Writs of Ejectment: James Fintan Lalor and the Rewriting of Nation as Physical Space, 1847-1848

Abstract

The rise of Irish nationalism during the nineteenth century cannot be understood without The Nation newspaper and its determined crusade to (re)create Ireland as a distinct cultural community during the 1840s. Among its contributors, however, was a writer who set himself apart from his contemporaries, and has always eluded clear-cut ideological ascriptions. James Fintan Lalor (1811-1849), an allegedly ‘marginal’ figure, but the most brilliant writer of the Young Ireland generation, is perhaps best known for linking the cause of independence with that of the tenant farmers, thus providing an ideological precedent for the Land War of the 1880s. However, Lalor’s contribution to Irish nationalist thought goes far beyond mere political strategy. An analysis of Lalor’s writings in The Nation and the Irish Felon reveals that for him, Ireland was not one of Anderson’s “imagined communities,” artificially bound by mental ties of language, history and tradition, but a physical space, a tangible reality to be reclaimed from the grasp of England’s “landlord garrison.”