1691-1800
The history of 18th-century Ireland is the history of two distinct societies: the Protestant Ascendancy, which presided over remarkable economic and cultural development, and a Catholic majority, which was legally relegated to second-class status with restrictions on religious liberty and socioeconomic advancement. Within the Protestant community itself, the Dissenters, that is, those not conforming to the established Church of Ireland, suffered political disabilities and other exclusions, although not to the degree experienced by the Catholics. A remarkable feature of the time was the development within the Ascendancy of an Irish patriotism that identified with the claim of Irish nationhood made in earlier centuries by the Anglo-Normans and the Old English. The claim regarded Ireland as one of the jewels in the monarch's crown, but a jewel that ought to be its own master and not subject to the English parliament.4 Yet the same Ascendancy, which called itself the Irish nation, held sway over the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the island because of the support of the very English government whose restricting hand it wished to remove. The century would see the Protestant Irish nation gain a degree of political autonomy, which was partly inspired by and to some degree facilitated by the American War of Independence. There would also develop a more radical separatist republican nationalism, inspired by the French Revolution. Irish republicanism appeared primarily among Ulster Presbyterians. However, many Catholics, whose perspective until then was shaped primarily by a romantic conservative longing for the return of the defeated Gaelic society, would also join the cause.
World History
