REHABILITATING “A FEW DISAFFECTED CHARACTERS”: IRELAND’S MEN OF ’98 FROM A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The Irish Rebellion of 1798 has generated a fraught legacy. Its history has been variously skewed by elitist and partisan accounts which overshadow more balanced scholarship. These works have proved crucial in the proliferation of a mythologised Ireland in which the Catholic is pitted against the Protestant; the Gaelic against the Anglo-Irish; the tyrant against the slave. This thesis unpacks such problematic binaries by tracing Ireland’s political prisoners of 1798 to colonial New South Wales. Much of the historiography is dated and sharply divided, portraying these rebels as perennially recalcitrant, or alternatively, as national heroes. This thesis presents an alternative reading by arguing that these transportees often fell short of their revolutionary reputations in exile, instead making significant contributions to the colony in its formative years. By examining Irish political prisoners in both Ireland and New South Wales, this thesis demonstrates the value of reassessing 1798 from a transnational perspective. History, like individual lives, crossed (and re-crossed) oceans – and was shaped by the journey.