Irish History: In the final pages of States of Mind (1983), Oliver MacDonagh analysed the first decade of the modern Northern Irish "Troubles" in terms of patterns of Anglo-Irish relations established in the last decades of the 18th century.
In the final paragraph of her important study of Irish sectarian conflict in the 1820s, Irene Whelan claims a much wider contemporary relevance:
At a time when fundamentalism is again a major influence in many of the world's leading religions, and millions across the globe are flocking to the standards of religious nationalism, the Irish experience affords a useful case history in which scholars of other divided societies may find valuable insights and comparisons.
The story she has to tell certainly shows how religious fanaticism can produce sectarian politics, but the fundamentalism which is her main focus is associated not with the poor and marginalised, but with a ruling elite, afraid of losing its monopoly.
It is nearly 30 years since Desmond Bowen published the only other major work on this subject, The Protestant Crusade in Ireland. Since then, despite important new work by David Hempton, Myrtle Hill, Joseph Liechty and Thomas McGrath, the role of religion in this crucial period has been rather downplayed. Whelan's scholarly, clearly written and engaged book is very timely, and offers much the most comprehensive account to date. One major advance on Bowen is her anatomy of sectarianism in previous decades, and while her chapter on "Eighteenth-Century Antecedents" is disappointingly patchy and rather dated in its historiography (and oddly, places little emphasis on Orangeism or the 1798 rebellion), her account of the early decades of the 19th century has much new material. Particularly interesting in this first phase of evangelical revivalism is the role of Trinity College, the work of societies such as the Ossary Clerical Association, the comparatively enlightened attitudes of leading evangelicals to poverty and to the Irish language, and the participation of Catholics (and even of some priests) in educational experiments such as the Kildare Place Society.
The contrasting "open warfare" of the "second Reformation" from 1822 is described graphically, particularly through citation of the "ugly tone adopted by the ultra-Protestant press". But while Protestant extremism is clearly the villain (and the book as a whole leans more to the Catholic side), Whelan gives a sympathetic account of the activities of the new breed of reformers at local level, charting the geographic spread of the movement and giving interesting case studies of the contrasting Kingston and Askeaton experiments.
The central figure of "the Catholic counter-attack" was James Warren Doyle, the sophisticated, continentally trained Bishop of Kildare and Loughlin. Whelan builds on McGrath's excellent two-volume biography to give a nuanced and sympathetic portrait (though not always an accurate one: local pride compels me to point out that Doyle was not "a native of Carlow" but of New Ross). Daniel O'Connell, and his role in the development of a sectarian politics at odds with his rhetoric (or, rather, aspects of it), is much less in focus in this study. In general, he comes across as less liberal and more tribal than Doyle, as he harnessed the crude sectarianism and millenarianism of popular movements such as Ribbon societies and Rockites, to the new political machine of the Catholic Association.
The virtual absence of this popular sectarianism, and indeed the general response of the Irish-speaking poor to the evangelical crusade, is the main weakness of the book. It seems odd to mention, in passing, the high pay that may have attracted educated Irish-speakers to become teachers in Bible schools, without using Pádraig de Brún's important work on the Gaelic poets who were attracted to that role. More generally, Whelan's failure to use the evidence of folklore, ballads, and above all, amhrán na ndaoine (beyond a brief, anodyne look at some verses of Raftery's), and her surprising lack of interest in Rockites and Ribbonmen (given the book's origins in a thesis supervised by Jim Donnelly), means that her account lacks balance. The "second Reformation" is seen entirely through the eyes of its chief proponents and its (mainly clerical) Catholic opponents, but not of its target audience. There is a great deal of this Irish-language material in print, and Niall Ó Cíosáin's work, in particular, points to a range of approaches to it.
Yet, in spite of this limitation, Whelan's book offers a fascinating, complex and fresh account of the polarisation of politics on sectarian lines during the 1820s. Lilliput Press has given it the first-rate production and editorial treatment that it deserves. This will be the standard account for a long time to come.
• Tom Dunne is Professor Emeritus of History at UCC. His book, Rebellions: Memoir, Memory and 1798, won the Ewart Biggs Prize 2005.
• The Bible War in Ireland: the "Second Reformation" and the Polarisation of Protestant-Catholic Relations 1800-1840 By Irene Whelan Lilliput Press, 347pp. €45