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Select Document: John Hampden Jackson, ‘Finland and Ireland: assorted comparisons’ (1937)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2017

Andrew G. Newby  and
Richard Mc Mahon
Andrew G. Newby
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Denmark and Trinity College Dublin
Richard Mc Mahon*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Denmark and Trinity College Dublin
*
* Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark, newby@aias.au.dk and Department of History, Trinity College Dublin, RIMCMAHO@tcd.ie
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Abstract

This select document is an annotated translation of John Hampden Jackson’s 1937 Finnish-language text ‘Finland and Ireland: assorted comparisons’, an article previously unavailable in English. It represents an intriguing and extended instance of the generalised comparisons that were made between Irish and Finnish history by observers from the nineteenth century onwards. Therefore, as an example of a mid-twentieth-century primer of the two countries’ ‘parallel histories’, Hampden Jackson’s article is an excellent resource. Moreover, although Hampden Jackson had carved out a niche by the 1930s as an expert on Finland, his reflections on Ireland expose a rather patchy and superficial knowledge, and arguably a degree of condescension. Some of the value of translating this article is that it exposes attitudes of the (broadly-defined) British Left towards Ireland in the 1930s, and particularly the way these were presented, in comparisons with other countries, to an overseas audience.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 160: Ireland and Finland, 1860–1930: Comparative and Transnational Histories , November 2017 , pp. 256 - 270
Copyright
© Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 

Political and social comparisons made between Finland and Ireland from the mid-nineteenth century onwards were generally underpinned by the assertion of parallel historical narratives. William Alexander Henderson, a journalist who later became director of the Abbey Theatre, wrote of Finland’s ‘resemblances to Ireland’ after a holiday in Russia in 1904. Having outlined the two countries’ similarities in an Evening Herald article, Henderson added that:

I have so far indicated the marvellous coincidental resemblances in tradition, history, customs, aspirations, attitude, temperament, geographical position, etc. between Finland and Ireland ... Perhaps in no two other countries of the world could such perfect identity of parallelisms be traced.Footnote 1

Likewise, the nationalist M.P. for South Down, Jeremiah MacVeagh, claimed during a visit to Helsinki in 1910 that he had been unprepared for the ‘strange parallels which [were] to be found between the two cases’ of Finland and Ireland.Footnote 2 As the apparently analogous experiences of the ‘long nineteenth century’ in Finland and Ireland culminated in independence and civil war, the Tuam Herald made an editorial comment in 1923 that ‘it is not often that an exact parallel in the history of two countries at any time of their existence can be found, but … we are very much struck with the similarity … Finland is a small country like Ireland. It is now a Republic.’Footnote 3

The following document is a translation of an article on Finland and Ireland that was published in a Finnish journal in 1937.Footnote 4 It is worth noting that many of the phenomena noted by John Hampden Jackson in the article – conquests, the centralisation of royal power, Reformation, the chaos of the Napoleonic era, the growth of nationalism, and eventual independence – were common throughout Europe and by no means limited to Finland and Ireland. As an example, however, of a mid-twentieth-century primer of the two countries’ ‘parallel histories’, Hampden Jackson’s article is an excellent resource. It represents an intriguing and extended example of the generalised comparisons that were made between Irish and Finnish history by observers from the nineteenth century onwards. Moreover, although Hampden Jackson became renowned as an expert on Finland, his writings on Ireland reflect a very generalised knowledge, without personal experience or areas of speciality. Some of the value of translating this article is that it exposes attitudes of the (broadly-defined) British Left towards Ireland in the 1930s, and particularly the way these were presented, in comparisons with other countries, to an overseas audience.

John Hampden Jackson (1907–66) was a prolific author on a variety of topics relating to British and European history. The son of J. Parker Jackson, a prominent Liverpool businessman, John Hampden Jackson attended King William’s College on the Isle of Man before graduating with an M.A. from Christ Church, University of Oxford, and taking up a position as history master at Haileybury College in Hertfordshire.Footnote 5 He became known as a ‘left-leaning’ historian and commentator, and was an acquaintance of George Orwell, John Middleton Murry and others through his work for The Adelphi literary journal and its related summer school in Essex.Footnote 6 He later edited The Democrat, and was an extraordinarily energetic public lecturer on international relations and politics. He was also a pioneer of adult education, initially as a member of the Oxford Extra-Mural Board (1938–47), and then the Cambridge Extra-Mural Board (1947–66).Footnote 7 Elaine Morgan, the Welsh evolutionary anthropologist, encountered Hampden Jackson during her time in Oxford and referred to his ‘upper-crust’ accent, adding that he ‘certainly wasn’t right-wing, but he had his own rarefied philosophical stance. He was passionately in favour of the common people.’Footnote 8 This impression was reinforced by the American historian, Frank H. Simonds, who described Hampden Jackson’s ‘academic tone’ as being ‘flavoured by the placidity of “Mr Chips”’.Footnote 9 In a retrospective appreciation of Hampden Jackson, by his former pupil, the historical novelist Peter Vansittart, he was described as ‘a brisk, sturdy figure with russet hair and amused eyes, markedly independent, slightly theatrical’. Vansittart recalled a ‘fluent’ teacher, and a committed member of the Labour Party who was able to call on the Labour leader Clement Atlee, an Old Haileyburian, ‘to address his civics class’. Hampden Jackson died at the age of fifty-nine, and Vansittart concluded that ‘probably nothing of him remains in print. He was serious but not sententious, with a wit elegant and spontaneous.’Footnote 10

Hampden Jackson’s comparative article on Finland and Ireland is significant not only as an example of the overarching parallels that were perceived in the nations’ histories. It is also illustrative of the cooling attitudes of the British Left towards an independent Ireland, particularly after Éamon de Valera’s accession to presidency of the Free State’s Executive Council in 1932, prefiguring the ‘deep rift’ that has been identified between ‘Labour and mainstream Irish nationalism’ in the 1940s.Footnote 11 While it would be misguided to infer too much about the sources of Hampden Jackson’s knowledge of Ireland, his writing seems to indicate consistent similarities with his Adelphi colleague, George Orwell. Indeed, Kevin Kerrane’s analysis of Orwell’s perspectives on Ireland resonate strongly with views expressed – explicitly or implicitly – in Hampden Jackson’s published works:

