The Resurrection of Hungary

"The Resurrection of Hungary" was a book published by Arthur Griffith in 1904 in which he outlined his ideas for an Anglo-Irish dual monarchy. He proposed that the former kingdoms which had created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1800, namely, the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland, return to the pre-1800 arrangement whereby they had two governments but a shared king. The policy, which was modelled on Hungary's achievement of equal status with Austria under the Habsburg emperor/king, became the basis for the policy of Griffith's new Sinn Féin party. He proposed an Anglo-Irish Empire to be the equivalent of the "Austro-Hungarian Empire".

Griffith summed up his ideas in the book by comparing the relative status of Hungary vis-à-vis Austria and Ireland vis-à-vis Great Britain:

He advocated a policy of abstentionism from the institutions of the United Kingdom and a return to the "Constitution of 1782" agreed between the British government and the Parliament of Ireland in 1782.

Griffith called his new party, Sinn Féin, a “King, Lords and Commons Party.” [ibid.] The "Anglo-Irish Empire" idea, though strongly associated with Griffith, was not uniquely his creation. As early as the mid-1880s Lord Salisbury, leader of the Conservative Party had contemplated using the 1867 Austro-Hungarian example as a model for a reformed relationship between Britain and Ireland. [ [http://www.irishdemocrat.co.uk/reviews/griffiths-legacy/ Peter Berresford Ellis in "The Irish Democrat" in 2003.] ]

From 1917 the party while maintaining its commitment to abstentionism, abandoned Griffith's proposal for having the British monarch on the Irish throne as King of Ireland. Instead it was split between republicans (those associated with the Easter Rising in 1916 and who had subsequently joined Sinn Féin) who advocated the creation of a new republic with an elected head of state, and those who advocated the creation of an Irish monarchy, albeit now with a monarch chosen from any royal house but the House of Windsor.

In 1917 the party's "Ard Fheis" adopted a motion committing the party to establishing a republic before holding a referendum on whether to install a monarchy or not, once the monarch chosen was not from the House of Windsor. [Ard Fheis, October 1917.] The party later committed itself unambiguously to supporting a republic.

Given its introduction of the concept of abstentionism, and its formative role in the appearance of Sinn Féin, "The Resurrection of Hungary" was one of the most influential texts in 20th century Irish history.

Footnotes

ources

* Arthur Griffith, "The Resurrection of Hungary: A Parallel for Ireland" (UCD Press, 2003 reprint)
* F.S.L. Lyons, "Ireland Since the Famine"