DID anyone ever fear to speak of 98? Certainly, on the evidence adduced in this compelling collection of long essays, few feared to write of the rebellion. And it is the 1798 rebellion - its meaning, its context, its message - that lies at the centre of this timely volume, the first in a new series of cultural explorations from the most innovative publishing house in Ireland.
Kevin Whelan sets out to rescue the rebellion from the dungeon of Irish history whither it had been cast by assorted axe grinders, polemicists and special pleaders, who had variously written of it (written it off?) as sectarian carnival, peasant jacquerie or mindless mayhem; but he does so, not to re enthrone the rising as an early version of the War of Independence or to apotheosis the "Boys of Wexford" (much less Father Murphy), but rather to stress the rootedness of the rebellion in the context of social changes in 18th century Ireland, to emphasise the gravity (and sophistication) of the threat posed by the nonsectarian United Irishmen to the Protestant state, and to assess the response of that state to that challenge. His concern is as much with the hidden hand of economic change, political process and social adjustment as with the rebel hand that set the heather blazing. His objectives, he writes, is to offer a "post revisionist" perspective on the 1790s - the key decade in the making of modern Ireland - a perspective that will move beyond the comforting but sterile polarities of "nationalist" and "revisionist" history.
Building on the pioneering work of Louis Cullen, Marianne Elliott and others, and incorporating much of his own extensive researches on the 1790s, Whelan peels away the layers of obfuscation and evasion that had lain over much of what we knew of the period. He uncovers the pivotal role of the Catholic big farmer (hard faced men who had done well out of the Penal Laws) who were the inheritors of the social authority and political clout of the shattered remnants of the 17th century Long bhriseadh na nGaeil, and who thus facilitated the shift from Jacobite to Jacob in popular politics.
He undertakes an investigation into the United Irish project and is particularly informative on their novel methods of propagating their message. However, while he finds much to praise in their ideals, he is also ready to reprimand them for consistently underestimating the powerful groundswell of support for conservatism in Ireland in the 1790s.
In what is perhaps the most interesting essay, Whelan shows how the Irish government sought to defend it's honour, these United Irishmen: new laws were brought, new forces deployed; and a new concept - Protestant Ascendancy - was espoused. The Orange Order, initially largely composed of members of the Established Church, was adopted by Dublin Castle (with mingled reluctance and distaste) as a powerful counter revolutionary agency; and the Catholic Church was offered state support for a seminary at Maynooth. In these ways, "Disunited Irishmen" were successfully pitted against United Irishmen, and the United Irishmen's project failed. Lastly, Whelan examines the ways in which the 1798 rebellion has been treated by historians and others since, well, since the heather was first set ablazing. As he points out, the rebellion has until recently never been approached on its own terms but always from the viewpoint of carefully contrived post rebellion polemics. The events of the summer of 98 have ever constituted a screen on which the most lurid - or heroic - fantasies of various interested parties could be projected in order to support whatever case - was being argued.
There are omissions in the volume: the impact of the American Revolution on Irish politics, political vocabulary and social mobilisation is treated perfunctorily, and most obviously there is no account of the 1798 rebellion itself. At times, too, the going can become a little slow; Whelan's prose is an exuberant and promiscuous amalgam of archaism and neologism, of the jargon of the geographer and the discourse of the historian - a heady mixture that can cause indigestion. But while some of his sentences are clear candidates for the file marked "Eh?", the overall effect is a powerful one.
This is an important book and Whelan's attempt at revising the rising - and re-contextualising it is by any reckoning a notable achievement; no one now need fear to speak of 98.