Prophesying Revolution: The Example of 'The Battle of Moy' (1883)

Abstract

In Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars 1763-3749 (1992), I. F Clarke contends that 1871 inaugurated the emergence of a new type of predictive literature, which, in the next decades, became more ‘violent’, ‘vindictive’, and often ‘nationalistic’. The 1916 Rising was prepared in secret but the months and years immediately preceding it witnessed the publication of several well-known works of fiction clearly anticipating the armed revolution that was to come. Patrick Pearse’s plays such as The King (1914) or The Master (1915) have been interpreted as texts exploring the notions of redemptive self-sacrifice and violence as a means to achieve national independence. Similarly, The Revolutionist, a slightly earlier play by Terence MacSwiney (1912), may be read as a rejection of mere Home Rule and a plea for action and self-sacrifice. However, the idea that only an armed revolution could work as a viable solution to obtain Ireland’s independence was clearly toyed with decades earlier, notably in the anonymously published The Battle of Moy (1883). This article will examine this lesser known text in order to show how this example of 19th-century nationalist science fiction might have fostered the idea that only violent action and war could turn Ireland into a nation.