“They are a stupid, sodden, vicious lot, most of them being equally deficient in brain and virtue”.
While the Irish and our culture is widely celebrated around the world today, that certainly wasn’t always the case.
Anti-Irish prejudice, often called Hibernophobia, was especially widespread in Britain and the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Irish immigrants were stereotyped as violent, drunken, unintelligent, and racially inferior. Let’s take a look at some notable figures throughout history who had a noticeable and unashamed disdain for the Irish.
10. Oliver Cromwell – one of the most vocal anti-Irish voices in history
Oliver Cromwell is probably the most infamous figure in Irish historical memory.
During the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, his forces carried out massacres at Drogheda and Wexford, confiscated Irish Catholic land, and imposed brutal policies that devastated the population.
Ask anyone in Ireland their opinion of Oliver Cromwell, and you’re unlikely to hear anything positive.
9. Charles Trevelyan – “for you stole Trevelyan’s corn”
Charles Trevelyan was a senior British official during the Great Famine. Horrifyingly, he was said to have believed that the famine was partly divine punishment.
Trevelyan infamously resisted large-scale relief efforts for the Irish, making him one of the most hated figures in Irish history.
8. Voltaire – a wholly negative perfection of the Irish
Known by his pen name Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet was a celebrated French Enlightenment philosopher and was well known for his criticisms of Christianity, mainly the Catholic Church.
As such, he was known to express inherently anti-Irish sentiment. In some of his works, he depicted the Irish as backwards and savages, while he defended British rule in Ireland.
7. Thomas Nast – depicting the Irish as violent and animal-like
Thomas Nast was known as the founding father of political cartooning in the United States. He was famous for creating iconic American political imagery, like the democratic donkey and the Republican elephant.
However, he was also notorious for depicting Irish immigrants as violent, ape-like, and primitive in 19th-century cartoons. He backed up damaging stereotypes of the Irish at the time.
6. Benjamin Disraeli – disdain for the Irish
Benjamin Disraeli would eventually become the Prime Minister of the UK twice. Early in his career, he wrote deeply condescending comments about the Irish.
He described the native Irish way of life as consisting of “clannish brawls and coarse idolatry”
5. Charles Kingsley – shocking statements about the Irish
Charles Kingsley was an English clergyman who infamously referred to Irish people as “human chimpanzees” after visiting Ireland.
In a letter to his wife while visiting Ireland in the wake of the devastation of the Famine, he wrote “I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country”. Shockingly, he was known to be somewhat progressive at the time.
4. Theodore Roosevelt – bolstering a widespread dislike for the Irish
Before he served as the 26th President of the United States, Roosevelt’s horrifying anti-Irish diary entries would shock and appall you.
“The average Catholic Irishman of the first generation as represented in this assembly, is a low, venal, corrupt and unintelligent brute”. He also referred to the Irish as “vicious, stupid-looking scoundrels”.
His statements are indicative of a widespread disdain and anti-Irish sentiment that swept over the US while Irish people were fleeing their homeland, ravaged by famine, in search of a better life.
His opinion of the Irish changed over the years, and during his presidency, he worked closely with Irish Americans.
3. Henry Winter Davis – blamed the Irish Catholics for the election of Democrat James Buchanan
Henry Winter Davis was a prominent 19th-century US Representative from Maryland.
He was a leader in the anti-Catholic “Know Nothing” movement in the United States, he openly attacked Irish immigrants and blamed them for political problems in America.
2. Lord Salisbury – believed the Irish needed firm guidance by the British
Lord Salisbury was the British Prime Minister in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and he vehemently resisted efforts by William Gladstone and the Liberal Party to grant Ireland self-government.
Instead, he famously suggested that the Irish needed firm British governance for “twenty years” to quell unrest and economic turbulence.
1. Queen Elizabeth I – brutal oppression of the Irish
Queen Elizabeth the First oversaw harsh Tudor campaigns in Ireland, including military suppression, plantations, and policies aimed at crushing Gaelic Irish resistance and Catholic influence.
