Friends of Ireland: early O’Connellism in Lower Canada

Abstract In September 1828, societies of the ‘Friends of Ireland’ were founded throughout the United States and British North America for the purpose of raising funds and disseminating propaganda in support of the O’Connellite campaign for Catholic emancipation. In March 1831, the societies were briefly revived to agitate for repeal of the Union. The first Irish diasporic social movement to appear in Britain’s overseas empire, the British …