#O'Connell* christ autocorrect

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Did Wellesley consider himself Irish? I know he was born there but according to wikipedia (I'm still new to a lot of this and I'm learning more about napoleonic era) he was anglo-irish. I'm just not sure of the exact implications of that label. Thank you!

Oh don't worry about asking! This is a complicated subject - especially if you're coming at it new with little background on the relationship (aha) between Ireland and England.

Did Wellesley consider himself Irish? No. He did not. He was born there—but to English (i.e. Anglo) family who didn't identify with the Irish (at all).

Anglo-Irish are descendants of [mostly] Protestant English who came to Ireland to reinforce English control i.e. the Protestant Ascendency. And Wellesley's family was part of this colonization/subjugation of Ireland (begun formally in the 17th century, but it had been happening on/off before that). His family was part of the aforementioned Protestant Ascendency which was the political/economic/social/religious control of Ireland by the English/Anglo-Irish who made up only a very small minority of landowners/general population.

Arthur himself, and his family, identified as British (or, to a lesser extent, English). And the distinction is important! Being British, and saying that whilst holding positions of control and power in Ireland, reinforced that Ireland is/was part of the Kingdom of Great Britain, which obviously there was a lot of dissent and, uh, opposition and opinions about by the Irish themselves. (Back then and still to this day.)

When Arthur was born in 1769, in addition to the Penal Laws and other regulations and Acts, Ireland was under the The Declaratory Act, 1719 which legislated that the king and British parliament had "full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient validity to bind the Kingdom and people of Ireland." It also legislated that the Irish House of Lords had no power to hear appeals from Irish courts, among other various items.

This changed in 1783 so that the British parliament gave up the right to legislate for Ireland, declaring that appeals from Irish courts couldn't be heard in courts in Great Britain. Which like...who controlled the courts and legal apparatus in Ireland at this time? The Anglo-Irish.

Then there was the Act of Union, 1800 which formally unified the kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This made the 1783 Act nul and void and effectively made Ireland subject to British rule (among a tonne of other legal implications that I do not have the authority to speak to with any confidence at all).

Please, please note that this is not my area of expertise and these is very much a broad brush-stroke/nutshell summary of the situation. It's incredibly complicated and worthy of deep engagement on its own. The treatment of Ireland and the Irish by the British was horrific and the complexities of identity—civic, national, personal, religious—are hugely nuanced and I am definitely not able to do them even an iota of justice. The Irish, and historians of this particular subject, are much better placed than me.

Anyway - the long and short is no, Wellesley would have identified as British, not Irish. His family was part of the long colonization/subjugation and attempted genocide of the Irish by the English. It's a very complex subject but there are some good resources out there if you're interested in learning more!

I hope this helps!

(And anyone who is more fluent on this matter, please correct anything I got wrong. My knowledge is surface level as it was never my area of specialization in ye olde academic past-life.)