Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821-1824 (review)

Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821-1824 is the latest monograph emanating from the prolific and demanding historian James S. Donnelly, Jr. Those adjectives may strike some readers as smacking of filial loyalty, for the present reviewer spent nearly a decade as a student under Donnelly's direction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But, rather than expressing any sense of debt—though debt there is—these words indicate an appreciation that any scholar would feel for the decades of intensive research and deep thought that have culminated in this compelling book.

Desperate economic circumstances, exacerbated by near-famine conditions in the early 1820s and blended with millenarian expectations about the overthrow of Protestantism, created the heady mix known as the Rockite movement. Donnelly draws heavily on his knowledge of other agrarian mobilizations, as well as on rich archival sources, to compare and contrast these rebels with other agrarian movements often referred to collectively as "Whiteboys." He writes that "the dominance of Captain Rock and his followers in the southern region [i.e., Munster and neighboring counties] in the early 1820s thus constituted a recurrence of patterns of collective behavior with a long pedigree. But the Rockites carried agrarian rebellion in Ireland to a higher plane of intensity than it had ever before reached; their extreme violence invites and repays close study."

Beginning his account in County Limerick, where Alexander Hoskins's aggressive administration of the Courtney estate provoked the initial outburst of Rockite violence, Donnelly argues persuasively that the phenomenon became supralocal. Strongholds emerged in Counties Limerick and Cork and, to a lesser extent, in Counties Tipperary, Kerry, Kilkenny, Waterford, and Clare. Assaults on persons or property, especially for the purpose of acquiring weapons or exacting tribute, were features of the early movement. These were augmented with other intimidatory acts, including murder and incendiarism. The last of these methods became so prevalent between 1822 and 1824 that entire districts of North Cork and mid-Limerick feared flaming onslaughts. As one observer wrote to the Dublin Evening Post, "The state of the country between Mallow, Doneraile, and Fermoy is beyond all description. On a recent night four fires could be seen blazing at once—near Doneraile, and at Shanbally more, Ballyhooly, and Ballyduff."

Donnelly contends that in the main, the violence was not random. It was directed at achieving sweeping rent reductions and, of equal or more consequence, at the abolition of tithes. To be sure, the issue of tithes had often been associated with agrarian violence prior to the 1820s; Donnelly makes clear that such campaigns usually sought the reduction or temporary abatement of tithes; the Rockites, in contrast, sought their end. Part of the reason for their aggression toward tithes and toward Protestants more generally was the widely held belief—as propagated in the prophecies of Charles Walmsley, who was known popularly by his pseudonym, Pastorini—that Protestantism was to be destroyed by 1825.

Spelled out in threatening letters and notices, the expressed aims of the Rockites appealed to multiple constituencies. Indeed, among the essential conclusions running through Captain Rock are those dealing with the politicization of the movement and its social composition. Rockite committees drew lessons from—and in some cases overlapped with—Ribbon societies. Committees usually directed no more than two dozen men at a time, but in some instances, they also coordinated attacks that utilized several hundred rebels and that drew support from neighboring districts or counties. Cross-border actions served to prevent witnesses or survivors from identifying assailants—a logical strategy, and one that clearly required contacts beyond the neighborhood to bring in recruits. Organizational and ideological links with Ribbon societies—evident in the administration of sectarian oaths and the use of political catechisms—prevailed near towns and larger centers, including Cork. These links in turn fostered ties between disaffected townsmen and their agrarian counterparts, who would, on the face of things, have seemed to be the more likely recruits to...