The Bellews of Mount Bellew: A Catholic Gentry Family in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (review)

The Bellews of Mount Bellew: A Catholic Gentry Family in Eighteenth-Century Ireland. By Karen J. Harvey. (Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distributed in the United States by ISBS, Portland, Oregon. 1998. Pp. 218. $55.00.)

Karen Harvey offers an unpretentious piece of work--simply a family history. It does not seek a place among the revisions of the history of Irish Catholic life under the ancien régime. As a study of the Catholic gentry, it claims to be no more than illustrative. The Bellews are not presented as paradigmatic. Yet, at once, the chapter headings reveal an attention to more ambitious historiography. The life of the family is related to the familiar topics of historians' inquiry: landownership, the Catholic diaspora, trade, and Catholic politics. The text fulfils the expectation. Throughout, there is a sound knowledge of the secondary literature displayed--and not only that dealing with the prominent analytical themes. One is grateful for the care taken, for example, to explain those features of continental military organization that aided or inhibited the careers of Irish soldiers. In brief, we have not merely the Bellews, but the Bellews and their world--and that depicted in a way relevant to general understandings of the Irish past.

In view of this, one would not hesitate to commend this book for providing an agreeable way of entering eighteenth-century Catholic Ireland. Indeed, it might be thought that entering through the Catholic gentry estates of County Galway would allow the visitor some particularly interesting perspectives. There are some in this book; but they are less extensive than might be expected--a consequence, no doubt, of the restrictive nature of family history. A whiggish preoccupation with Catholic links to late eighteenth-century dissent from the established order needs to be redressed. Thus one is grateful for a chapter which focuses on the role of the gentry in the Catholic agitation. Regrettably, if justifiably in view of the subject matter of the book, this is not much more than a partial narrative, which fails to show the political and ideological strength of the aristocratic party. Again, the question of the relationship between reality and perception of Catholic afflictions might best be approached through a study of the gentry. It was they, after all, who, together with the clergy, bore the weight of the penal code and they assumed a leadership role in dismantling it. The question is of increasing importance, as twentieth-century historians eagerly remove the burdens of eighteenth-century Catholics. Harvey does give it attention; but her sources, quite properly restricted by their relevance to the Bellews, give far more opportunity to comment on reality than perception--and in the long term, it was perception that was more important.

Dr. Harvey is not to be faulted. She set out to write a family history and has done so very competently. However, her very skill in increasing one's interest in such a study draws attention to the genre's unsatisfying nature. In the end, she leads one to regret that her ambitions were so circumscribed.

C. D. A. Leighton
Bilkent University, Ankara

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