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The Irish Rebellion of 1798

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the uprising in 1798 led by the United Irishmen, who were inspired by American and French revolutions, and the impact this had across Ireland.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the momentum behind rebellion in Ireland in 1798, the people behind the rebellion and the impact over the next few years and after. Amid wider unrest, the United Irishmen set the rebellion on its way, inspired by the French and American revolutionaries and their pursuit of liberty. When it broke out in May the United Irishmen had an estimated two hundred thousand members, Catholic and Protestant, and the prospect of a French invasion fleet to back them. Crucially for the prospects of success, some of those members were British spies who exposed the plans and the military were largely ready - though not in Wexford where the scale of rebellion was much greater. The fighting was initially fierce and brutal and marked with sectarianism but had largely been suppressed by the time the French arrived in August to declare a short-lived republic. The consequences of the rebellion were to be far reaching, not least in the passing of Acts of Union in 1800.

The image above is of Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763 - 1798), prominent member of the United Irishmen

With

Ian McBride
Foster Professor of Irish History at Hertford College, University of Oxford

Catriona Kennedy
Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of York

And

Liam Chambers
Head of Department and Senior Lecturer in History at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Available now

55 minutes

Last on

Thu 8 Dec 2022 21:30

LINKS AND FURTHER READING

CONTRIBUTORS








READING LIST

Thomas Bartlett, David Dickson, Dáire Keogh and Kevin Whelan (eds), 1798: A Bicentenary Perspective (Four Courts Press, 2003)

Guy Beiner, Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster (Oxford University Press, 2018)

Guy Beiner, Remembering the Year of the French: Irish Folk History and Social Memory (University of Wisconsin Press, 2009)

Nancy J. Curtin, The United Irishmen: Popular Politics in Ulster and Dublin 1701-1798 (Clarendon Press, 1994)

David Dickson, Daire Keogh and Kevin Whelan (eds), The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion (Lilliput Press, 1993)

Tom Dunne, Rebellions: Memoir, Memory and 1798 (Lilliput Press, 2004)

Marianne Elliot, Wolfe Tone: Prophet of Irish Independence (Liverpool University Press, 2012)

Marianne Elliot, Partners in Revolution: The United Irishmen and France (Yale University Press, 1982)

Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French (NYRB Classics, 2004)

Daniel Gahan, The People’s Rising: Wexford, 1798 (Gill & Macmillan, 1995)

James Kelly, The Cambridge History of Ireland, vol 3, 1730-1880 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), especially ‘Ireland during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, 1791-1815’ by Thomas Bartlett

Dáire Keogh and Nicholas Furlong (eds), The Women of 1798 (Four Courts Press, 1998)

Ian McBride, Eighteenth-Century Ireland: The Isle of Slaves (Gill & Macmillan, 2009)

Ian McBride, Scripture Politics: Ulster Presbyterians and Irish Radicalism in the Late Eighteen-Century (Oxford University Press, 1998)

Ruán O’Donnell, The Rebellion in Wicklow, 1798 (Irish Academic Press, 1998)

Thomas Pakenham, The Year of Liberty: The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798 (first published 1969; Abacus, 2000)

Stephen Small, Political Thought in Ireland, 1776-1798: Republicanism, Patriotism and Radicalism (Oxford University Press, 2003)

Jim Smyth, The Men of No Property: Irish Radicals and Popular Politics in the Late Eighteenth-Century (Macmillan, 1998)

A.T.Q. Stewart, The Summer Soldiers: The 1798 Rebellion in Antrim and Down (Blackstaff Press, 1995)

Kevin Whelan, The Tree of Liberty: Radicalism, Catholicism and the Construction of Irish Identity, 1760-1830 (Cork University Press, 1996)


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  • Thu 8 Dec 2022 09:00
  • Thu 8 Dec 2022 21:30

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