Abstract (eng)
The growth of Czech nationalism in the Austrian Empire (1848 – 1918) is contrasted with the development of Irish nationalism, as perceived in a provincial Irish newspaper, the Cork Examiner. This study examines Irish nationalism on a cultural and political level; local Cork history; and the development of mass media. Pre-war contacts between Ireland and Austria are explained, focusing on Bohemia. These links were religious, military and educational and spanned several centuries. Based on an elite level, the significance of Bohemian politics for the Irish masses was minimal. The appraisal of Czech nationalism from an Irish perspective is the object of this study, examining their common cause (independence), their ‘patriot-traitors’ (Casement and Masaryk), their miscellaneous failures (risings) and individual success (international recognition). According to press, pamphlets, and related printed matter explored, there existed spasmodic sympathies at the best of times, negation of nationhood aspirations at worst. My purpose was to highlight the images these nations nurtured about each other at the time of the Great War – in particular 1915 as crucial to nationalist and separatist policy – in their historical dimensions and popular intentions. Irish and Czechs remained essentially alien to each other even if their political struggles remained identical. The language issue was a popular motif in the press. The Czech patois was superseded by German and communication went via the German speaking Press, overshadowing Czech sentiment; and when the Czech language was firmly established, the new language barrier did not induce further interest, except on a theoretical basis. Given the historical and genealogical associations, the geographic, denominational and cultural distance between Ireland and Bohemia was too great to allow satisfactory monitoring of potentially mutually supportive political movements, essentially nationalist and separatist in nature.