Orwell never set foot in Ireland, but that hardly discouraged him from issuing strong opinions on Irish culture … his sense of Irish history was spotty. According to Orwell’s friend Paul Potts, ‘He was a storehouse of odd information about weird subjects. Yet I would have trembled to think about what would have been the result had he written a book about Ireland.’Footnote 12

There is plenty in Hampden Jackson’s 1937 article that reflects an ‘Orwellian’ assessment of Irish history and society. While this can be explained partly by a lack of detailed knowledge, it was reinforced by a disdain for nationalism – something emphasised in the Irish case by Hampden Jackson’s strong faith in British liberalism.Footnote 13 In his 1932 book A history of England – co-written with fellow Christ Church graduate and Haileybury master Charles Carrington – Hampden Jackson described the Irish Free State as a ‘sop to Irish pride’, adding that ‘a few rebels continued to fight against the settlement’.Footnote 14

Moreover, Orwell pointedly referred to de Valera as a ‘petty fuehrer’,Footnote 15 and there are suggestions of this attitude in Hampden Jackson’s article, particularly in his juxtaposition (p. 419) of de Valera with the ‘calmer more reasonable Irish who were ready to accept the Treaty’. Elsewhere, Hampden Jackson’s comment that the 1916 leaders were ‘executed, not including (strangely enough) Eamon De Valera’ reiterates a point he had made previously in both The post-war world (1935), and England since the Industrial Revolution (a schoolbook, first published in 1936).Footnote 16 Hampden Jackson’s attitudes towards Ireland certainly seem to typify ‘many English leftists’ adherence to England’s imperial history’, and particularly a faith in Britain’s potential to be an international bastion of liberalism.Footnote 17 Here, a rather Janus-faced approach to nationalism can be detected with an antipathy to some forms of nationalism barely able to disguise an indulgence for other, more palatable, varieties – grown, for instance, in the soil of the home counties or, indeed, emerging from the writings of Finnish nationalists in the early decades of the twentieth century.

The magazine Suomalainen Suomi (Finnish Finland) was established in 1933 as the organ of the Suomalaisuuden Liitto (officially known in English as the Association of Finnish Culture and Identity). The Suomalaisuuden Liitto was founded in 1906 to promote the place of the Finnish language over Swedish in civil society. In its early days, it featured writing by Urho Kekkonen, an Agrarian Party politician who later became Finland’s longest-serving president, and the noted Finnish author Mika Waltari. After various iterations it was renamed Kanava (Channel) in 1973 and has continued to be published eight times a year, as Finland’s self-proclaimed ‘leading social and cultural political magazine’.

During the 1930s, Hamden Jackson became known as a leading ‘authority on Finland’ in Britain.Footnote 18 According to Vansittart’s account, Hampden Jackson’s interest in Finland stemmed partially from his interest in social democratic politics, and partially from an instinctive suspicion of ‘large power units’ – either in international politics or internal party politics. He therefore sought to popularise ‘the values of smaller democracies’. Along with Finland, he wrote on Estonia, and produced a pamphlet on the Baltic states. The acknowledgements for Hampden Jackson’s Finland (London, 1938; 2nd ed., London, 1940) refer particularly to Paavo Soukka and Jussi Teljo, and it is possible that Teljo – a regular contributor to Suomalainen Suomi – was responsible for arranging the translation of Hampden Jackson’s articles.Footnote 19 Teljo (1904–92), who was also a prominent member of the Suomalaisuuden Liitto, and professor of social science at the University of Helsinki, was something of a kindred spirit. Politically he was a social democrat – although he does not seem to have been a party member – and he was active in the 1930s campaign to have increased Finnish-language education at the University of Helsinki.Footnote 20 The article ‘Finland and Ireland: assorted comparisons’ was one of three pieces which Hampden Jackson contributed to Suomalainen Suomi in 1937, in between ‘An Englishman observes Finland’ (Mar. 1937), and ‘Changing England’ (Dec. 1937), and part of a larger body of Finland-related work that he produced from the late 1930s.Footnote 21 He argued that:

Overall, it appears that the year 1937 has seen a revival of British sympathy for Finland, and that this will allow Finland to play an important role in promoting peace and democracy in Europe. Nothing I have seen in Finland has shaken my belief that this sympathy is well founded.Footnote 22

Hampden Jackson’s magnum opus on Finland, which was first published in 1938, received considerable praise in the Finnish press, and was used internationally as a source for Finnish history. In this work, he reiterated that ‘the parallel between Ireland and Finland is singularly close’.Footnote 23

It is said that Arthur Griffith founded the Free State with an essay on Hungary; he might have founded it more securely with a study of the Finns ... The truth is that statesmen of London and Dublin – to say nothing of Belfast – have a lesson to learn from the history of Finland.Footnote 24

Therefore, while Hampden Jackson does not appear to have published ‘Finland and Ireland: assorted comparisons’ in English, some of his comparative reflections were presented in passing in his Finland as a way of giving historical context for foreign readers. In general, and this is not perhaps surprising given the attitudes to both countries he displayed elsewhere, he seems much more positive about 1930s Finland than 1930s Ireland, and he implied that Ireland could learn much more from Finland than vice-versa. In her review of Finland, the American travel writer Agnes Rothery noted that:

J. Hampden Jackson’s is a straightforward and authentic history, written by an Englishman from a British point of view … Mr. Jackson is an Englishman, and he makes the comparison between Finland and Ireland in their struggle for home rule, for their own language, institutions, laws, and their own solution of their problems.Footnote 25

This is an important observation. Hampden Jackson might have been perceived as an ‘authority’ in Finland. However, his observations about Ireland do not seem to be quite as well-informed, and are generally included in his text to support his positive take on Finland and the Finns. The full article is presented here in translation for the first time. In places, Hampden Jackson is quite clearly using poetic licence, and in others he seems to misunderstand or misrepresent both the thrust and details of Irish history – with due regard for the integrity of the original text we have highlighted some of the more obvious missteps in the footnotes.

