Converting Ireland

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Karina Bénazech Wendling re-assesses ‘souperism’ and British cultural imperialism through the use of the Irish language and Bible in schools. The book explores Protestant societies in Ireland’s religious and political landscape, Catholic counter-missions, and nationalist resistance, offering new insights into Irish religious history. Accounts of ‘souperism’ – the alleged use of food to induce Irish Catholics to convert to Protestantism – have long featured in the popular memory of the Great Famine (1845–50). Scholars have cast a more critical eye over the phenomenon and its origins in the ‘Second Reformation’ of the 1820s and the ‘Bible War’ that followed in the 1830s and 1840s. With this book, Karina Bénazech Wendling makes an important contribution to that literature through her focus on the first body against which the term ‘souper’ was popularised in 1841 – the Irish Society for Promoting the Education of the Native Irish through the Medium of their Own Language. Formed in Dublin in 1818, it remained an independent body in Ireland until its merger with the Irish Church Mission in 1853. The book makes a persuasive case that the Irish Society was a complex religious, cultural and political phenomenon that deserves to be re-evaluated rather than reductively dismissed as a tool of British cultural imperialism or sectarian anti-Catholicism. Beyond converting Ireland, its founders took a serious interest in the Irish language and the Irish Bible. And so did their pupils as many converted in the West. The book explores the links between the campaigns of ‘ostracism’, the establishment of ‘refuge-colonies’ for converts and the deployment of Catholic counter-missions with the support of nationalist leaders and of Paul Cullen. This book has much to offer the scholar not only of Ireland’s fraught religious and educational history, but also of the global history of missions and interdenominational relations. Karina Bénazech Wendling offers a re-assessment of ‘souperism’—the long-debated claim that food was used to convert Irish Catholics to Protestantism during the Great Famine. Focusing on the Irish Society for Promoting the Education of the Native Irish through their Own Language, the first group labeled ‘soupers’ in 1841, she uncovers a more complex picture. Rather than a mere tool of British cultural imperialism, the Society had a deep engagement with the Irish language and Bible translation, while also encouraging religious conversions in the West. The book explores the Society’s role in Ireland’s religious and political landscape, the rise of Catholic counter-missions, and nationalist resistance. Offering fresh insights into Ireland’s religious history and global missionary movements, this book is essential for scholars of Irish studies, interdenominational relations, and education in Ireland.

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Pages: 336, Hardcover, Manchester University Press