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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