John Hampden Jackson, ‘Finland and Ireland: assorted comparisons’ (translated by Andrew G. Newby)Footnote 26

Comparing parallel historic events can often be misleading but sometimes the similarities between events can be so perfect that the urge to compare them is irresistible. This is the case with Finland and Ireland. At first glance these border posts of Eastern and Western Europe have nothing in common. What similarities could Finland have with that lush green island where it always rains and where the waves of the Atlantic unceasingly batter its shores? Nevertheless, a large number of similarities are to be found in the history of these two countries.

Around the same time, in fact almost in the same year as Eric IX The Holy of Sweden made his first crusade to Finland, Henry II of England led his first invasion of Ireland.Footnote 27 For the Swedes, just like for the English, their excuse was that the oppressed savages had requested their help; Eric, just like Henry, had got the Pope’s blessing for his Crusade. The latter could not call his invasion a Crusade as the Irish had already been Christians for far longer than their Eastern neighbours. Despite this, the Pope at the time, (Hadrian IV), blessed Henry’s flag and promised him ownership of the island.Footnote 28 Henry, on the other hand, had promised to recognise and reorganise the Irish Catholic church as his first act. The Irish people had nothing to protect them against the well-organized army of Henry and his noblemen.Footnote 29 Their only hope of survival was retreating to their fortresses in the bogs and hoping that the invaders would tire of their marauding and pillaging.

Before leaving Ireland, Henry left a garrison of soldiers in Dublin. This garrison was similar to the one left in Turku by the Swedish.Footnote 30 In the Middle Ages more and more English noblemen moved to Ireland, where they divided up the land at the expense of the Irish. After a while, a new Irish-English race was born, which had a lot in common with the Swedes in Finland. These Irish-English people married natives, and adopted Gaelic, the native language of Ireland. In addition, they often transformed their names into Gaelic forms. For example the Norman de Burgh became the Irish [416] Burke, and so on.Footnote 31 Medieval Ireland, however, was never completely under English rule. The power of the English kings hardly reached further than Dublin.Footnote 32 The rest of the country kept its Irish laws and customs, adopting only limited facets of the feudalism introduced by the English barons. Ireland was too large and wild to be totally conquered by the English. If England’s largest enemy had been on the other side of Ireland as Sweden’s enemy was on the other side of Finland,Footnote 33 the matter would have been quite different. From the eleventh century to the start of the nineteenth century England’s biggest enemy was France. Invading Ireland only became relevant when the threat of France leading an invasion through Ireland into England seemed imminent. Occasionally, but only occasionally, Great Britain’s westernmost island came to interest England’s Medieval kings. For example, Richard II made two trips there at the end of the fourteenth century, with the intent of getting the Irish nobles used to English customs.Footnote 34 This was unsuccessful as the cultural gap between the two nations was too large.

The first serious attempt at making Ireland more English occurred at the end of the Middle Ages. The Tudors, just like the Swedish Vaasa dynasty, were rulers trying to centralise power.Footnote 35 They confidently attempted to bend nobles to their will, and to spread the will of the king throughout all the social classes. Only a couple of years after the first Vaasa ruler made a trip around Finland, the first Tudor tried to enforce English laws on Ireland, with the help of his vassal Sir Edward Poynings.Footnote 36 Where the Vaasas succeeded the Tudors failed. The main reason was religion. Finland was a Lutheran country, which linked it to its mother country. But Ireland on the other hand was a country that had been deeply influenced by Catholicism, and was strongly opposed to the Protestants of England. The Reformed church was a disaster for them and this created a new feud between the two countries. The Tudors – and their successors The Stuarts – tried in vain to overcome this barrier. Ireland remained a Catholic country, and therein lay the greatest difference between it and Finland.

Despite this, great similarities can be found between the history of these countries in the following centuries. During the seventeenth century more English people moved to Ireland, which also happened in Finland with the Swedes.Footnote 37 [417] Queen Elizabeth I gave English nobles large areas of lands in the south of Ireland. James I gave out even larger areas of land in the north of Ireland to the Scots.Footnote 38 Oliver Cromwell tried and failed to exile the Irish west of the river Shannon and give the land left behind to his English yeomanry. A new Anglo-Irish cultural layer was therefore born. Just like the Finns, these people kept their native languages, but the difference lay in the fact that they adopted a new religion. These people became the ruling class of Ireland and were in fact more easily compared with the German people living in the areas near the Baltic Sea.Footnote 39 Access to the more important posts in the country was reserved for these people. No Catholic Irishman had the right to vote or be chosen into the parliament that met in Dublin. Catholics had no role in the public sector, from governors to postmen.Footnote 40 But despite this the Catholics had to pay taxes to the Protestant church, which the Irish greatly resented. The Anglo-Irish formed a small minority government, and a hated upper class. (This was also known as ‘The Ascendancy’).

At this point the parallels between Finland’s and Ireland’s positions become more obscure. The Irish, who in the same manner as the Finns had been stripped of their native language, were forced to accept the invaders’ culture in order to aid their own progression. In their fight for freedom they were relying on Anglo-Irish outcasts, just as the Finns had once relied on their country’s Swedish-speakers. Ireland’s leaders were expecting help from England’s arch nemesis France, exactly like some Swedish Finns turned their eyes towards Russia. At exactly the same time as SprengtportenFootnote 41 was negotiating with Catherine and ArmfeltFootnote 42 with Alexander I, Wolfe Tone was holding negotiations with the French rebels and Napoleon.Footnote 43 There are a couple of similarities that can be noted between Armfelt and Wolfe Tone. Tone was by nature brilliant, charming, clever, irresistible and rather capricious, but at the same time uncommonly stubborn. His plan was to persuade France into attacking England through Ireland where a people’s uprising would be put into motion. Both France and Ireland would benefit from this plan. The first one from defeating England and the latter from the independence they so sorely desired. It was by chance – if chance can be talked of – that Tone’s plans were foiled. [418] Twice France’s powerful navy was destroyed just off the coast of Ireland due to storms and fog. Only a tiny proportion of the soldiers led by Hoche made it to land: there they were easily slaughtered by the English.Footnote 44

The rebellion of the Irish failed but it frightened the English government into tightening their reins on Ireland. To do this the power of the Anglo-Irish upper class had to be broken. Members of the Dublin parliament were bribed to vote in favour of ending this institution, and in 1800 an Act of UnionFootnote 45 was passed which transferred power to London, leaving the Anglo-Irish with the right to send a few representatives to the English parliament.

