Synopses & Reviews
This is a study of religion, politics, and society in a period of great significance in modern Irish history. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw the consolidation of the power of the Protestant landed class, the enactment of penal laws against Catholics, and constitutional conflicts that forced Irish Protestants to redefine their ideas of national identity. Connolly's scholarly and wide-ranging study examines these developments and sets them in their historical context. The Ireland that emerges from his lucid and penetrating analysis was essentially a part of ancien regime Europe: a pre-industrial society in which the dominance of a landed elite depended on maintaining the balance between coercion, deference, and an absence of credible pretenders to power; in which the ties of patronage and clientship were often more important than horizontal bonds of shared economic or social position; and in which religion remained a central part of personal and political motivation.
Review
"An evenly paced, well organized, and concise overview of the conditions in Ireland....Connolly has presented an interesting, informative, and thought-provoking view of Ireland in the eighteenth century."--The Historian
"This is an important book for students of early 18th-century Ireland."--Choice
"A scholarly and detailed examination of those political, religious, legal, social, and economic forces that operated to create "Ascendancy" Ireland.--Albion
"The decades covered by this book, especially those after 1700, have been perhaps the most neglected period in modern Irish history....Connolly's efforts to assemble the materials to write such a volume as this have been heroic, and the result is amply worth the effort....It is clearly the book we have been waiting for."--Irish Literary Supplement
"A major work that will be central to discussion of the subject for decades to come."--American Historical Review
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [318]-338) and index.