Firearms, Legitimacy and Power in Eighteenth-Century Ireland

The English Historical Review, 2021

War in History, 2004

This article offers a fresh look at the relationship between war, imperial expansion (itself a consequence of war) and religious developments in Britain and Ireland in the middle decades of the eighteenth century. While conflict between Britain and the Catholic Bourbon powers between 1739 and 1763 heightened popular hostility to ‘popery’ among Protestants, war and the expansion of empire helped to change elite attitudes towards Catholicism. Catholic rehabilitation, though long-drawn-out and limited in this period, had the effect of dividing Protestants, deepening the mutual suspicions and mistrust between Protestant Dissenters and the Anglican establishment in England, Wales and Ireland. *I am grateful to the owners and custodians of the archives that I cite, or from which I quote, for permission to use the material in their collections. This article is an off-shoot of a wider project on the impact of the mid-eighteenth-century wars on Britain and Ireland.

Archbishop Laud's ecclesiastical and political energy has left historians gasping behind him. This is not simply a result of his passion for detail and singleminded capacity for hard work; it is also a product of his geographical and administrative range. With remarkable prescience, he anticipated current concern with the broader 'British' dimension of early modern history and viewed religious policy not in a narrowly English sense, or confined only to church matters, but in terms of all three royal dominions, and extending to education as well. The result is a standing challenge, not merely to historians' stamina, but also to the instinctive compartmentalisation of their approach to the 1630s which has sought to confine Laud within national boundaries and see him solely as an ecclesiastical leader.

Studies of Transition States and Societies, 2014

Book Reivew of "The IRA: The Irish Republican Army" by James Dingley, 2012, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger

The ‘Nine Years War’ in Ireland saw violence and upheaval which brought the authority of the English crown to the point of collapse, but also resulted in the completion of the Tudor conquest and the eradication of native Irish laws and social order. This thesis examines the conduct and impact of the Nine Years War in the context of military transformations occurring in continental Europe. The effects of the modernising influences of the ‘military revolution’ on the native Irish military are explored, and also the reciprocal development and response of the forces of the English crown. This is achieved by studying the war at strategic, operational and tactical levels, the role of combat, the methodology and equipment used and development of doctrine. Furthermore the increased intensity of war precipitated higher levels of brutality and civilian victimisation. Therefore this study examines the role and extent of atrocity and aggression against civilians in Ireland and compares this with the experience of war in contemporary Europe. Key issues engaged with are the strategy behind both Irish and English campaigns, the degree to which the war can be considered a guerrilla war, the use of fortifications by the Irish, and the fatal weaknesses in the forces raised by O’Neill and his confederates. In addition non-combat characteristics of the war are examined such as the native economy, manufacturing, the command and control of military forces, and Irish military logistics. Detailed examination of the course and key moments of the war provides significant insight into attitudes in early modern Ireland with regards to modernisation, innovation and the social relationships between the native Irish, and the Old English and New English.

Irish Historical Studies, 2015

This article examines a petition drawn up by Robert Ayleway, an official within the Irish fiscal-military state in 1692, in connection with charges of corruption and incompetence during the Williamite Wars (1689-91). Ayleway’s petition, and his wider career, demonstrate that he was part of a process of English and Irish state formation that had begun well before 1688, driven by informal patronage networks as much as by formal bureaucratic developments, creating an entrenched interest group of officials that nevertheless came into conflict after 1689 with new officers, many of them foreign, who came to Ireland in William III’s train. Both sides suspected the loyalty of the other, but the petition reveals that Ayleway saw himself, with some justice, as a competent and loyal official who had used his private means to serve the public in a way that had also advanced his own private interests, suggesting something of the ethos of officials within the new Irish (and English) fiscal-military state.

Éire-Ireland, 2007

Crime, Histoire & Sociétés, 2007

The extent and nature of violent activity in Ireland in the first half of the nineteenth century constitutes an important, at times controversial, but as yet insufficiently researched area of study. There has, in fact, been little agreement on the role of violence in Ireland in this period. On the one hand, there are those who have viewed early nineteenth-century Ireland as a particularly violent place. This was certainly the view of many commentators of the time and is supported, to some degree at least, by the numerous studies of rural unrest in pre-Famine Ireland, which have demonstrated how violence and the threat of violence was utilized, mainly by agrarian secret societies, in order to uphold supposedly communal norms and to regulate socioeconomic conditions 3. The extent of such unrest has, indeed, led one commentator, to conclude that early nineteenth-century Ireland was a remarkably violent country 4. A number of historians have, however, challenged or at least qualified the view of Ireland in this period as a particularly violent society. Cormac Ó Gráda, for instance, has argued that the belief in endemic violent criminality in pre-Famine Ireland was almost certainly exaggerated 5. Similarly, David Fitzpatrick has suggested that Irish society at this time, in certain regions and for prolonged periods, was not endemically or abnormally violent 6. 2 Commentary on the extent of sectarian violence in this period reflects, in some respects, these contrasting perspectives on the extent of violent activity. The dominant view among those who have commented on sectarian violence is that sectarian animosity was a significant and direct cause of violent conflict.For Kerby Miller, in the last quarter of the

Irish Sword, 2021

From New York to Ballyfermot: the Thompson submachine gun and the Irish War of Independence by AARON Ó MAONAIGH * Celebrated in ballad and described as a provider of 'mysteries within a mystery', the saga of the Thompson submachine gun and its part in the Irish War of Independence holds a prominent place in the lore and legend of the revolutionary era. 1 Despite its prominence, however, the Thompson gun only arrived in Ireland shortly before the climax of the war. Its role in action was a minor one and it was discharged in combat on only three accounts, with little effect. Since the pioneering 1967 article by J. Bowyer Bell, much has been written concerning the procurement and attempted importation of Thompson guns to Ireland, although an insufficient amount has been written concerning their use during the war.

UCC - SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS, 2018

The Double Tressure, No. 34 (2011), 2011

2010

The Journal of the History of Ideas, 2016

The American Historical Review, 2001