The entire nineteenth century was a ceaseless battle between Irish nationalism and English imperialism. At first the fight was over religion; only after 1829 was even a hint of tolerance granted towards Ireland’s Catholic majority.Footnote 46 Then the struggle took on an economic aspect. After the infamous famine that took place during the 1840s, smallholders refused to pay rent to their English and Anglo-Irish landowners before they received reassurances about the fairness and permanency of their tenancy. This was only resolved at the end of the century when funds were given from London to the Irish smallholders in order for them to buy land. During this time Ireland’s National Party had taken a new direction. The Irish now demanded independence, the right to govern themselves.Footnote 47 England did not agree to this demand although a few of the state’s leaders (particularly Gladstone) did their best to see the Home Rule Bill accepted in parliament. Twenty years before Eugen Schauman shot Bobrikov in Helsinki the English governor-general was killed by the bullet of an Irishman.Footnote 48 Only by 1914 was the Home Rule law passed, and even then the English refused to enact it because of the outbreak of World War One.

During the war Ireland, just like Finland stayed neutral.Footnote 49 Irish activists, like the Finns, secretly contacted their motherland’s enemies.Footnote 50 Ireland did not have a Jaeger battalion in Germany,Footnote 51 but just when it seemed that England would conscript the Irish to fight for them, Sir Roger Casement persuaded Germany to send weapons to Ireland for use in a War of Independence. Unfortunately for the Irish nationalists Casement’s plans sprung a leak and Germany’s [419] weapons never made it to their destination.Footnote 52 Activists took over Dublin in 1916 but after a week’s fighting they were toppled and their leaders were executed, not including (strangely enough) Eamon de Valera.Footnote 53 But Ireland’s will to become independent stayed strong and when the World War ended England sent its troops to Ireland in order to quell any agitation. This sparked a war that continued until 1922, when Ireland was given the status of a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth.

It was thought that the treaty would satisfy the Irish nationalists, but their extreme members, led by de Valera, refused to recognize the treaty. From this started a Civil War between de Valera and his followers, and the calmer more reasonable Irish who were ready to accept the treaty.Footnote 54 The latter won the war and Ireland was a dominion of Britain for the next ten years. But in the elections of 1932 de Valera was victorious, and from there a new phase began in the history of the nationalist movement. De Valera refused to pledge allegiance to the king of England. He also refused to pay back interest for the money that the smallholders had used to purchase their lands; he did everything in his power to make Ireland economically and culturally independent from England.

The cultural part of the question is probably more interesting for Finnish readers, for there more similarities can be found between Finland and Ireland. In Ireland as in Finland the mixing of races produced some rather talented individuals. Just like many of Sweden’s most famous names from the battlefields, government and literature were originally from Finland, many of England’s heroes had their roots in Ireland. Out of the soldiers Wellington, of the sailors Dundonald;Footnote 55 Burke and Palmerston of the statesmen, and Swift, Goldsmith, George Moore and James Joyce of the writers were all Irish. And since Shakespeare there has hardly been a decent English playwright, that hasn’t been Anglo-Irish by birth (the list starts off with Sheridan and Goldsmith and ends with Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde along with Eugene O’Neill and Sean O’Casey.)Footnote 56 The characteristic Anglo-Irish ingenuity has always been manifested in quirkiness and satire. Almost all of England’s satirists are Anglo-Irish and the skill and art of English-language conversation is nowhere at a higher level than in Dublin.

[420] Alongside this Anglo-Irish civilisation Ireland’s own Gaelic civilisation has stubbornly continued its existence in the cottages of Western Ireland. The Irish of Galway and Connaught cannot, in the absence of literary civilisation, demonstrate their skills by writing. But like the Karelians of Finland they have expressed themselves through music and poems.Footnote 57 What an abundance of mysterious poems, spells, music and legends await a Lönnrot of Ireland’s western counties to round them up into Ireland’s Kalevala.Footnote 58 The famous Irish harp is an instrument similar to the kantele. The Finnish bitter sweetness can be detected in Irish songs and the Irish ‘keeners’ could almost be from Karelia (by chance it is so that out of Finns Karelians most closely resemble the Irish by nature. An Irishman would use the term ‘jöröjukka’Footnote 59 to describe someone from Häme. They on the other hand would call Irish people ‘suunsoittaja’.)Footnote 60 The natural talent of the Irish as with the Finns was mainly poetic. This fact stopped foreigners getting a proper view of either countries’ civilisation because anything poetic is hard to translate to another language.

There is an ongoing argument over language in Ireland. It is a real cultural battle that can be compared to the language contention in Finland.Footnote 61 The Anglo-Irish refer to the fact that English has always been the written language in Ireland and that all civilised Irish can read and write it. They insist that if the Irish are stripped of the English language they will also be stripped of their connection to the wonderful literature and civilisation that has been theirs for centuries. The same argument is used by the Swedish[-speaking Finns], who claim that giving up the Swedish language would also mean giving up the likes of RunebergFootnote 62 and Snellman.Footnote 63 In the same way that many Finnish leaders did not speak Finnish as their first language, the leaders of the Irish national party from Parnell to Erskine Childers could not even speak Gaelic. Irish nationalists on the other hand pointed out that English was the language of the invaders and capitalist oppressors, and that Ireland’s own Gaelic (which was during the dark times of the Middle Ages the best literary tongue in Europe) is the only natural way to express the undying spirit of Ireland. It is for this reason that de Valera has made Gaelic an official language of Ireland alongside English.

