In October 1641 a rebellion broke out in Ireland. Dispossessed Irish Catholics rose up against British Protestant settlers whom they held responsible for their plight. This uprising, the first significant sectarian rebellion in Irish history, gave rise to a decade of war that would culminate in the brutal re-conquest of Ireland by Oliver Cromwell. It also set in motion one of the most enduring and acrimonious debates in Irish history. Was the 1641 rebellion a justified response to dispossession and repression? Or was it an unprovoked attempt at sectarian genocide? John Gibney comprehensively examines three centuries of this debate. The struggle to establish and interpret the facts of the past was also a struggle over the present: if Protestants had been slaughtered by vicious Catholics, this provided an ideal justification for maintaining Protestant privilege. If, on the other hand, Protestant propaganda had inflated a few deaths into a vast and brutal “massacre,” this justification was groundless. Gibney shows how politicians, historians, and polemicists have represented (and misrepresented) 1641 over the centuries, making a sectarian understanding of Irish history the dominant paradigm in the consciousness of the Irish Protestant and Catholic communities alike.

This lavishly illustrated book presents an informed history of the Easter Rising, one of the most significant political episodes in 20th century Irish history.

Named for its mythical leader “Captain Rock,” avenger of agrarian wrongs, the Rockite movement of 1821–24 in Ireland was notorious for its extraordinary violence. In Captain Rock, James S. Donnelly, Jr., offers both a fine-grained analysis of the conflict and a broad exploration of Irish rural society after the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Originating in west Limerick, the Rockite movement spread quickly under the impact of a prolonged economic depression. Before long the insurgency embraced many of the better-off farmers. The intensity of the Rockites’ grievances, the frequency of their resort to sensational violence, and their appeal on such key issues as rents and tithes presented a nightmarish challenge to Dublin Castle—prompting in turn a major reorganization of the police, a purging of the local magistracy, the introduction of large military reinforcements, and a determined campaign of judicial repression. A great upsurge in sectarianism and millenarianism, Donnelly shows, added fuel to the conflagration. Inspired by prophecies of doom for the Anglo-Irish Protestants who ruled the country, the overwhelmingly Catholic Rockites strove to hasten the demise of the landed elite they viewed as oppressors. Drawing on a wealth of sources—including reports from policemen, military officers, magistrates, and landowners as well as from newspapers, pamphlets, parliamentary inquiries, depositions, rebel proclamations, and threatening missives sent by Rockites to their enemies—Captain Rock offers a detailed anatomy of a dangerous, widespread insurgency whose distinctive political contours will force historians to expand their notions of how agrarian militancy influenced Irish nationalism in the years before the Great Famine of 1845–51.

Townshend traces the dramatic events of the Easter Rebellion in Dublin in 1916, the actions and aims of the rebels, the British response to the revolt and the consequences, politically and culturally, of the uprising.

`A study of both Tudor Anglo-Irish relations and the 16th century, Morgan's work is first rate, thoughtful, well-researched and subtle.' ARCHIVES As a study of both Tudor Anglo-Irish relations and the sixteenth-century, Morgan's work is first rate, thoughtful, well-researched and subtle. ARCHIVES Fascinating piece of detective work... No serious student of late Tudor Ireland can afford to ignore this rigorous and painstaking analysis. HISTORY Between 1594-1603 Elizabeth I faced her most dangerous challenge - the insurrection in Ireland known to British historians as the rebellion of the earl of Tyrone, and to their Irish counterparts in the Nine Years War. This study examines the causes of the conflict in the developing policy of the Crown, which climaxed in the Monaghan settlement of 1591, and the continuing resilience of the Gaelic system which brought to power Hugh Roe O'Donnell and Hugh O'Neill. The role of Hugh O'Neill, the earl of Tyrone, was pivotal in the conspiracies leading up to the war and in the leadership ofthe Irish cause thereafter. O'Neill's acceptance of an alliance with Spain rather than a fragile compromise with England is the terminal point of the study. By exploiting all the available source material, Dr Morgan has not only provided a critical reassessment of the early career of Hugh O'Neill but also made an original and lasting contribution to both Irish and Tudor historiography. HIRAM MORGAN is lecturer in history, University College, Cork.

The study shows how the 1641 Irish Rebellion played an integral role in politicizing the English people and escalating the political crisis of the 1640s. The 1641 Irish Rebellion has long been recognized as a key event in the mid-17th century collapse of the Stuart monarchy. By 1641, many in England had grown restive under the weight of intertwined religious, political and economiccrises. To these audiences, the Irish rising seemed a realization of England's worst fears: a war of religious extermination supported by European papists, whose ambitions extended across the Irish Sea. England and the 1641 Irish Rebellion explores the consequences of this emergency by focusing on survivors of the rising in local, national and regional contexts. In Ireland, the experiences of survivors reflected the complexities of life in multiethnic and religiously-diverse communities. In England, by contrast, pamphleteers, ministers, and members of parliament simplified the issues, presenting the survivors as victims of an international Catholic conspiracy and assertingEnglish subjects' obligations to their countrymen and coreligionists. These obligations led to the creation of relief projects for despoiled Protestant settlers, but quickly expanded into sweeping calls for action against recusants and suspected popish agents in England. England and the 1641 Irish Rebellion contends that the mobilization of this local activism played an integral role in politicizing the English people and escalating the political crisis of the 1640s. JOSEPH COPE is Associate Professor at the State University of New York at Geneseo.