Erin Go Bragh and the San Patricio Battalion

Title: Erin Go Bragh and the San Patricio Battalion

Description: Today, Steve is joined by frequent guest Jacob Herr to talk about the history, background and context of a group of mostly Irish, but also other nationality Catholics who deserted the United States Army the Army of Mexico right before and during the Mexican American War. This unit, called the San Patricio Battalion fought bravely during many of the pivotal battles of the war. Learn their fate after this controversial conflict. Enjoy this incredible story on St. Patrick’s Day or any other day of the year!

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Jacob Herr, actor and historian
https://vocal.media/authors/jacob-herr

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Music Provided by:
“Crossing the Chasm” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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Image Credits:
By http://www.cinemotions.net/data/films/0315/39/1/affiche-One-Man-s-Hero-1999-1.jpg, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22125033

Begin Transcript:

Thank you again for listening to Beyond the Big Screen podcast. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast network. Of course, a big thanks goes out to Jacob Herr. Links to learn more about Jacob and his blog can be found at https://vocal.media/authors/jacob-herr or in the Show Notes.
In this episode, the real history, context and background on story of the San Patricio Battalion in the Mexican American War. Keep your podcatchers updated for our next episode, where Jacob and I see if Hollywood appreciated or hated history in the 1999 film, One Man’s Hero.
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Another way to support Beyond the big screen is to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. These reviews really help me know what you think of the show and help other people learn about Beyond the Big screen. More about the Parthenon Podcast Network can be found at Parthenonpodcast.com. You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen, great movies and stories so great they should be movies on various social media platforms by searching for A to z history. Links to all this and more can be found at beyond the big screen dot com. I thank you for joining me again, Beyond the big Screen.
[00:00:00] I would like to welcome Jacob Herbeck to the show. Jacob took us through the really fascinating look at both the real Billy the kid and Billy, the kid has portrayed in popular media. Jacob is going to do it again today with a really intriguing yet not widely known piece of American history. The Mexican-American war is a complicated conflict to discuss there’s many moving parts in diplomacy, military, and culture.
All under the shadow of a great revolutionary movement sweeping through the world today, Jacob is going to guide us through the history of a group of Roman Catholic, Irish, us soldiers who changed alliances and allegiances from the U S to Mexico. the San Patricio, the sink Patrick battalion. Look out for our next step of sewed where we’ll explore the 1999.
Featuring the sand Patrice Leo’s one man’s hero. You don’t want to miss either one of these [00:01:00] episodes. Now, Jacob, how did you become interested in the Mexican American war? And then this kind of interesting sub part of the conflict, the San Patricio. I became interested in the Mexican American war. When I was wrapping up a research project that I was doing in college, my junior year, it was about my home state of Indiana during the war of 1812.
And then when I started exploring the legacy of these people who were involved in 1812, and then later on with the Texas revolution and the Seminole wars, you see a lot of similar names. And then you discover really, I, it was a deep dive into this conflict that in terms of the public zeitgeists, everybody knows the civil war.
Everyone knows the revolution. Everyone knows world war II. Very few people actually either know of the Mexican-American war [00:02:00] or its importance in terms of the story of not. American history, but also Latin American history with Mexico and how we have our border, our international border between the America and Mexico to this very day, it was politically consequential.
While at the same time, I was also, I discovered this group, this military group, the sound, but three CEO battalion. It just stuck out like a sore thumb. Because it kind of breaks that good versus evil us and them narrative that we see with a lot of those other wars and this particular group, you begin learning about these people, their story, and they’re beginning to end, and it really surprises you.
And it creates that gray area, which is a very true reality in the course of. [00:03:00] Our, our history that’s still ongoing, but also in military history that it really does show that the gray areas. Is like a fog of war it’s confusing and it’s not easy to decipher. Yeah. I, uh, I had been doing a little bit of research into this general time period in European history for the history of the papacy podcast.
And. I think you get commonly. And especially in my education stuff that was going on in Europe at this time, really didn’t have a lot of impact on things that were going on in north America, but there was a ton. And I think that it feeds into this with the, the Irish and the Catholics. And that might be a good place to really start off with is what was changing in the demographics of the United States.
During this time, because of some things that were going on in Europe at the time. Some of the things that [00:04:00] were going on at that particular time. At first off, we kind of have to start with what was going on in Ireland at that time, because we think of Ireland today as either geographically, the, you know, the classic Emerald aisle or politically Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is still a part of the United States.
For at least centuries. Now we know that Ireland and the Irish people were under the colonial rule of England. Um, and throughout knew there were numerous attempts prior to the 20th century and world war II with the rise of the Irish Republican army to either declare independence or serve as an opening to a foreign invasion against the Britain.
There was a rebellion in Ireland in 1798. There was, uh, an Irish Legion that was created by Napoleon. There was the young Ireland [00:05:00] movement in the 1830s, the Fenny and rising in the 1860s to 1880s, both in the United Kingdom and in parts of Canada. And then the creation of the Irish Republican brotherhood at the turn of the century, that would then become Michael Collins is Irish, Republican army that we know today.
I saw a little back toilet. It blew my mind that Ireland lost. I think it was about half of its population between starvation. I immigration. And it still hasn’t caught up to that population of the 1840s, 1830s, all the way up to this day in 2022. No, it hasn’t because the great Irish famine or the Irish potato famine, as we know it in today’s time, they, it really was a dire circumstance for these people.
Where they were resorting to eating bugs, eating grass, eating [00:06:00] roots of plants, just to survive from one day to another. And there was literally no any type of foreign aid that we see in today’s time. Whenever a international famine takes place, the Irish were really out on their own. And rather than starving to death in their Homeland, they had no choice to say we need, we need to find a living somewhere else.
And that’s why you see this long wave of immigration, not just. Into the United States, but also into Canada and then other parts of the British empire in London, parts of South Africa, India. Uh, but for the most part, north America is the largest hub along with other. Um, European minority groups. The next step in this is the Mexican American war.
Now I think back to my high school, into college American history, [00:07:00] the, the Mexican American Moore’s almost treated. Thing. It’s not in any of those contexts. I didn’t get a huge education on the Mexican American war, but it was mostly set up as sort of a prequel to the civil war. And you know, this is where the farm league of the young Lee, a younger.
They make their mark and then a couple of deck, a decade or so later, the real show is the civil war. Before we talk a little about the Mexican-American war and where this conflict started, what was the sort of a history historiography you learn? There wasn’t really much of a historiography that I learned.