Imperial coercion in Ireland and India 1919-21: Insights for Irish Australians

In November 1921, James Vincent (J. V.) O’Loghlin compared India and Ireland
in his regular column in Adelaide’s Irish Catholic newspaper, the Southern Cross.
His comment followed rioting in Bombay associated with the visit of the Prince of Wales. O’Loghlin, the founder, first editor and long-term director of the Southern Cross, had argued that most Indians feared and hated British rule and that neither ‘British officialism’ or ‘press propaganda’ could camouflage popular hostility.
He emphasised the consequences of foreign rule for India, prevented from
making its own laws and subject to those made by the British government in
India ‘in which she has no representation’. O’Loghlin’s identification of the par-
allels between India and Ireland exemplified an important insight about the cir-
cumstances confronting the two colonies. In both, Britain was exerting military
coercion to reassert control. For Irish Australian readers, similar items in Irish
Catholic newspapers magnified the opportunities available for deeper understanding of the empire in the years following the Great War. Before and during the Great War, Australian understanding or engagement with imperial issues beyond the relationship between Ireland and/or Australia and England was limited. The consequences of the war, in particular the Versailles ‘peace’ conference and treaty-making processes, highlighted the somewhat less-desirable features of the British Empire. This challenged those features as opposed to those which had inspired large forces from both Ireland and India, as well as Australia, to volunteer from 1914 onwards.