This course explores the history of Irish resistance to English and British rule over the island of Ireland from the reign of Elizabeth I to the creation of the Irish Free State in the early 1920s. We will explore the political, religious, economic, cultural and social causes of rebellion, the ways in which rebellion was pursued and responses to it. This course will involve close reading of primary sources, and will offer a reading of rebellion as an intellectual movement as much as a series of self-contained events.
The first classes will explore rebellion in Ireland in the early modern period. The broader context of resistance to English rule in Ireland will facilitate an in-depth focus on one of the great crises of the late Elizabethan period – the rising of the Earl of Tyrone in the 1590s and a war which lasted for almost a decade and threatened to cripple the English state. The second session focuses on the outbreak of full-scale war in the island or Ireland, against new coalitions shaped by religion – Catholic and Protestant; politics – royalist or parliamentarian, Jacobite or Williamite; and ethnicity – Irish, English, Scot. Particular attention will be paid to the rebellion of 1641 and its legacy in the creation of a confederated state which offered an alternative model for governing Ireland as an independent polity during the 1640s.
The third session will consider why the relative peace of the 18th century was finally broken with the rebellion of 1798, which can only be considered within the context of the other great crises of this period – the American War of Independence of the 1770s; and the French Revolution of 1789. By framing 1798 within the context of opposition to empire and support for republicanism, we will consider how this failed rising embraced radical ideas, but also offered a structure for understanding rebellion for Irish revolutionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The final sessions will consider modern revolution as it emerged in Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries. Romantic nationalism, agrarian unrest, sectarian violence, and acts of terror offer key frameworks for thinking about the failed Rising of Easter 1916 and the eventual emergence of the Irish Free State from the War of Independence it inspired.
What our students say
"Dr Devlin is so well-read in this field... he packed a whole lot of Irish history in class time. It's such a fascinating subject."