The Political Thought Of The Irish Revolution

These texts demonstrate the diversity of opinion on the so-called 'Irish Question' in the final years of Anglo-Irish Union.

This is the first comprehensive analysis of late eighteenth-century Irish patriot thought and its development into 1790s radical republicanism. The book is a history of the rich political ideas and languages that emerged from the tumultuous events and colourful individuals of this pivotal period in Irish history. Patriots, radicals, and republicans played key roles in the movements for free trade, legislative independence, parliamentary reform, Catholic relief and independence fromBritain; and many of their ideas helped precipitate the rebellion in 1798. Stephen Small explains the ideological background to these issues, sheds new light on the origins of Irish republicanism, and places late eighteenth-century Irish political thought in the wider context of British, Atlantic,and European ideas.Dr Small argues that Irish patriotism, radicalism, and republicanism were constructed out of five key political 'languages': Protestant superiority, ancient constitutionalism, commercial grievance, classical republicanism, and natural rights. These political languages, which were Irish dialects of languages shared with the English-speaking and European world, combined in the late 1770s to construct the classic expression of Irish patriotism. This patriotism was full of contradictions,containing the seeds of radical reform, Catholic emancipation, and republican separatism - as well as a defence of Protestant Ascendancy.Over the next two decades, the American and French Revolutions, the reform movement, popular politicization, Ascendancy reaction, and Catholic political revival disrupted and transformed these languages, causing the fragmentation of a broad patriot consensus and the emergence from it of radicalism and republicanism. These developments are explained in terms of tensions and interactions between Protestant assumptions of Catholic inferiority, the increasing popularity of natural rights, and theenduring centrality of classical republican concepts of virtue to all types of patriot thought.

This is the first comprehensive analysis of late eighteenth-century Irish patriot thought and its development into 1790s radical republicanism. The book is a history of the rich political ideas and languages that emerged from the tumultuous events and colourful individuals of this pivotal period in Irish history. Patriots, radicals, and republicans played key roles in the movements for free trade, legislative independence, parliamentary reform, Catholic relief and independence from Britain; and many of their ideas helped precipitate the rebellion in 1798. Stephen Small explains the ideological background to these issues, sheds new light on the origins of Irish republicanism, and places late eighteenth-century Irish political thought in the wider context of British, Atlantic, and European ideas. Dr Small argues that Irish patriotism, radicalism, and republicanism were constructed out of five key political 'languages': Protestant superiority, ancient constitutionalism, commercial grievance, classical republicanism, and natural rights. These political languages, which were Irish dialects of languages shared with the English-speaking and European world, combined in the late 1770s to construct the classic expression of Irish patriotism. This patriotism was full of contradictions, containing the seeds of radical reform, Catholic emancipation, and republican separatism - as well as a defence of Protestant Ascendancy. Over the next two decades, the American and French Revolutions, the reform movement, popular politicization, Ascendancy reaction, and Catholic political revival disrupted and transformed these languages, causing the fragmentation of a broad patriot consensus and the emergence from it of radicalism and republicanism. These developments are explained in terms of tensions and interactions between Protestant assumptions of Catholic inferiority, the increasing popularity of natural rights, and the enduring centrality of classical republican concepts of virtue to all types of patriot thought.

These pioneering essays provide a unique study of the development of political ideas in Ireland from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. The book breaks away from the traditional emphasis in Irish historiography on the nationalism/unionism debate to focus instead on previously neglected areas such as the role of the Scottish Enlightenment and early Irish socialism and conservatism. A wide range of original primary sources are used from pamphlets to journalism, devotional tracts to poetry.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of seventeenth-century Irish political thought and culture.

The period between the Williamite war and the act of union saw different groups in Irish society forced to reassess their ideas of political and national identity, against the background of a changing society at home and intellectual and political revolution abroad. This volume of essays, deriving from a Folger Library, Washington, seminar, examines radical, patriot and conservative political ideas, from the debates on the meaning of the Revolution of 1688 to the emergence of democratic republicanism, and a redefined conservatism, in the 1790s. A concluding overview by Professor J.G.A. Pocock puts the Irish case in the wider context of the Atlantic world of the eighteenth century. -- Publisher description.

This work chronicles the ways in which the Irish revolution was remembered in the first two decades of independence by significant nationalist intellectuals: Eimar O'Duffy, P.S. O'Hegarty, George Russell, and Desmond Ryan. It provides a lively account of their controversial critiques of the revolution, and an intimate portrait of their lives and times.

The Irish Revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century spawned the creation of the modern Irish state. This is the first full length analysis to offer a comprehensive framework of that revolution in its totality, taking into account the broad range of social, economic and political developments as well as the IRA's campaign of guerrilla warfare and the British response to it. Drawing on such previously unpublished sources as the Irish Department of Defense's Military History Bureau, the author paints a broad picture of the people and the key events in the Irish struggle for independence. The book also breaks new ground in presenting much of the behind the scenes debate within the British Government in the prosecution of its policies in response to the revolt in Ireland. British official frustration provoked by the acceptance of D���¡il Eireann by the majority of the Irish people and the independent institutions it sought to set in place is also explicitly chronicled. New light is shed on the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations as well as on the divisions within Irish nationalism before and indeed afterwards which culminated in the Irish Civil War. The role of external forces including public opinion in the United States and British competing obligations at home and abroad are also covered. Considerable attention is given to the development of democratic government in the fledgling Irish Free State in the midst of domestic upheaval, and to the broader effort at nation building which followed after the Civil War.