The early Irish Republicanism as a Radicalism? Questioning the political categories used in historiography.
Résumé
The prevalent (revisionist) historiography on the 1798 rising has produced a narrative of a violent episode, ending in bloodshed, one in which the enlightened, secular and reformist agenda of the United Irishmen was corrupted by the sectarian impulses, parochial vision, and narrow nationalism of the Defenders. The history of the early Irish republicanism, written in the context of the ‘Troubles’ in the 1970s and 1980s and (des)informed by the different memorial strata since the seminal event of 1798, back projected on the 1790s a vision of republicanism synonymous with sectarian extremism. Recent research, however, demonstrated the need for a reconsideration of this interpretation. Recontextualising the Irish republicanism of the 1790s, by replacing it within its larger – Atlantic and transnational – contexts, allows to bring forward another narrative. In this paper, I will focus on several individual trajectories: Theobald Wolfe Tone, Nicholas Madgett, William Jackson, William Duckett, and Lawrence O’Connor. Three Catholics, two Protestants – all of them decided to devote their life (and for two of them in the literal sense of the word) to the ‘cause’ for an independent Irish republic within the larger ideal or battlefield of the Atlantic Republic. Favouring a micro-sociological and cultural approach allows to showcase the different steps in the process of commitment, permitting in turn a reappraisal of their supposed ‘radicalisation’ to question this concept as an expression of our own modern dismay in the face of political commitment.