Roy Foster: prediction

Transcript context

…Why did Frederick Douglass visit Ireland and then spend six months there? Douglass’s trip to Ireland is something people are looking at more and more now because there are so many perceived parallels between the position of the native Irish and other oppressed or excluded elements in different cultures, such as the Native Americans and, of course, Black people in the antebellum and indeed postbellum states of America. I think myself that historical parallels and historical precedents can be used as rather a blunt instrument. But certainly, there was a feeling among radical politicians, nationalist politicians in Ireland and Black politicians in the United States that they had a certain common cause. There’s also the overwhelming fact — and this I think is very relevant to Douglass — that the great leader of Catholic Ireland who brought about the so-called emancipation of Catholics — when they were finally allowed to sit in Parliament, in 1829 — this great leader, Daniel O’Connell, was a very passionate antislaver and abolitionist. And many of the people in his Catholic movement and then his movement to repeal the union with Britain and Ireland felt the same way. He was a great radical in the cosmic sense of radical politics, Daniel O’Connell, as well as being a founder of Catholic freedoms and an avatar of national autonomy. What do you think Douglass learned in Ireland?…

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