Not Scots, and Barely British: Rethinking Ireland’s Founding Role in America

a group of men in kilts playing a game of bagpipes

This 4th July, both Irish states will fete America’s founding. But the cherished narrative of Presbyterian Scots-Irish frontiersmen as the backbone of the Revolution obscures the Gaelic Irish written out of the record, the Protestant migration unionists prefer to forget, and the political convenience shaping how both traditions remember.