The Negotiated Hibernian: Discourse on the Fenian in England and America

During the 1850s and 1860s, the British Empire faced a threat from nationalists advocating self‐rule for Ireland. Known as the Fenians, the English press quickly identified them as a monolithic terrorist organization and blamed them for all manner of threats against the Empire; furthermore, they argued that elements in the United States, for reasons of their own, supported the separatists. However, the image of the Fenian was far more complex than the simple rhetorical image constructed in the British press, especially when an alternate stream of pro‐Irish rhetoric is considered. Indeed, the Fenian was as much a rhetorical cultural construct as it was a transnational independence movement.