A break from the past: Ireland, the French Revolution and the evolution of radical discourse, 1789-1797

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dc.check.chapterOfThesisN/Aen
dc.check.date2030-09-30
dc.contributor.advisorBielenberg, Andrew
dc.contributor.advisorO'Dwyer, Rory
dc.contributor.authorWatson, Lukeen
dc.contributor.funderUniversity College Cork
dc.date.accessioned2025-05-19T15:03:53Z
dc.date.available2025-05-19T15:03:53Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.date.submitted2024
dc.description.abstractIrish political discourse in the 1790s was fundamentally different from that which had preceded it. The 1790s witnessed political developments which were much more extreme, and indeed much more violent, than those which characterised the 1770s or 1780s. The central event which encouraged this new trend in Irish politics, was, without a doubt, the French Revolution. To political radicals across Europe, the revolution in France - previously seen as one of the more repressed nations on the continent - seemed to herald a new age of liberty and freedom. In Ireland, which from 1783 had endured a period of relative political inactivity, the revolution drew great interest from those who sought to reform Ireland’s political system, and who increasingly viewed it as necessary to extend political involvement to a greater subset of the population. Meanwhile, for those in power in the country, the French Revolution seemed to represent their worst fears made manifest: fears of anarchy, mob rule and the total destruction of the well-ordered system which had endured for decades, if not centuries. The hopes and fears which characterised the reception of the French Revolution in Ireland thus feature heavily in the public discussions of this period. The ideologies and rhetoric emerging from France helped to push Irish political discourse in a new direction, shifting it from one which was concerned with moderate political reform and legislative and economic independence, to one which was concerned with liberty, republicanism and complete independence. This thesis seeks to trace the impact of the ideas, rhetoric and ideology emerging from Revolutionary France on Ireland, in particular discussing the ways in which it shaped Ireland’s radical community. In this regard, this thesis adopts something of a social history approach, focusing in particular on the urban radical communities of Cork, Dublin and Belfast, providing a comparative discussion of the political developments of these localities, and using these to reflect on the wider developments occurring in Ireland. Discourse is an especially ephemeral and difficult to quantify topic, and thus sources that reflect such evolving political discussions, including letters, private memoirs and newspapers are central to this research.en
dc.description.statusNot peer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationWatson, L. 2024. A break from the past: Ireland, the French Revolution and the evolution of radical discourse, 1789-1797. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.
dc.identifier.endpage257
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/17527
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherUniversity College Corken
dc.relation.projectUniversity College Cork (School of History, McEnery Scholarship)
dc.rights© 2024, Luke Watson.
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectHistory
dc.subjectIrish history
dc.subjectFranco-Irish history
dc.subjectSocial history
dc.subjectEighteenth century
dc.subjectPolitical history
dc.subject1790s
dc.titleA break from the past: Ireland, the French Revolution and the evolution of radical discourse, 1789-1797
dc.typeDoctoral thesisen
dc.type.qualificationlevelDoctoralen
dc.type.qualificationnamePhD - Doctor of Philosophyen
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