CLT420H1

Ireland, Race and Empires

This course examines the extent to which the Irish can be understood as a colonized and racialized people, and the degree to which they participated in the colonization and racialization of Blacks and Indigenous peoples in the British and American empires. It encompasses debates about whether the Irish were victims of genocidal policies during the Famine, and their role in what one historian calls the “casual genocide” of imperial expansion. It also discusses the character and limitations of anti-colonialism in Irish nationalist discourse, and attitudes of racialized minorities and Indigenous peoples towards the Irish. This course is jointly offered with the graduate course, HIS1441H.