Irish Peasants: Violence and Political Unrest, 1780–1914

Introduction

Introduction Ireland became almost synonymous with rebellion during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Every decade between 1760 and 1840 was punctuated by at least one major outbreak of rural discontent. Though these upheavals generally lacked regional organization, they were regional in the sense that the participants pursued broadly similar aims over wide areas of the country. Effective repression was difficult for the government to achieve, largely because the rebels usually adopted clandestine forms of collective action. Some regional movements-the Oakboys of 1763, the Roughers of 1778-9, the Ribbonmen of 1819-20 - were of short duration and had a life measured only in months. But othersthe Rightboys of 1785-8, the Rockites of 1821-4 - endured for several years. And in the 1790s a staggering series of popular protests erupted in the Irish countryside, which were not purely agrarian or economic in aim, and which culminated in a vast revolutionary effort dedicated to the establishment of a separatist republic. All these movements, taken together, left scarcely any part of Ireland untouched. Yet in certain regions, especially the west midlands, the south, and the southeast, agrarian rebellion occurred so often that it became a deep-seated tradition. It acquired customary features - uniforms or special dress, quasi-military organization, oaths of secrecy and loyalty, codes of approved behavior, rituals of intimidation and punishment - all reappearing again and again until the 1840s. That decade was the first since the 1750s in which no regional agrarian revolt took place in Ireland. l 1. No comprehensive study of Irish agrarian movements and rural violence in the late 25 26 THE TRADITION OF VIOLENCE During that long span of time Irish peasants compiled a record of collective protest probably unequaled anywhere else in Europe. Individual agrarian rebellions usually had specific causes, such as a depression in agricultural prices, a series of bad harvests, a sharp and sudden rise in the level of rents, or a new fiscal imposition by the state. But the magnitude of Irish agrarian disorder can only be explained by taking account of broader economic and social developments. The most important of these was the rapid demographic expansion which began in the middle of the eighteenth century and continued, apparently at a steady pace (though with certain marked regional variations), until the end of the Napoleonic wars. Only then did the rate of population growth finally slacken. According to the most recent estimates, the total population rose from less than 2.5 million in 1753 to 4.4 million in 1791 and reached 6.8 million by 1821. The slower rate of demographic expansion during the 1820s and 1830s still boosted the population of the country to almost 8.2 million by the time of the 1841 census. Other European countries also experienced striking increases in population over roughly the same period, but the secular rate of growth in Ireland was certainly exceptional by contemporary European standards.2 eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has yet appeared, but the following works bearing on this subject may be noted: M. R. Beames, "Peasant movements: Ireland, 1785-95" in Journal of Peasant Studies, ii, no. 4 (July 1975), pp. 502-6; Beames, "Rural conflict in pre-famine Ireland: peasant assassinations in Tipperary, 1837-1847" in Past & Present, no. 81 (Nov. 1978), pp. 75-91; R. E. Burns, "Parsons, priests, and the people: the rise of Irish anticlericalism, 1785-1789" in Church History, xxxi, no. 2 (June 1962), pp. 151-63; G. E. Christianson, "Secret societies and agrarian violence in Ireland, 1790-1840" in Agricultural History, xlvi, no. 4 (Oct. 1972), pp. 369-84; Samuel Clark, Social origins of the Irish land war (Princeton, 1979), pp. 65-104; J. S. Donnelly, Jr., "The Whiteboy movement , 1761-5" in I.H.S., xxi, no. 81 (Mar. 1978), pp. 20-54; Donnelly, "The Rightboy movement, 1785-8" in Studia Hib., nos. 17-18 (1977-8), pp. 120-202; Marianne Elliott, "The origins and transformation of early Irish republicanism" in International Review of Social History, xxiii, pt. 3 (1978), pp. 405-28; Robert Kee, The green flag: a history of Irish nationalism (London, 1972), pp. 54-145; Lecky, Ire., ii, 1-51; iii, 212-25, 385-92, 419-21; Joseph Lee, "The Ribbonmen" in T. D. Williams (ed.), Secret societies in Ireland (Dublin and New York, 1973), pp. 26-35; G. C. Lewis, On local disturbances in Ireland, and on the Irish church question (London, 1836); Oliver MacDonagh, Ireland: the union and its aftermath (rev. ed., London...