to one another some day? What then? When there’s nobody else to blame except ourselves?” (Murray 2000, 198) Parker argues that self-determination considered merely, or largely, as the nonexistence of the invader will create issues of its own. The experiences of the Irish people reveal that statehood is quite simply, and quite frequently, kept apart from anti-colonial desires to collective freedom, when the state has been attained. New foundations require public commitment for their ‘national’ disposition, while they reconstruct the social network which distinguished the colonial institution they believed to have changed. In the final period of direct colonial regime in Ireland, the fight for the privilege to give a depiction of the nation was supported by numerous parties, with the view of local culture a critical battle arena. For people who grew in the Free State of Ireland, the sense of continuous restructuring of the colonial standpoint on Irish self-determination, before the War of Independence and the 1916 insurrection, has been hard to understand. Nationalism’s idealized interpretation of the 1916 rebellion as an unavoidable expression of the historical determination of the citizens misrepresents the fact that it surprised the general public. To the select few, Anglo-Irish and Gaelic, who had been in the front line of a comparatively serene advance toward national independence in the United Kingdom, it was a catastrophe. The statement of Yeats in Easter 1916—“a terrible beauty is born” (Shaffer 2005, 150)—chronicles its effect on people of his social group and political standpoint. It is a shard historical paradox that, post-liberation, the expression itself grew to be a customary of patriotic expression arranged to remove the intricacy of Ireland prior to 1916, and engage, subsequently, a substantial majority involved in the Home Rule’s—a term given to the course of granting Ireland more influence, control, and voice in its governance, emancipating them from England’s regime and hence pacifying citizens of Ireland who demanded to have further home based sovereignty—pacifists agenda to a historically unavoidable struggle toward mass revolution. Such struggle toward freedom has been captured by Shaw in John Bull’s Other Island. Shaw’s comedy play begins in the “Office of Broadbent and Doyle, Civil Engineers, Great George Street, Westminster. Summer 1904, 4.40 pm” (Luckhurst 2006, 11). In this particular place in urban London, schemes for the future of Ireland in colonial times have been formulated. On in this place “hang a large map of South America, [and] a pictorial advertisement of a steamship company” (Shaw 2006, 1)—images of the kingdom where in Ireland is to be completely incorporated. The engineers of the kingdom are icons of modernity, rooted in unquestionable knowledge, manifested in rigid dualities of decline and growth. Larry Doyle’s—an Irish who has denounced his birthright to assimilate with the English—professional knowledge is a component of his growth at the empire’s core: “It is by living with you and working in double harness with you that I have learned to live in a real world and not an imaginary one. I owe more to you than to any Irishman” (Pierce 2000, 133). Attached to the colonial plan, he is trapped in a historical competition with Irish ‘backwardness’: “The dullness! The hopelessness! The ignorance! The bigotry!” (Shaw 2006, 10) Cornelius, father of Larry, is a pro-independence, pro-home rule, and nationalist, but a civil engineer endeavors to “join countries, not separate them” (Pierce 2000, 133), putting “Galway within 3 hours of Colchester and 24 of New York” (Luckhurst 2006, 11). This agency, committed to competence and accuracy, accommodates an “Anglicized Irishman” (Richards 2004, 125) tolerating, not the growth of Ireland, but a colonialist’s vision of a modernist utopia. Broadbent, confusing the theatrical paradox, a ‘Gladstonized Englishman’ (Richards 2004, 125), and creator of the reality of Larry, is fully received by a bizarrely over-romantic notion of Ireland, represented in ‘stage Irishman’ of Glaswegian Tim Haffigan (Luckhurst 2006, 12): Broadbent’s falling for an Irish grotesque, simultaneously endearing and degraded, illustrates Bhabha’s account of the double effect of racial stereotype. The desire/terror dynamic is underscored by Broadbent’s instruction to his servant to pack a revolver and ammunition for his ‘delightful’ trip to Ireland. Performativity is central to imperial relations, and in its multiplying confusions around power, identity, nation and empire, John Bull’s Other Island enacts the contradictions embedded in ideas of Britain and Ireland, and aspirations