The Orange Order,
Militant Protestantism and anti-Catholicism
A Bibliographical Essay
by Donald MacRaild ([email protected])
University of Sunderland
England
Note: Donald MacRaild is currently working on a Leverhulme Trust funded project on the Orange Order in the north of England. The Order now has a Lodge of Education and Research, dedicated to opening up the movement to academic scrutiny. Donald MacRaild is able to use complete runs of records for about five lodges in the Tyneside area (Hebburn, Jarrow, Consett). With the Lodge's permission, after research has been completed, these records will be made available to researchers.
Copyright © 1999 by Donald MacRaild, all rights reserved. This work may be used for non-profit educational purposes if proper credit is given to Donald MacRaild and the Irish Diaspora Studies Web site. For other permission, please contact...
Donald MacRaild ([email protected])

The historiography of the Orange Order is relatively sparse, given its importance in the nineteenth century. A useful primary source is Select Committee Report on Orange Institutions in Great Britain and the Colonies Parliamentary Papers (1835). An excellent analysis of the broad evangelical traditions, of which Orangeism is part, is found in D. Hempton and M. Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society, 1740-1890 (London, 1992). Other good background works include Peter Gibbon, The Origins of Ulster Unionism: the formation of popular Protestant politics and ideology in nineteenth-century Ireland (Manchester, 1975) and D.W. Miller, Queen's Rebels: Ulster Loyalism in historical perspective (Dublin, 1978).

For an unashamedly one-sided account of the Orange Order, see R.M. Sibbert, Orangeism in Ireland and throughout the Empire, 2 vols (London, 1939). More balanced is H. Senior, Orangeism in Ireland and Britain, 1795-1836 (London, 1966). See also Senior's `The early Orange Order 1795-1870' and Aiken McClelland, `The later Orange Order', both in T.D. Williams, ed., Secret Societies in Ireland (Dublin, 1973). See also Peter Gibbon, `the origins of the Orange Order and the United Irishmen', Economy and Society, 1 (1972). Orangemen crop up once of twice in S. Clark and J.S. Donnelly excellent edited collection, Irish Peasants: violence and political unrest (Manchester, 1983), with D.W. Miller's `The Armagh Troubles, 1784-95' proving to be worthy of close reading. Probably the best overview study is Tony Gray, The Orange Order (London and Toronto, 1972).


Britain including Scotland
The British scene is examined in a number of important studies. Frank Neal, Sectarian Violence: the Liverpool Experience, 1819-1914 (Manchester, 1988) is the principal study of English Orange traditions as well as a marvellous reconstruction of `riotous Liverpool', that unique place in the Diaspora. Neal's `Manchester origins of the Orange Order', Manchester Region History Review, IV, 2 (1990-1) casts an expert eye on the early years. For Scotland, see Elaine McFarland, Protestants First: Orangeism in nineteenth-century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1990), which shows how Scots Orangeism remained almost entirely in the hands of Ulster Protestant immigrants and their children. McFarland's book also contains the best theoretical analysis of the Order that I have read. Twentieth-century Scottish Orangeism is analysed in Tom Gallagher, Glasgow, the Uneasy Peace: religious tensions in modern Scotland (Manchester, 1987) and Graham Walker, `The Orange order in Scotland between the wars', in International Review of Social History, 37, 2 (1992). In an attempt to show that these Ulster traditions lived on in other parts of Britain, a couple of chapters of my book, Culture, conflict and migration: the Irish in Victorian Cumbria (Liverpool, 1998), consider the Orange Order and its violent legacy (chs. 5 and 6).

Anti-Catholicism
One of the greatest spurs to Orangeism in mid-Victorian England came from the no-popery demagogue, William Murphy. He looms large in a number of works, including W.L Arnstein, `The Murphy Riots: a Victorian Dilemma', in Victorian Studies, 19 (1) Sept. 1975, D.C. Richter, Riotous Victorians (Athens, Ohio, 1981), R. Swift, `"Another Stafford street row:" law, order and the Irish presence in mid-Victorian Wolverhampton', in Immigrants and Minorities, 3, (1) March 1984. Related works on anti-Irish violence - again including treatment of the Orange Order - include: N. Kirk, `Ethnicity, Class and Popular Toryism, 1850-1870', in K. Lunn (ed.), Hosts, Immigrants and minorities: historical responses to newcomers in British Society, 1870-1914 (Folkestone, 1980) (which was reprinted in his The growth of working-class reformism in mid-Victorian England [Chicago and Urbana, 1985] ); Tom Gallagher, `A tale of two cities. Communal strife in Glasgow and Liverpool before 1914' and P. Millward, `The Stockport riots of 1852: a study of anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiment', both in R. Swift, & S. Gilley (eds.), Irish in the Victorian City (London, 1985). On of Scotland's most notorious anti-Catholic activists is brought to life in Tom Gallagher's Edinburgh Divided: John Cormack and No Popery in the 1930s (Edinburgh, 1987), as is another in Colin Holmes, `Alexander Ratcliffe: militant Protestant and anti-Semite' in T. Kusher and K. Lunn (eds), Traditions of intolerance: historical perspectives on Fascism and race discourse in Britain (Manchester, 1989),

