Anglo-Irish interactions

The relationship between Ireland and Great Britain has a long and complex history. Given their geographical proximity and, since the latter part of the nineteenth century, a shared language, one key dimension of this history has been the journalistic connections, exchanges, and interactions that have mediated political and cultural relations between the two islands. By and large, this journalistic relationship existed within frameworks of colonialism, political and armed conflict, partition, political independence, and postcolonial adjustment. Over the course of the nineteenth century and up to the 1960s, journalism in Ireland was used predominantly as either a site of resistance against or a site of support for British rule. In Britain, over the same timeframe, journalism was used mostly to justify the subjugation of Ireland or, post-independence, to cast doubt on the political and economic viability of the nascent Irish state. The 1960s constituted a watershed as political relations between both islands matured amid greater economic cooperation. This was mirrored in the journalistic sphere by content that emphasized a relationship centered on economic exchange rather than on political antagonism. The eruption of the Northern Ireland Troubles in 1969 ended this brief journalistic idyll as political, armed conflict, and censorship again took center state. This chapter surveys Anglo-Irish journalistic interactions in terms of the ever-shifting contours of the relationship between the two islands from the advent of newspapers in the mid-1600s to the peace process of the 1990s.