John Gibney - The United Irishmen, Rebellion and the Act of Union, 1798-1803

John Gibney (ed.)

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

Pen & Sword History

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Copyright History Ireland

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Hardback ISBN: 9781526736680

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eISBN: 9781526736680

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T he 1790s is one of the most important decades in the history of modern Ireland. The decade witnessed the birth of the modern ideology of separatist Irish republicanism, the creation of the Orange Order, and the greatest bloodletting in modern Irish history in the form of the 1798 rebellion. In the aftermath of the rebellion came the Act of Union that brought Ireland into the United Kingdom for the next 121 years, and the smaller rebellion of Robert Emmet, possibly one of the most famous and, to later generations, inspirational of Irish republicans. Now, in the second instalment of the collaboration between Pen and Sword and History Ireland magazine, some of the worlds leading experts on the 1790s explore the origins, nature and aftermath of the decade from a range of perspectives: from the individuals involved and their international links, to the events of the rebellion and the responses of the government, to the manoeuvres that led to the Act of Union, this volume explore the motives, actions and legacies of the republicans, loyalists, and propagandists who shaped events that left an enduring mark on the next two centuries of Irish history.

The chapters below have all been drawn from the archives of History Ireland (and especially from the bicentenary editions to mark the 1798 and 1803 rebellions), and have been re-edited; with regards to illustrations, every effort has been made to contact rights holders. If we have missed any, the error will be rectified in any subsequent edition.

Thomas Bartlett is Emeritus Professor of history at the University of Aberdeen.

Allan Blackstock is Reader in Irish History at Ulster University.

Daniel Gahan is Professor of History at the University of Evansville, Indiana.

John Gibney is a historian attached to the Royal Irish Academys Documents on Irish Foreign Policy project.

Patrick Geoghegan is Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin.

The late Adrian Hardiman was a justice of the Irish Supreme Court.

Dire Keogh is Deputy President of Dublin City University.

Gordon Kennedy lectures in history at the Boston University Overseas Programme based in Dublin City University.

Sylvie Kleinman is Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of History, Trinity College Dublin.

Stephen McGarry is an author and historian.

Run ODonnell is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Limerick

James G. Patterson was formerly Professor of History at Centenary College, New Jersey

James Quinn is Managing Editor of the Royal Irish Academys Dictionary of Irish Biography .

Jim Smyth is Emeritus Professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana.

The late A.T.Q. Stewart was Reader in History at Queens University Belfast.

Kevin Whelan is director of the University of Notre Dames Keough Naughton Notre Dame Centre in Dublin

John Gibney

B etween 1791 and 1803 Ireland experienced one of the most sustained phases of official repression in its modern history, an island-wide revolt that resulted in a level of brutality and bloodletting on a scale that (thankfully) has never been repeated, narrowly avoided being invaded by the forces of revolutionary France, and was formally integrated into the United Kingdom, where it would remain until most of Ireland became independent in 1922. And the ideology that led to Irish independence was a legacy of the same era: separatist republicanism.

The catalyst for much of this upheaval was one of the most notable organisations in Irish history: the Society of United Irishmen, a pro-French radical group founded in Belfast and Dublin in the autumn of 1791 and inspired by the democratic and secular ideals of the French Revolution. The brainchild of the Belfast-born Presbyterian physician William Drennan, the United Irishmen were one of many political societies to emerge in late eighteenth-century Ireland. But a clue to their importance lay in their name, as they consisted of a broad coalition between some Anglicans, some Presbyterians, and some Catholicsall of whom had grievances of one kind or another with the way in which Ireland was governed in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

A century previously, the victory of the forces of the Protestant William III over those of the Catholic James II had opened the door to Protestant dominance in Ireland. The Anglican landed elite (the beneficiaries and descendants of the colonists of previous centuries) were confirmed as Irelands ruling class, ruling through the exclusively male and Protestant Irish parliament based in Dublin. The penal laws of the eighteenth-century excluded Catholics and Presbyterians from political life, a situation that only began to change from the 1760s onwards, as the decline of Jacobitism and the outbreak of the American Revolution made calls for the relaxing of such restrictions more relevant (it made sense, after all, to allow Catholics into the armed forces at a time when extra resources were needed). Yet the example of the American colonists had an extra resonance in Ireland which, while nominally a distinct kingdom that shared a monarch with Britain, was subject to a degree of British political control along with trade restrictions which ensured that the grievances aired by colonists in North America echoed across the Atlantic. Irish politicians such as Henry Grattan, backed by the Volunteer movement of the 1780s, had successfully extracted a degree of greater autonomy for the Irish parliament in 1782. But hopes for greater political reforms came to naught in the 1780s, and this provided a context for the creation of the United Irishmen.