In fact the Gaelic fanatics do not have nearly as good arguments on their side as the Finnish men of Finland one hundred years ago.Footnote 64 Not even one Irishman out of a hundred can speak Gaelic. [421] During the past few centuries English has become the language of the people in Ireland. And the Irish have learnt to use it masterfully. Nowhere in the world, not even in England is English spoken so beautifully and diversely as in Ireland. The greatest of the currently living English authors is W.B Yeats from Dublin, who sings of Ireland’s history and mythology and uses rhythms and sayings only encountered in Ireland. On the other hand it is important to remember that Gaelic is mainly spoken along the west coast of Ireland. This is why attempts to revive the language are artificial. The Irish must be taught Irish like any other foreign tongue. They are also taught to reject Yeats and O’Casey because they wrote in English and to admire authors whose only good aspect was that they wrote in Gaelic. Ireland’s Catholic bishops support the Gaelic movement because many of the English writers are negative towards the religion whereas the users of Gaelic are spiritually disciples of the church.Footnote 65

There is still one similarity left between these two countries. For the time being Finland has not reached its natural boundaries, as East Karelia is still under the power of Russia. Ireland is also still divided because the seven north-eastern counties,Footnote 66 where King James planted a group of Scots in the seventeenth century, are outside of de Valera’s Ireland and under England’s governing. England gives Northern Ireland the same amount of apparent freedom as Russia gives the East Karelians but it is very unlikely that either will loosen their grip, one on Belfast and the other on Murmansk.Footnote 67

The differences between Finland and Ireland are almost as clear as the similarities. Finland is currently enjoying the wellbeing and other virtues brought by national independence whereas Ireland is still poor and quarrelsome. Dublin’s parliament is being divided by a dispute between the supporters and opponents of Gaelic.Footnote 68 The people of Ireland have every reason to gaze enviously at the Finns, who were saved from religious division by Lutheranism, own a wealth of beautiful forests and whose native language has been preserved despite its hard times.

References

1 Evening Herald, 19 Nov. 1904.

2 Freeman’s Journal, 10 Aug. 1910.

3 Tuam Herald, 27 Oct. 1923.

4 Jackson, John Hampden, ‘Suomi ja Irlanti: eräitä vertauskohtia’ in Suomalainen Suomi, no. 6 (Oct. 1937), pp 415–421 Google Scholar.

5 Liverpool Daily Post, 2 Mar. 1940.

6 The complete works of George Orwell: a kind of compulsion, 1903–1936, eds Peter Davison, Ian Angus and Sheila Davison (London, 1998), p. 493.

7 Mary Salinsky, ‘Writing British national history in the twentieth century’ (Ph.D. thesis, King’s College, London, 2013), p. 220; The Independent (London), 9 Oct. 2008.

8 Morgan, Elaine, Knock ‘em cold, kid (Kibworth Beauchamp, 2012), p. 51 Google Scholar.

9 Frank H. Simonds’s review of John Hampden Jackson, The post-war world: a short political history, 1918–1934 (London, 1935)Google Scholar, in Saturday Review of Literature (20 July 1935), pp 6–7.

10 The Guardian, 21 Sept. 1989.

11 Marley, Laurence, ‘Introduction’ in idem (ed.), The British Labour Party and twentieth-century Ireland: the cause of Ireland, the cause of labour (Manchester, 2016), p. 7 Google Scholar. See also Gibbons, Ivan, The British Labour Party and the establishment of the Irish Free State, 1918–1924 (Basingstoke, 2015)Google Scholar.

12 Kerrane, Kevin, ‘Orwell’s Ireland’ in Irish Review, nos 36–37 (2007), p. 14 Google Scholar.

13 This strengthened during the Second World War. Perhaps no better example of Hampden Jackson’s faith in ‘Britishness’ can be found than his article ‘A forgotten ideal’ in The Spectator, 26 Oct. 1944. Here, he argued that to British readers, ‘It is right that we should be modest about our national achievement, proper that we should realise our shortcomings and the need to repair the ravages of laissez-faire and class inequalities. But at the risk of sinful pride we should remind ourselves that for a hundred years and more the people of Europe have looked to us for a model.’

14 Carrington, Charles E. and Jackson, John Hampden, A history of England (London, 1932), pp 767–768 Google Scholar.

15 Orwell quoted in Erika Gottlieb, The Orwell conundrum: a cry of despair or faith in the spirit of man (Ottawa, 1992), p. 57 Google Scholar.

16 In The post-war world, he noted that the British ‘almost executed a lean crow of a man who gave his name as Eamon de Valera, but reprieved him because he had been born in America’ (Hampden Jackson, The post-war world, p. 91). In England since the Industrial Revolution, Hampden Jackson wrote: ‘Only one leader was reprieved, and that was because he had been born in America and the English were anxious not to offend the United States just when there was a chance that they would come in to the World War on the English side. The name of the reprieved man was Eamonn [sic] de Valera.’ See Jackson, John Hampden, England since the Industrial Revolution, 1815–1948 (Rev. ed., London, 1949) pp 167–168 Google Scholar.

17 Bluemel, Kristin, George Orwell and the radical eccentrics: intermodernism in literary London (Basingstoke, 2004), p. 70 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Cambridge Daily News, 2 Dec. 1939.

19 Teljo was sub-editor of Suomalainen Suomi magazine in 1937, during which time Hampden Jackson contributed three articles. Teljo was also a translator of various works into Finnish, notably Trevelyan’s History of England (published as G. M. Trevelyan, Englannin historia (Porvoo, 1948)).

20 Ylioppilas, 12 Apr. 1933; Jussi Teljo, Suomalaisuusliikkeen Tehtävät (Porvoo, 1935); Hämeläinen, Pekka Kalevi, Kielitaistelu Suomessa, 1917–1939 (Helsinki, 1968), pp 192, 232 Google Scholar.

21 Jackson, John Hampden, ‘Englantilainen tekee havaintoja Suomesta’ in Suomalainen Suomi, no. 2 (Mar. 1937), pp 107–112 Google Scholar; idem, ‘Muuttuva Englanti’, Suomalainen Suomi, no. 8 (Dec. 1937), pp 567–73. Elsewhere, see: John Hampden Jackson, ‘German interventions in Finland, 1918’ in Slavonic and East European Review, xviii (1939), pp 93–101; idem, ‘Russian control in Finland’ in Contemporary Review, clxx (Aug. 1946), pp 69–72; idem, ‘Finland since the armistice’ in International Affairs, xxiv, no. 4 (Oct. 1948), pp 505–14; idem, ‘Russia, Finland and Estonia’ in Contemporary Review, clxxxi (June 1952), pp 334–7; idem, ‘Finland’s reparations’ in World Today, viii, no. 7 (July 1952), pp 307–14; idem, ‘Resettlement of Karelian refugees’ in World Today, ix, no. 6 (June 1953), pp 249–56. In addition to his academic and political reflections, Hampden Jackson featured on Yleisradio (national broadcaster) radio programmes in Finland in the late 1940s and 1950s, e.g.: Sunday 13 Feb. 1949 – John Hampden Jackson, ‘Englantilais-Suomalaisia Suhteita: 1 – Historiallinen Tausta’, [‘English–Finnish Relations: 1 – Historical Background’]; Friday 26 June 1953 – John Hampden Jackson, ‘Vaikutelmia Suomesta’ [‘Impressions of Finland’]. See also, John Hampden Jackson, ‘Democracy in Finland’ (16 Jan. 1940) (Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, MS RIIA/8/611); idem, ‘The Finnish situation’ (20 May 1948) (ibid., MS RIIA/8/1542); idem, ‘Problems of Finland today’ (9 June 1953) (ibid., MS RIIA/8/2145). Hampden Jackson’s appearances on B.B.C. radio – e.g., in 1954, speaking on ‘Modern Art in Finland’ – also indicate that he was required to act as a general commentator on Finland (Belfast Telegraph, 18 Jan. 1954).

