Reviews

The People’s Rising: Wexford 1798 Daniel Gahan (Gill and Macmillan, £12.99) The Mighty Wave: the 1798 Rebellion in Wexford Dáire Keogh and Nicholas Furlong (eds.) (Four Courts, £9.99) Sir Richard Musgrave’s Memoirs of the Irish Rebellion of 179

It was commonplace in the late 1970s and early 1980s for political historians to venture that the imbalance in Lecky’s coverage of the eighteenth century, which prompted him to devote three of his seminal five-volume History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century to the 1790s, would soon be remedied. This expectation was informed primarily by … Read more

Tudor Frontiers and Noble Power: The making of the British State Steven G. Ellis (Clarendon Press, 1995, £35) The Problem of Ireland in Tudor, Foreign Policy 1485-1603 William Palmer (Boydell Press, 1994, £29.50)

Gone are the days when English historians ignored the question of British involvement in Ireland in the early modern period. When considered at all, the traditional narrative tended to trivialise the Irish experience and minimalise its impact on the grand sweep of English history. An example of this tendency is found in the influential England … Read more

The British Problem, c.1534-1707: State Formation in the Atlantic Archipelago, Brendan Bradshaw and John Morrill (eds.), (MacMillan £42.50 hb, £13.50 pb). Uniting the Kingdom?:The Making of British history, Alexander Grant and Keith J. Stringer (eds

There is a spectre haunting Irish historiography, one more ominous perhaps than revisionism or nationalism—the spectre of the ‘British Problem’, carrying with it the threat of another colonial impulse. Still reeling from Anglocentrism, scholars now have to face Britocentrism. Introducing Paddy and Mr Punch, Roy Foster assured his readers that his focus on English rather … Read more