arising from them, as Ireland anticipated the achievement of national autonomy within the empire. Cornelius expresses accurately the explanation of easy transition from colonial to neo-colonial structure, from which numerous people stay economically and socially prohibited. Shaw expects with frightening precision the attribute of the social structure which surfaces in Independent Ireland (Shaw 1930, 56): Aunt Judy: There’s harly any landlords lef; and therll soon be none at all. Larry: On the contrary, therll soon be nothing else; and the Lord help Ireland then! The composition of the most wanted “new class of man in parliament” (Shaw 2006, 39) involves outlooks pro-church, anti-labor, pro-farmer, and ways adequate to reside in London. With the potential exemption of the first-cited criterion, all of the above features describe what Joe Lee calls Independent Ireland’s ‘the official mind’ (Luckhurst 2006, 12). Officially assigned to strong economic functions, the preferred of Rosscullen have no desire to interrupt colonial administration in Ireland, and find the aspiration of their spirit, in the form of a new ruler. What is needed is a person who will arbitrate between them and urban policymakers, so as to safeguard their newly gained economic position (Luckhurst 2006). People who will finance their dreams still suffer at the foot of colonialism’s social hierarchy (Pierce 2000, 149): Matthew: Was Patsy Farrll ever ill used as I was ill used? Tell me dhat? Larry: He will be, if ever he gets into your power as you were in the power of your old landlord… you, who are only one step above him, would die sooner than let him come up that step; and well you know it. John Bull’s Other Island dramatizes other major points, re-analyzing past events in Irish theatrical domains, and referring to future re-explanations of such events as possible methods for decisive cultural involvements. There is the character of the Irish-English couple, which allows the story to be understood as a rendition of the Irish National Romance (Sternlicht 2004). According to Weintraub (1992), pacifist anti-colonial analysis recognizes the influence of the gendered metaphor, while claiming that it is inadequate to the mission of embodying what has been defined as the ‘totality of relationships’ (p. 136). In conclusion, colonialism generates lived experiences which are intuitively damaging, and brings about requirements for restorative methods in the awareness of both colonizers and colonized. In the metropolis, these methods surface as a doctrine where in the colonized other is deprived of its integrity, and becomes an intricate core of pity, terror, fury, and resentment. The ethical disintegration inherent in the oppressive traditions of colonialism is escorted by blameworthy practices of moral obstruction: “That blessed old head of yours with all its ideas in watertight compartments, and all the compartments warranted impervious to anything it doesn’t suit you to understand” (Carpenter 2009, 65). In the settlement, the colonial doctrine surfaces in savage habits of supremacy, and is contradicted by shared narratives of struggle, rooted in clamors for freedom, equality, justice, and respect (Shaw 1931, 10): Empire: a name that every man who has ever felt the sacredness of his own native soil to him, and thus learnt to regard that feeling in other men as something holy and inviolable, spits out of his mouth with enormous contempt. As stated by Richards (2004), the oppressive truths of colonialism demand that opposing narratives linger, as their common alias ‘rebellious’, implies, underground. Eventually, utopian aspirations, generated by long experience of domination and coercion, become influential and potent historical agents in their own right. Conclusions It would appear that ‘colonialism’s truths’ revealed in Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island, atrocious or else, are mostly half-done viewpoints on human understanding, knowledge, and experiences built among historical interactions, within and between Ireland and Britain. Colonial masterpiece, and particularly the demonstration of Shaw’s comedy play, allows us to consider ‘visions’, as similarly important as their expressed illusion. John Bull’s Other Island is a relic in time, generating overloads of symbols and implications from the instability of opposing material circumstances and doctrines at work at any particular instance. Critical understanding of the complex features of Shaw’s comedy play, and the critical boldness to risky analysis actively relevant to the urgent conditions of the time, justify Shaw’s public status. 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