Irish History: The bicentenary of the 1798 Rebellion produced an enormous volume of literature. There is no other comparable case in contemporary Irish historiography of so many studies being written in such concentration on a single episode, writes Guy Beiner.
Many months of intense reading are required to digest all that has been published on the topic in recent years. When presented with such an overwhelming choice, the main problem is how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Aspiring for canonical codification, the editors of this mammoth tome have attempted to present a collection that is "definitive and self-critical". The publishers have pushed this point further, claiming in their catalogue that the book "covers all aspects" and "is intended to open as many windows as possible on the causes, contexts, circumstances and consequences of the Irish rebellion of 1798". This ambitious undertaking appears to echo François Furet and Mona Ozouf's monumental Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, which was compiled for the bicentenary of the French Revolution (1989). With the timely issue of this book during the bicentenary of Robert Emmet's rising, has the ultimate epitaph of the United Irishmen now been written and can there possibly be anything more to say about the dramatic events of '98?
This book is the outcome of a highly successful five-day academic conference, which travelled in May 1998 from the Ulster Museum in Belfast to Dublin Castle. Thirty-three articles based on papers originally prepared for the conference have been arranged in eight sections, which cover the intellectual roots of Irish radicalism, rebellious activities in all four provinces (with a separate section on Ulster), loyalist responses, government policy, historiography and memory, comparative European contexts, and the United Irish diasporas in Australia and across the Atlantic. Perhaps it is indicative of the climate of the Good Friday Agreement (ratified shortly before the conference took place) that only one essay covers the insurrection in south Leinster, which has been to date the main arena of historical preoccupation, while five essays map radical politicisation and rebellion throughout Ulster. These contributions reject deeply rooted simplifications associated with a "whole Protestant community" and offer a complex picture that moves beyond the more familiar terrain of the radical Presbyterians in the environs of Belfast. Overall, the essays in this book display impressive sophistication in the analysis and interpretation of the rebellion. The subtitle, A Bicentenary Perspective reflects a heightened self-awareness among historians. Yet despite the assertion that we now have a "precise calibration of the remarkably sinuous historiography of '98 after '98", the section on historiography, which features some excellent essays (notably, Ian McBride on remembrance and forgetting among Ulster Presbyterians), is far from comprehensive. This is not a stand-alone book and it is assumed that readers are already familiar with other work in the field.
The origin of the book in conference proceedings has limited its scope. Although it may appear to be a representative showcase of bicentennial historiography, other perspectives that were floated in 1998 are absent (most noticeably the opinions of Tom Dunne, who was the most vocal critic of the bicentenary commemorations). More surprisingly, even though the contributors had ample opportunity to engage with each other at the conference and over the following five years, bar a few exceptions (such as the essay by Peter Linebaugh, which complements the contribution of Luke Gibbons on radical Enlightenment), the benefits of cross-fertilisation are not self-evident and pertinent observations have not always been picked up. To give but one example, David Dickson's socio- economic analysis of Munster notes that a severe fall in grain prices in 1797 encouraged agitation, yet studies of other areas do not examine the repercussions of this factor on their analyses. Moreover, for those who have followed the burgeoning historical literature on the 1790s, several essays appear all too familiar. Indeed, some of the contributors are rehearsing arguments that they have already presented in print in other publications. Though tenured academics in the Irish university system are not officially subject to the pressures of "publish or perish", multiplication and repetition is rife in "1798 Studies". Critical syntheses are needed to orchestrate this polyphony, but there does not appear to be a concerted drive to pool resources and process the overabundance of data.
To some extent this concern is addressed in 83 pages of running commentary provided by Kevin Whelan, who has contributed a pithy introductory essay to each one of the eight sections. Written with panache, this witty exercise in argumentative history writing is the most engaging feature of the book. Peppered with combative remarks in which no punches are pulled, these essays serve to propel and stimulate diligent readers who are intent on wading through this lengthy book.
Transcending the conventional role of editor, he does not merely introduce the chapters in the collection but also positions them in a larger interpretative context, while often putting forward contrary points of view and identifying lacunae that require further research. The discursive footnotes are encyclopaedic in their remarkable scope of bibliographical references, which are polemically qualified. Some of them read like short review articles in their own right (such as a page-long footnote on the transformations in the reputation of Wolfe Tone). In addition, Whelan has provided a definitive 66-page bibliography that covers all publications and theses. Together with the appendices to an article by C.J. Woods, which index the seminal work of the United Irishmen's biographer R. R. Madden, this will surely prove to be an indispensable tool for future researchers. When taking into account his many other relevant publications, Whelan has clearly confirmed his position as the leading authority today on 1798 and the dominant voice of its bicentennial historiography.
It is intriguing that Whelan has chosen not to publish his contribution as a separate monograph. He admits that the "only sustained narrative of the rebellion" remains Thomas Pakenham's The Year of Liberty, which was originally published in 1969, and although he brands this book reflective of an outdated interpretative paradigm, no one yet has risen to the challenge of replacing it with an integrative history that will incorporate all the new work. In his presidential address to the Irish Historical Society (delivered in December 1999), Thomas Bartlett, one of the editors of this volume, provocatively argued that, despite all the bicentennial hype, "the history of the 1798 rebellion remains to be written". According to the bibliography, in the past five years alone, 20 postgraduate theses have been completed on related topics and it is possible that much more is yet to be written on 1798. This book will be high on the reading list of those who choose to contribute further.
Guy Beiner is a government of Ireland research fellow at Trinity College, Dublin. His book, Remembering "The Year of the French": Irish Folk History and Social Memory, is forthcoming
1798: A Bicentenary Perspective. Edited by Thomas Bartlett, David Dickson, Dáire Keogh and Kevin Whelan, Four Courts Press, 756pp, €50