Nuevo Irelandia? Californy was the place it was meant to be… but…

If it wasn’t for British historian John Fox’x “El Proyecto MacNamara” (Irish Academic Press/Merrion, 2014), one of the great “whatifs” of North America… might have disppeared forever. More than a great story of a spectular failed effort at ethnic cleansing, it is largely the story of a single man who was caught up in international intrigue, one war, one near war, and is largely (if unwittingly) at least partially responsible for the founding of the state of California. Quite the career for a guy, who if you run a “google search” for his name only turns up Fox’s book, buried among references to an American academic and poet of the same name, and — despite being in his time, a person of concern to Popes, Presidents, and Parliaments, is so obscure a figure, we don’t even know what he looked like.

About all we can say about Eugene MacNamara is he was an Irish priest, born in 1814 and somehow educated in Paris. Whether he was properly ordained is still unknown, but by the 1830s, was a member of the Jesuit order. Or at least assumed to be.

Given the growing oppression in Catholic Ireland by the British in the last 1830s and 40s — even before the great hunger — the Papacy had been “creative” in its Irish policies. A request, appeal,demand made to the French, or Spanish, or Austrian powers wasn’t going to work in Ireland (where the Chuch didn’t even have Bishops, but only “apostolic visitors”… clerics with a brief to report on conditions in their region, and temporary admistrative functions… and little control over the activities of the clergy, or the faithful.

MacNamara… educated in France, although his record appears to include being tossed out of the seminary at some point (even that is obscure)… also seems to (again, for obscure reasons) have had contacts withiin the British establishment, that (again, under murky circumstances) brought him to the Vatican’s attention.

And, given the repression of the Irish, and the growing demand for a irish homeland… a CATHOLIC homeland … MacNamara was not alone in turning his thoughts to mass emigration. His unhappy experience as Apostolic Visitor to British Guiana (modern Guyana), given the tropical climate … not to mention having made himself persona non grata with the local clergy (whom he complained were incorribly corrupt and lazy), he began to turn his attentions to Mexico.

Or, rather, the then growing interest in the Pacific trade among Europeans. Mexico had inherited claims to massive amounts of the North American west, although very few Mexicans lived there, and … having recognized by the 1830s that the westward expansion of the United States, as well as European designs on controlling the China trade were were a growing threat to its own interests, what better than bringing in Catholics (Catholism the state religion up until 1857) with presumably no love for, or support for, Britain (which — like the United States — was already making known their desire for warm water ports on the North American Pacific coast).

Move the Irish to California… simple, right? Mexico’s recent unhappy experience with immgration to Texas, aside, California is a massive chunk or real estate, and where exactly to put those several thousand (to being with) Irish had to be determined… nobody having ever mapped much more than the coasts. Some vague claims to the San Joaquin Valley having been ok-ed by the Mexicans, the British (who would have had to oversee the “voluntary”(?) emigration thought more in terms of setting up a new colonial possession to extend their claims on what was then Oregon (US states of Oregon and Washinton, the Canadian province of British Colombia) then subject to testy competing claims with the United States –who also had interests in acquiring the territory.

Meaning… a otherwise unknown Irish priest had the Mexicans expecting him to serve their interests, the British to serve theirs, and the Americans… well, they didn’t want to British OR the Mexicans to be running things there. And certainly not the Papists.

This is where the story gets even murkier. Whether MacNamara was a British agent (as the Americans suspected), would be seeking to create an independent Irish republic (as the Mexicans suspected), or simply over his head in an honest effort to assist Irish farmers isn’t clear. Any one, or all of the claims have incomplete evidence to support them.

Even worse, just as MacNamara finally got approval from Mexico to begin, the United States invaded Mexico… and Frémont.. who JUST HAPPENED to be on a mapping expedition of the west, showed up to assert US claims. If he was working on behalf of Mexico, he was a traitor to Britian. If on the behalf of Britain or Mexico, to the United States. If on the behalf of the Pope… well… any way you look at it, he found himself a wanted man.

One can only assume that all he set out to do was find a place to resettle displaced Irish peasants, though given the “power games” of the 1840s, his options were limited. He escaped California, first going to Chile … which had no interest in his scheme … and was lost at sea heading for yet another possible refuge, in the Kingom of Hawaii.

Would there have been a “Nuevo Irelandia” in northern Mexico, a British Hiberia, a Celtic Republic… or… ?