The Irish Revolution was a pivotal moment of transition for Ireland, the United Kingdom, and British Empire. A constitutional crisis that crystallised in 1912 electrified opinion in Ireland whilst dividing politics at Westminster. Instead of settling these differences, the advent of the First World War led to the emergence of new antagonisms. Republican insurrection was followed by a struggle for independence along with the partition of the island. This volume assembles some of the key contributions to the intellectual debates that took place in the midst of these changes and displays the vital ideas developed by the men and women who made the Irish Revolution, as well as those who opposed it. Through these fundamental texts, we see Irish experiences in comparative European and international contexts, and how the revolution challenged the durability of Britain as a global power.

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.

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.

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.

Using a wide variety of sources in Ireland and Britain, Patrick McGarty has produced an absorbing, comprehensive and insightful exploration of County Leitrim during the Irish Revolution. This wide-ranging study details social, political, cultural and military developments from the introduction of the ill-fated third home rule in 1912 through the First World War, Irish War of Independence and Civil War. The decade witnessed extraordinary upheaval and unrest at both a national and a local level. In Leitrim there was a decisive political transformation with the collapse of the Irish Parliamentary Party and the unprecedented rise of Sinn Fein. McGarty pays close attention to how various modes of resistance were deployed first against British rule and after the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 against the pro-Treaty Irish government. These included political violence and widespread campaigns of boycott and intimidation and this study provides new insights on the nature and implications of both republican and state violence. McGarty offers a novel and compelling account of the Irish Revolution in a so-called 'quiet' county.

The present-day Republic of Ireland was created by a revolutionary elite which developed between 1858 and 1914. Here, one of Ireland's most eminent historians, Professor Tom Garvin, considers the social origins of the revolutionary politicians who became the rulers of Ireland after the 1916 Rising and examines their political preconceptions, ideologies and prejudices. In many cases they were not only influenced by old agrarian grievances and memories of the Great Irish Famine, but also, and more immediately, by the contemporary Catholic abhorrence of the Protestant and secular world symbolised by London, England and, to some extent, America. Drawing on the evidence of private letters and diaries as well as the popular nationalist journalism of the period, Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland makes a hugely original contribution to Irish historiography. Daring and provocative, it reconstructs the private thoughts, hopes and prejudices of the men and women who secured Irish independence.