Abstract
Was early modern Ireland a kingdom or a colony? Ciaran Brady and Raymond Gillespie argue that it was a bit both:
The relative strength of these images of Ireland as kingdom and colony varied among the different power groupings in the island, and over time. Neither held sway to the exclusion of the other, each rather coexisted in a delicate balance in the minds of political actors. The effect of each was at all times influenced by the presence of its rival,…and it was this interaction which made Irish society so distinctive.1
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Notes
Ciaran Brady and Raymond Gillespie (eds), Natives and Newcomers: Essays on the Making of Irish Colonial Society, 1534–1641 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1986), p. 17.
James Kelly, Prelude to Union: Anglo-Irish Politics in the 1780s (Cork: Cork University Press, 1992).
Alan Ward, The Irish Constitutional Tradition: Responsible Government and Modern Ireland, 1782–1992 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1994), ch. 2.
See, e.g., W.E.H. Lecky, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, 2 vols. (Orig. Pub. 1861, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903);
for more recent assessments lamenting the failure of the Whigs to chart Ireland on a liberal constitutional course, see Edith Johnston, Great Britain and Ireland 1760–1800: A Study in Political Administration (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1963), p. 270;
James Kelly, Henry Grattan, Historical Association of Ireland Life and Times Series, No. 1 (Dundalk: Dundalgan Press, 1993), p. 50;
for an iconoclastic assessment of the Whig legacy, see Gerard O’Brien, ‘The Grattan Mystique’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 1 (1986): 177–94.
W.E.H. Lecky, A History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, 5 vols. (London: Longman, Green, 1898) iii, 5.
Thomas Davis, The Life of the Right Hon. J.P. Curran and a Memoir of the Life of the Right. Hon. Henry Grattan, by. D.O. Madden, of the Inner Temple. With addenda, and a letter in reply to Lord Clare (Dublin: James Duffy, 1846), p. 172.
Theobald Wolfe Tone, An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland, in Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone. Memoirs, Journals and Political Writings, Compiled and Arranged by William T.W. Tone, 1826, ed. Thomas Bartlett (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1998), p. 281.
Kennedy, ‘Irish Whigs,’ pp. 63–7; for a more sceptical assessment of the Whig programme, see Gerard O’Brien, Anglo-Irish Politics in the Age of Grattan and Pitt (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1987), pp. 119–30.
For a discussion of Irish rhetoric in the eighteenth century, see Katherine O’Donnell, ‘Burke’s Irish Accent’ (PhD thesis, Cork, 1998). I wish especially to thank Dr. O’Donnell for her insights and our conversations on this topic.
Valentine Lord Cloncurry, Personal Recollections of the Life and Times, with extracts from the correspondence of Valentine Lord Cloncurry (Dublin: James McGlashan, 1849), p. 30.
Sir Jonah Barrington, Personal Sketches of His Own Time, 2 vols. (3rd edn, London: George Routledge, 1869) i, p. 98.
Henry Grattan, Jnr., Memoirs of the Life and Times of the Rt. Hon. Henry Grattan, 5 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1841) iv, p. 61; for Dublin Corporation’s hostility to Catholic relief, see Jacqueline Hill, From Patriots to Unionists: Dublin Civic Politics and Irish Protestant Patriotism, 1660–1840 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
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Curtin, N.J. (2001). ‘A Perfect Liberty’: The Rise and Fall of the Irish Whigs, 1789–97. In: Boyce, D.G., Eccleshall, R., Geoghegan, V. (eds) Political Discourse in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Ireland. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403932723_12
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