22 See Hampden Jackson, ‘Englantilainen tekee havaintoja Suomesta’. Some of this enthusiasm was based on the apparent defeat of fascism in Finland. In early 1938, Hampden Jackson penned an article entitled ‘Fascism in Finland’ for the New Statesman, in which he argued that only one country in the world had seen a ‘fully-fledged fascist movement’ decline in influence after initial success, and ‘that country was Finland’. The right-wing Finnish nationalist Lapua League, which had been founded in 1929 was outlawed after the Mäntsälä Rebellion in 1932, an attempted coup d’état, and its influence gradually declined. This article received particular attention in Finland. See: John Hampden Jackson, ‘Fascism in Finland’ in New Statesman and Nation, xv (Jan. 1938), pp 4–6.

23 Jackson, John Hampden, Finland (2nd ed., London, 1940), p. 16 Google Scholar.

The first edition of this work was an inspiration for Revd Edward J. Coyne’s comparative article ‘Finland and its lessons for Ireland’ in Studies, xxviii, no. 112 (Dec. 1939), pp 651–61.

24 Hampden Jackson, Finland, p. 17.

25 Rothery, Agnes, ‘Four books on Finland’ in Saturday Review of Literature (2 Mar. 1940), p. 10 Google Scholar.

26 Page references corresponding to the original Finnish text are included in square brackets in the translation below.

27 Eric’s crusade (or invasion) is said to have taken place two decades ahead of Diarmait Mac Murchada’s invitation to Henry II to intervene in Leinster. The traditional historical narrative describes the First Swedish Crusade as taking place around 1150, with the goal of converting heathen Finns to Christianity. Researchers have questioned the historicity of these events. See: Murray, Alan V., Crusade and conversion on the Baltic frontier, 1150–1500 (London, 2001), p. 123 Google Scholar.

28 The reference here is to the papal bull Laudabiliter, issued by Pope Adrian IV in 1155, in which Henry II was given papal blessing for an intended invasion of Ireland to root out evil and extend the boundaries of the church. This was issued apparently at Henry’s request but historians now identify the church of Canterbury as the prime mover. In any case, Henry II did not act on Laudabiliter and when he did go to Ireland in 1171, it was to enforce his power on the Anglo-Norman barons recruited by Diarmait Mac Murchada as much as, or more than, a personal wish to invade and hold Ireland as part of his empire. While in Ireland, however, Henry held a reforming church council. See: Marie Therese Flanagan, Irish society, Anglo-Norman settlers, Angevin kingship, interactions in Ireland in the late twelfth century (Oxford, 1989). We are grateful to Dr Margaret Murphy (Carlow College) for the above note and for further clarification on some of the finer details of Irish medieval history in the notes that follow. See, in particular, notes 29, 31, 32 and 34.

29 Henry II, it might be noted, did not engage in a single battle while in Ireland.

30 Turku, in southwestern Finland, was founded in 1229, and its castle dates from the 1280s. The territory of ‘Finland’ at this time was not clearly defined. The first formal delineation of Finland’s eastern border did not occur until the Treaty of Pähkinasaari between Sweden and Russia (Novgorod) in 1323. See: Pirjo Jukarainen, ‘The boundaries of Finland in transition’ in Fennia, clxxx, nos 1–2 (2002), pp 83–8 (figure 1).

31 The Irish form would be de Búrca, with Burke as the Anglicised form. The practice of the English in Ireland adopting Irish forms of their names was specifically forbidden by the Statute of Kilkenny, 1366.

32 At the height of English power in medieval Ireland about two-thirds of the country had been colonised and was nominally loyal to the English crown. This area rapidly contracted thereafter but the statement that the power of the English kings hardly reached further than Dublin is an exaggeration even with reference to the fifteenth century. See: Frame, Robin, Colonial Ireland, 1169–1369 (2 nd ed., Dublin, 2012)Google Scholar.

33 i.e., Russia.

34 Richard’s expeditions of 1394 and 1399 were primarily to obtain the subjection of the Irish kings and return Ireland to profitability for the English crown. In 1394 he did propose some measures for ‘civilising’ the Irish kings but there was no great will on either side to carry on with this experiment after the king returned to England.

35 Gustav I Vasa (1496–1560) is generally credited with creating a centralised Swedish state, through administrative reforms and the creation of a powerful army and navy.

36 Poynings’ Law, 1494, laid down that no legislation could be enacted by the Irish parliament until it had been inspected and approved by the king and his council in England. Gustav I Vasa took the Swedish throne in 1523, after the end of the Kalmar Union. Gustav I instigated a Protestant Reformation in 1527, but it was a gradual process rather than a revolution, and was only confirmed by the victory of Charles IX over the Catholic king, Sigismund, in 1598.

37 The centralisation of the Swedish state (including Finland) did indeed precipitate considerable population movement. Members of the higher nobility in Finland tended to settle around the royal court in Stockholm, but at the same time, as Hampden Jackson notes here, there were opportunities for lesser nobles from all over the Swedish realm to gain offices in Finland. The late sixteenth century also saw the large-scale movement of Finns from Häme and Savo to various parts of Sweden and, later, Norway. These ‘Forest Finns’ were initially encouraged by the Swedish monarchs as they settled large areas of previously uninhabited land.

38 James I’s plantations also featured a considerable English contingent, though Hampden Jackson might have simplified this for narrative purposes, and to reflect James’s own Scottish origins.

