The role of the Irish language summer college in revolutionary Ireland, 1913–1921

The Irish language summer college is a unique institution that has provided education as Gaeilge to multiple generations for 120 years. Despite this enduring presence in Irish cultural memory, a presence which predates partition and the founding of the Irish Free State, the historical significance of this institution has been largely overlooked by scholars thus far. Initially founded for training teachers in the Irish language in 1904, the Irish colleges were born of the greater cultural revival movement spearheaded by the Gaelic League at the turn of the twentieth century. Scholars who have discussed the Irish colleges thus far, then, tend to treat them as offshoots of the League, a limiting view which overlooks the fact that each college retained a varying degree of independence from other colleges and external bodies. Their independence is key to the discussion of the Irish colleges’ role during the revolutionary era. Starting with the establishment of the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and ending in 1921, this article explores the degree to which Irish colleges facilitated the work of advanced nationalist organisations during this period and the effect this had on the wider language movement, the colleges themselves and those who attended them.