Canada and the United States of America
My knowledge of the North America scene is undoubtedly sketchy. What follows is a partial listing: perhaps others can add to it? The Orange tradition of the United States was feeble next to the Canadian version. The only works I know in this area are C.D. Gimpsey, `Internal ethnic friction: Orange and Green in nineteenth-century New York, 1868-1872', in Immigrants and Minorities, 1, I (1982) and M.A. Gordon, The Orange Riots: Irish political violence in New York City, 1870 and 1871 (Ithaca and London, 1993), which examine the same city and events. In addition, C.J. Houston and W.J. Smyth, `Transferred loyalties: Orangeism in the United States and Ontario', in American Review of Canadian Studies, 14, 2 (1984) explain the comparative weakness of the U.S. order.
Canada has given rise to a number of excellent studies. What leaps out at the newcomer is, first, the sheer size of the order; secondly, its vital importance as a community-building frontier institution; and, thirdly, the amount of primary material available in Canada (unlike Britain where no one seems to have seen an Orange lodge membership list, let alone a good chronological run of the same). Although C.J. Houston and W.J. Smyth, Irish emigration and Canadian settlement: patterns, links and letters (Toronto and Belfast, 1990) does not concentrate on, nor indeed make much mention of, the Orange Order, it provides vital background by explaining the prominence of Protestant in the Irish stream to Canada. The fullest treatment of the Canadian Orange tradition is Houston and Smyth's brilliant mix of history, geography and culture, The Sash Canada Wore: An historical geography of the Orange Order in Canada (Toronto, 1980), though Hereward Senior, Orangeism: the Canadia Phase (Toronto, 1972) should also be examined. The major treatment of Orange Violence in Canada, is Scott W See's Riots in New Brunswick: Orange nativism and social violence in the 1840s (Toronto, 1993), which is an expansion of his earlier, shorter works, including his `The fortunes of the Orange Order in nineteenth-century New Brunswick', in P. Toner (ed.), New Ireland remembered (Fredericton, 1988) and `The Orange Order and social violence in mid-nineteenth-century St John', Acadiensis 13, 1 (1983), which is recently republished as part a useful collection on immigrants and minorities in F. Iacovetta (ed.), A Nation of Immigrants: Readings in Canadian History, 1840s-1960s.

H. Senior, `The genesis of Canadian Orangeism', Ontario History, 60 (1968) and C.J. Houston and W.J. Smyth, `The Orange Order and the expansion of the frontier in Ontario, 1830-1900', Journal of Historical Geography, 4, 3 (1978) offer short overviews of key aspects of the Canadian dimension. Scott W. See's book also carries in the notes an endless list of articles on aspects of social violence in Canada, many of which had at least a marginal Orange aspect. Some of the most obvious case-study articles, include M.S. Cross, `Stony Monday, 1849: The rebellion losses in Bytown', Ontario Historical Society, 63 (1971); Gregory S Kealey, `The Orange Order in Toronto: religious riot and the working class', in G.S. Kealey and P. Warrian (eds), Essays in Canadian working-class history (Toronto, 1983 ed.); W.B. Kerr, `When Orange and Green united, 1832-9: the alliance of MacDonnell and Gowan', in Ontario History, 34 (1942); J.D. Livermore, `The Orange Order and the election of 1861 in Kingston', in G. Tulchinsky (ed.), To Defend and Preserve: Essays on Kingston in the nineteenth century (Montreal and London, 1976); H. Senior, `Ogle Gowan, Orangeism and the immigrant question, 1830-1833', Ontario History, 66 (1970); Hereward Senior, `Orangeism in Ontario politics, 1872-1906', in D.Swainson (ed.), Oliver Mowat's Ontario (Toronto, 1972); G.F.G. Stanley, `The Caraquet riots of 1875', Acadiensis, 2 (1972). Ogle Gowan, one of Canada's most prominent Orangemen, is the subject of an interesting piece of historical imaginative writing by Donald Akenson: The Orangeman: the life and times of Ogle Gowan (Toronto, 1986).


South Africa
The Orange Order's activities in the southern hemisphere are not something I know anything about. The following item, then, comes courtesy of Patrick O'Sullivan: J Brown, 'Orangeism in Southern Africa', in Donal McCracken (ed.) The Irish in Southern Africa, 1795-1910 (Durban, 1992),

Donald MacRaild
University of Sunderland
Copyright © 1999 by Donald MacRaild, all rights reserved. This work may be used for non-profit educational purposes if proper credit is given to Donald MacRaild and the Irish Diaspora Studies Web site. For other permission, please contact...
Donald MacRaild ([email protected])

 

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