39 The Baltic nobility were a privileged class of families – originally largely of German background – who resided in the Baltic states and provided officers for the Swedish and Polish kings.

40 This is an exaggeration, as Catholics did operate at the lowest levels of state administration as, for instance, local constables. See: Garnham, Neal, The courts, crime and the criminal law in Ireland, 1692–1760 (Dublin, 1996), pp 29–30 Google Scholar.

41 As political relations between Sweden and Russia deteriorated, Catherine the Great had given some encouragement to the small Finnish separatist group led by George (or Göran) Magnus Sprengtporten (1740–1819). See: Oakley, Stewart P., War and peace in the Baltic, 1560–1790 (London, 1992), pp 153–154 Google Scholar; Derry, T. K., A history of Scandinavia (London, 1979), pp 189–192 Google Scholar.

42 Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt (1757–1814). Despite a somewhat turbulent relationship with the Swedish King Gustav III, Armfelt distinguished himself as an officer in the Swedish army and, in 1792, was appointed guardian of the infant Gustav IV. Russia’s defeat of Sweden in 1809 led to the abdication of Gustaf IV, and also cost Sweden its Finnish territories. Armfelt subsequently became an adviser to Tsar Alexander I and is credited with convincing Alexander to recognise Finland as a ‘Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire’, therefore giving the Finns an opportunity to develop an autonomous state in the nineteenth century. See: Kirby, David, A concise history of Finland (Cambridge, 2006), pp 71–74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Hampden Jackson seems to have been unaware of the life and career of Johan Anders Jägerhorn, a Finnish nobleman and army officer. In 1788 Jägerhorn was implicated in a plot against the Swedish king, and of advocating Finnish sovereignty, for which act of treason he was exiled to Germany. In Hamburg he got to know Lord Edward FitzGerald. As an agent of the French, Jägerhorn met with FitzGerald to discuss the 1798 invasion plans, only for the Finn to be arrested by the English and imprisoned for two years in the Tower of London. In 1982, Des O’Malley unveiled a plaque outside Jägerhorn’s house in Porvoo. See: Etelä-Suomen Sanomat, 7 Apr. 1982; Weber, Paul, On the road to rebellion: the United Irishmen and Hamburg, 1796–1803 (Dublin, 1997), pp 59–60 Google Scholar. The connection of Jägerhorn to the United Irishmen was reasonably well-known and it is conceivable that Hampden Jackson was seeking to maintain a strictly comparative narrative without intertwining historical threads.

44 French troops, under the command of General Hoche, did not land in Ireland and references to slaughter are unfounded. For the best guide to the 1790s, see Bartlett, Thomas, Dickson, David, Keogh, Dáire and Whelan, Kevin (eds), 1798: a bicentenary perspective (Dublin, 2003)Google Scholar.

45 Although not expressed explicitly here, Hampden Jackson would have expected his Finnish readers to contrast this with the momentous events of 1809, when Finland passed from being part of the Swedish kingdom to being a self-governing grand duchy of the Russian tsar.

46 There were, of course, a series of Catholic relief acts in Ireland in the closing decades of the eighteenth century that introduced more than ‘a hint of tolerance’ for Catholics, allowing them to hold, in theory at least, a series of important positions within Irish society. On the relief acts of 1778, 1782, 1792 and 1793, see Bartlett, Thomas, The fall and rise of the Irish nation: the Catholic question, 1690–1830 (Dublin, 1992)Google Scholar. It is likely that, for Hampden Jackson, Daniel O’Connell’s international fame would make 1829 a more recognisable date for a Finnish readership.

47 In highlighting a demand for ‘independence’ (itsenäisyys) rather than self-government (itsehallinto), Hampden Jackson conflated here the home rule demands of the Parnellites with the republican separatism of the Fenians / I.R.B. In so doing, he arguably simplified, misunderstood or misrepresented the chronology of the Irish nationalist movement.

48 Despite Hampden Jackson’s poetic prose, of course, Frederick Cavendish and his assistant Thomas Henry Burke were stabbed to death by the Invincibles in the Phoenix Park in 1882, and not shot.

49 As it had been a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and governed from London, the implication that Ireland was ‘neutral’ is misleading. A stronger comparison would have been an exploration of the ‘special’ status that Finland and Ireland had been granted over conscription.

50 Although there are few examples of direct links between Finns and Irish agitators during the First World War, Germany was actively engaged with nationalists from both countries. The British ambassador in Sweden, Sir Esme Howard, also acknowledged that, having failed with the Easter Rising in Dublin, and with the Verdun offensive having stalled, the Germans would be seeking new opportunities to create chaos. Howard’s report to London quoted a local political informant that ‘whenever a big military movement came to naught the Germans promptly turned to political intriguing, in order to create a diversion both at home and in the field’. With Verdun at a stalemate, ‘the nearest result was the uprising in Ireland’. After its failure, ‘something else has to be thought of. Undoubtedly the turn has now come to Finland and Sweden’. See: Jeffery, Keith, 1916: a global history (London, 2015), p. 103 Google Scholar.

51 Teutophile academics in Helsinki launched a secret recruitment drive for the German army. When it became known in September 1914 that a new Russification scheme was planned, activity increased among those who hoped to take advantage of the international situation, and profit from German assistance, guns and pressure. Some 2,000 Finns travelled in secret to Hamburg for military training. They would form the Twenty-Seventh Prussian Jaeger Brigade. They did see action on the Eastern Front rather than in Finland, and returned to fight for the Whites in the Finnish Civil War.

52 Roger Casement’s treatment in Hampden Jackson & Carrington’s schoolbook A history of England was even less sympathetic; he was dismissed as a ‘fanatic called Casement’ (Carrington & Hampden Jackson, A history of England, p. 766).

