Sir, - Prof Mary C. King (October 7th) extols the paper by Prof Donald Akenson (The Irish Times, September 26th), in which he reminds us of the collusion of many Irish emigrants and their descendants in imperalist economic exploitation of colonies, the destruction of native cultures, and barbaric cruelty towards the native peoples. She also points to the dialectic between being oppressed and becoming an oppressor.
According to the two professors, we Irish have tended to stress our experience of being oppressed, but have ignored our capacity to oppress others. Drawing on James Joyce's short story Counterparts, Prof King says that to understand how the oppressed can also be guilty of cruelty is a necessary step towards developing a conscience which would preclude it.
This would be all very well if the discussion was of human frailty. But to creating a real human civilisation in which there is no oppression requires us not only to forge individual moral conscience, but to build strong, democratic, non-exploitative institutions, in which a social conscience with an international dimension can be sustained.
In this regard there is a serious problem with Prof Akenson's paper. He seems to have said that the Irish were and are imperialist. This is a false and assertion because the Irish have not been an imperalist nation at any time in the last several centuries. No Irish imperialism had any chance to develop, because the Irish people were dominated by British imperialism, and did not have independent economic development or political power.
Imperialism is not reducible to certain behaviour patterns of individuals or groups. It is an economic and political system, supported by state power, in the interests of a country's ruling classes, to extend that country's influence and domination over other peoples as widely as possible, by means of trade, diplomacy, aggression, war, and any other available means.
The Irish ruling classes were guilty of much barbarous behaviour against their own people, at home, even while dominated themselves and without political power. So the types of behaviour attributed by Prof Akenson to Irish emigrants, while it is often associated with imperialism, does not constitute imperialism, nor does it need imperialism to thrive.
Rather than blaming Irish people for becoming involved in the imperial projects of other countries, Professors Akenson and King would be better employed demonstrating that the nature of imperialism is such that it sucks everyone into its service. The fact is that none of us will be free until we break the shackles which bind us to imperialism and the institution itself is consigned to history. - Yours, etc.,
Laracor Gardens, Dublin 13.