Irish Political Thought and the Union: Visions of Representative Government, 1798-1879

Moving beyond binary nationalist and unionist narratives of nineteenth-century Irish history, this study instead explores political thought through ideological battles over government. Drawing on neglected pamphlets, political tracts and polemic newspapers, Colin Reid reveals how Irish protagonists - unionists and anti-unionists, Catholic Emancipationists, Repealers, Tories, Fenians, and federalists - clashed over the meaning of representation, sovereignty and the British connection. Reid t...