53 Hampden Jackson had previously referred to the Easter Rising as a ‘mad, mad escapade’ in The post war world, p. 91.

54 Finland’s Civil War (1918) has been the subject of concerted comparative analysis with the Irish case by Bill Kissane, who has written that ‘the very moment Finland and Ireland asserted their claims to independence, statehood revealed the depths of their internal divisions’ (Bill Kissane, ‘Victory in defeat? National identity after civil war in Finland and Ireland’ in John A. Hall and Siniša Malešević (eds), Nationalism and war (Cambridge, 2013), pp 322–3; A. G. Newby, Éire na Rúise: An Fhionlainn agus Éire ar thóir na saoirse (Dublin, 2016), pp 115–16). To give some statistical context, the Finnish Civil War resulted in over nine times more deaths than the Irish case (approximately 36,000 in Finland), arising from a conflict that lasted just over three months (as opposed to just short of eleven months in Ireland). Hampden Jackson sidestepped mentioning the Finnish case explicitly in his text, probably because this would have meant an unavoidable choice of label to describe the conflict. The victorious Whites recalled the ‘War of Liberation’ (implying a fight for national freedom from Russia), which only gradually (by the 1960s) came to be replaced by more neutral terms such as ‘civil war’ or ‘internal war’. See: Tuomas Tepora and Aapo Roselius, ‘Introduction: the Finnish Civil War, revolution and scholarship’ in idem, The Finnish Civil War, 1918: history, memory, legacy (Leiden, 2014), pp 6–7. In his 1938 English-language account, Finland, Hampden Jackson allowed himself space to express some of this nuance: ‘The civil war is officially known today in Finland as the War of Independence, the implication being that the Whites fought for Finland’s independence against Russian Bolsheviks and the misguided proletariat whom the Russians had fooled into supporting them … the truth, however, is not so simple’ (Hampden Jackson, Finland, pp 141–42).

55 Presumably referring to the Scot, Thomas Cochrane, tenth earl of Dundonald, a storied officer in the British navy, nicknamed ‘the sea-wolf’ by Napoleon. Hampden Jackson is employing here an extremely liberal definition of ‘Irish roots’. See: Grimble, Ian, The sea wolf: the life of Admiral Cochrane (Edinburgh, 2000)Google Scholar.

56 Hampden Jackson here seems to be conflating ‘Anglo-Irish’ with Irish (and Irish-American) literary figures who worked through the medium of English.

57 Karelia was in many respects the heartland of Finnish national identity, and its people presented as the culture-bearers of Finnish music and poetry. Lönnrot’s ethnographical investigations in the region, resulting in the publication of Kalevala in 1835, underpinned subsequent constructions of a Finnish ‘national’ history. See: Pertti Antonen, ‘The Kalevala and the authenticity debate’ in Bak, János M., Geary, Patrick J. and Klanczay, Gábor (eds), Manufacturing a past for the present: forgery and authenticity in medievalist texts and objects in nineteenth-century Europe (Leiden, 2014), pp 61–62 Google Scholar; Fewster, Derek, Visions of past glory: nationalism and the construction of early Finnish history (Helsinki, 2006), p. 94 Google Scholar. The first edition of Kalevala was published by the Finnish Literature Society: Lönnrot, Elias, Kalewala taikka Wanhoja Karjalan runoja Suomen Kansan muinosista ajoista (Helsinki, 1835)Google Scholar.

58 Standish O’Grady and Douglas Hyde, for example, have been compared to Lönnrot in the sense of being national ‘culture-givers’. See: Foster, John Wilson, Fictions of the Irish literary revival: a changeling art (Syracuse, 1987), p. 20 Google Scholar. In his 1904 account, William Alexander Henderson also referred to Lönnrot as ‘a scholar after the stamp of Eugene O’Curry or Douglas Hyde’ (Evening Herald, 19 Nov. 1904). It should be noted, of course, that there was a strong Irish language manuscript tradition for centuries prior to the publication of Hampden Jackson’s article.

59 Jöröjukka is the Finnish name of the German folk character Der Struwwelpeter (Shock-headed Peter). The implication here is that the inland Finns of the Häme region would be considered morose or grumpy in Irish eyes, unlike the Karelians.

60 Blatherer.

61 The magazine Suomalainen Suomi was in many respects a product of the language contention between Finnish and Swedish in Finland, and this seems to have been an important point of comparison for both Hampden Jackson and his editor.

62 Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804–1877) was one of the nation builders of the nineteenth century, a Swedish-speaking Finn who nonetheless seemed to present the essence of the Finnish land and people through his poems. He became the acknowledged national poet of Finland, and composed the song Vårt Land / Maamme which became the national anthem of independent Finland.

63 Johan Vilhelm Snellman (1806–1881) was, like Runeberg, a leading figure in Finland’s national movement in the nineteenth century. An essentially conservative figure in many respects, he promoted the Finnish language as an essential ingredient of nationhood, and he helped to establish Finnish as an official language in 1863. Hampden Jackson’s main point here is that many of the leading Finnish nationalists, and promoters of the Finnish language, came themselves from Swedish-speaking backgrounds.

64 See: Coleman, Michael C., ‘“You might all be speaking Finnish today”: language change in nineteenth century Finland and Ireland’ in Scandinavian Journal of History, xxxv, no. 1 (2010), pp 44–64 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Finland, Hampden Jackson continued this flattery of his Finnish-speaking Finnish friends: ‘The Gaelic enthusiasts were as uncompromising as the Finns in their triumph were generous; the Gaels have not yet found a modus vivendi with the Anglo-Irish while the Finns have reconciled, if they have not quite finally appeased, the Swedo-Finns’ (Hampden Jackson, Finland, p. 17).

65 Again, he seems to have been reassured by his Finnish colleagues that the language question was now settled in Finland: ‘In fact the language quarrel in Finland, like the religious quarrel in Ireland, is an anachronism. The chief purpose it serves in this century is as a disguise for the new economic conflict between the old ruling class and the new’ (Hampden Jackson, Finland, pp 126–7).

66 Quite why Hampden Jackson considered there to be seven counties in Northern Ireland is not clear.

67 This comparison was the basis for one of the Free State’s earliest interventions in the League of Nations: ‘On their first appearance at Geneva, Irish delegates supported Finland in its dispute with the Soviet Union over autonomy for the Finnish-speaking province of Karelia (“a kind of Finnish Six Counties”) and took particular interest in the working of the League’s machinery for dealing with minorities’ ( Keown, Gerard, First of the small nations: the beginnings of Irish foreign policy in the interwar years, 1919–1932 (Oxford, 2016), p. 135)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 This was a curious and largely invalid point of division to highlight given that there was broad agreement within Irish political life in the 1930s on the need to support the Irish language.