This study traces the impact of the American Revolution and of the international war it precipitated on the political outlook of each section of Irish society. Morley uses a dazzling array of sources - newspapers, pamphlets, sermons and political songs, including Irish-language documents unknown to other scholars and previously unpublished - to trace the evolving attitudes of the Anglican, Catholic and Presbyterian communities from the beginning of colonial unrest in the early 1760s until the end of hostilities in 1783. He also reassesses the influence of the American revolutionary war on such developments as Catholic relief, the removal of restrictions on Irish trade, and Britain's recognition of Irish legislative independence. Morley sheds light on the nature of Anglo-Irish patriotism and Catholic political consciousness, and reveals the extent to which the polarities of the 1790s had already emerged by the end of the American war.

This collection explores the complex political thinking of a fundamental period of Irish history. It moves from the political, religious and military turmoil of the seventeenth century, through the years of the protestant ascendancy, to the revolutionary events at the end of the eighteenth century. The book addresses the basic conflicts of the age. In the case of religious politics it examines the hopes, anxieties, and interactions of Anglicans, Catholics and Presbyterians. It investigates the great political issues of the day - the constitutional thinkers and politicians involved in these struggles. Light is thrown on the great and the good - Swift and Molyneux, Grattan and Lucas - as well as on a huge cast of forgotten or never known figures, be they royal officials, lawyers, clergymen, landowners, or popular writers. A whole world of vibrant political debate is exposed.

The author presents a new picture of political life in mid-eighteenth century Britain, a period of history which is poorly understood. Written in a clear, accessible style, and drawing on much original material, this book argues that British politics and political culture in the mid eighteenth century have often been poorly understood through over-emphasis on 'stability'. Using a thematic approach, it reconstructs a political world in which vital issues continued to exercise the minds and emotions of those who made up the contemporary 'political nation', a group which included far more than the handful of politicans who competed for national political office. This is a book which interprets its subject broadly, and which seeks to tell the stories of politics in this period through the words and projects, hopes and fears, of contemporaries . It also represents an important contribution to the difficult, but important, project of writing the history of the British Isles. Development in Scotland and Ireland are given careful attention along with those of England.

Seventeenth-century 'English Literature' has long been thought about in narrowly English terms. Archipelagic English corrects this by devolving anglophone writing, showing how much remarkable work was produced in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and how preoccupied such English authors as Shakespeare, Milton, and Marvell were with the often fraught interactions between ethnic, religious, and national groups around the British-Irish archipelago. This book transforms our understanding of canonical texts from Macbeth to Defoe's Colonel Jack, but it also shows the significance of a whole series of authors (from William Drummond in Scotland to the Earl of Orrery in County Cork) who were prominent during their lifetimes but who have since become neglected because they do not fit the Anglocentric paradigm. With its European and imperial dimensions, and its close attention to the cultural make-up of early modern Britain and Ireland, Archipelagic English authoritatively engages with, questions, and develops the claim now made by historians that the crises of the seventeenth century stem from the instabilities of a state-system which, between 1603 and 1707, was multiple, mixed, and inclined to let local quarrels spiral into all-consuming conflict. This is a major, interdisciplinary contribution to literary and historical scholarship which is also set to influence present-day arguments about devolution, unionism, and nationalism in Britain and Ireland.

Drawing together some of the leading academics in the field of Shakespeare studies, this volume examines the commonalities and differences in addressing a notionally 'Celtic' Shakespeare. Celtic contexts have been established for many of Shakespeare's plays, and there has been interest too in the ways in which Irish, Scottish and Welsh critics, editors and translators have reimagined Shakespeare, claiming, connecting with and correcting him. This collection fills a major gap in literary criticism by bringing together the best scholarship on the individual nations of Ireland, Scotland and Wales in a way that emphasizes cultural crossovers and crucibles of conflict. The volume is divided into three chronologically ordered sections: Tudor Reflections, Stuart Revisions and Celtic Afterlives. This division of essays directs attention to Shakespeare's transformed treatment of national identity in plays written respectively in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, but also takes account of later regional receptions and the cultural impact of the playwright's dramatic works. The first two sections contain fresh readings of a number of the individual plays, and pay particular attention to the ways in which Shakespeare attends to contemporary understandings of national identity in the light of recent history. Juxtaposing this material with subsequent critical receptions of Shakespeare's works, from Milton to Shaw, this volume addresses a significant critical lacuna in Shakespearean criticism. Rather than reading these plays from a solitary national perspective, the essays in this volume cohere in a wide-ranging treatment of Shakespeare's direct and oblique references to the archipelago, and the problematic issue of national identity.