sovereignty

sovereignty, the ultimate locus of power and fount of authority in society, is a vexed issue in Irish history. High kings had developed a loose and contested monarchy in Ireland but, after Henry II's assertion of lordship in 1171, the sovereignty of Ireland rested outside the island as an inalienable attribute of the English crown. This was qualified in two ways. First the papacy, which claimed sovereignty over islands, had granted the lordship of Ireland to the English king to reform its religion under Pope Adrian's bull Laudabiliter of 1156. In 1317 Irish princes asked for the bull's revocation in their remonstrance to Pope John XXII on the grounds that its provisions had not been fulfilled by the English crown; after the Reformation this seemed an even more pregnant possibility. Secondly, Ireland was only partially conquered—indivisible sovereignty in the shape of the common law only operated in English areas whereas brehon law functioned in Gaelic areas, Irish political succession known as tanistry continued, and clerical appointments in ecclesia inter hibernicos were made by Rome. After the Tudor conquest, tanistry, the foremost example of local sovereignty, was declared illegal. The lawyer Sir John Davies asserted that the English right to Ireland rested solely on conquest, which abrogated any Irish or papal claims to sovereignty; native writers, notably Keating (see literature in irish), by emphasizing the voluntary submission of Irish kings to Henry II, insisted that the Irish were free subjects of a Christian prince.

The sovereignty issue re‐emerged in the closing phase of British rule in Ireland. Republicanism, with its theoretical basis in popular sovereignty and citizenship, inevitably faced difficulty over the acceptance of dominion status and an oath of allegiance in the Anglo‐Irish treaty. De Valera's erosion of this edifice culminated in his opponents' declaration of a Republic of Ireland in 1949. A major aspect of national sovereignty is independent control over defence and the right to decide on peace and war. Ireland achieved this by taking possession of the treaty ports in 1938 and by neutrality in the Second World War. Irish nationalism has traditionally regarded the whole island of Ireland as the national territory and this was enshrined in articles 2 and 3 of the constitution of 1937. These claims to sovereignty have never been exercised, although the 1985 Anglo‐Irish agreement gave Dublin a consultative role in the affairs of Northern Ireland. Another elusive aspect of Irish nationalist aspirations has been economic sovereignty. The doctrine of self‐sufficiency was a commonplace amongst early 20th‐century nationalists and in Ireland found its voice in Arthur Griffith, founder of Sinn Féin. However, this policy was abandoned in the late 1950s in the pursuit of economic growth. In 1965 Ireland re‐established free trade with the United Kingdom (see anglo‐irish free trade agreement) and in 1972 entered the European Community (see european union) with the goal of ‘ever closer union’.

Hiram Morgan