In 1898 the recruiting officer at the Connaught Rangers' depot in Galway received a letter from one Michael McDonough, who had enlisted the year before at an age too tender for the recruiting law.1 He had consequently been "claimed out by my parents for not being the exact age," and had been gravely disappointed at being denied "the honour to ware [sic] the scarlet coat which Queen Victoria bestrode on my back." Now, however, he was of age, and was determined "to take the honour to be a true brave and faithful soldier for Queen Victoria, for I am consous [sic] enough that she is the want of brave soldiers now." McDonough had "read in the papers of the publick" of the movement of British troops to India and Africa, and he was full willing to leave my manson [sic] and to go into the interiors of Africa to fight voluntarilly [sic] for Queen Victoria and as far as there is life in my bones and breath in my body, I will not let any foreign invasion tramp on Queen's land. McDonough did, however, want the Rangers' recruiting officer to know that his enthusiasm was not unqualified or unreserved. He pointed out that "if her [Victoria] or her leaders ever turns with cruelty on the Irish race, I will be the first that will raise my sword to fight against her," and in this regard he was sure that he would have "plenty of Irishmen at my side, for they are known to be the bravest race in the world."2 Having offered this qualification, McDonough repeated his intention to enlist, asked for instructions, and, as an afterthought, implored the Rangers to supply him, upon enlistment, with "a uniform worthy of my tittle [sic] and youth." McDonough may fall short of the archtype of Irishmen who offered their services to the British Army in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for he could read, and could write, in passably good English, something that many such volunteers could not manage. He was also possessed of parents attentive enough to retrieve him from the ranks in his minority, and there may have been recruits whose parents would not have been solicitous. But his sentiments are so similar to those of many of his peers and countrymen that his letter serves as a good introduction to the questions addressed in this essay. McDonough was clearly of two minds. He knew Irishmen to be "the bravest race in the world," and he seems to have admired the uniforms of Queen Victoria's Irish soldiers. He was willing and eager to fight for the "Queen's land." In this regard he resembled hundreds of thousands of Irishmen. But he also bristled at the thought of English cruelty to the Irish, a sentiment shared as well by hundreds of thousands of his countrymen. How could the British Army have accepted so many soldiers in these years from Michael McDonough's Ireland, in numbers twice those of the proportion of Ireland's population in the British Isles? How especially in years (the 1790s to the 1920s) when other Irishmen on no less than six separate occasions organized, fought and died in efforts to win Ireland's freedom from Britain? Did ...
