This is a two volume study of over 2,000 pages with 255 illustrations published in July 2023, the 175th anniversary of the Young Ireland Rising at the Widow McCormack's house, Farranrory Upper, Ballingarry, Co. Tipperary on 29th July 1848 and the bringing of the tricolour flag from Paris by Thomas Francis Meagher. The house is now a national heritage museum under the OPW and is known as the Famine Warhouse 1848.
Volume 1:
The focus of Volume 1 is not on a single individual but on the collective that became known as Young Ireland. It attempts to establish why and how did such a group of like-minded, able and youthful individuals cohere in Dublin to leave such rich cultural and political legacies to Ireland.
The overarching context was Ireland's relationship with Great Britain but more pertinent at home was Young Ireland's participation in Daniel O'Connell's Loyal National Repeal Association. There is much new material here on the foundation of the Nation newspaper, inspired by Thomas Davis; the break with O'Connell; John Mitchel's United Irishman; the influence of the overthrow of the French monarchy; the visit of the Irish Confederation delegation led by William Smith O'Brien to Paris; the unveiling of the tricolour; the suspension of Habeas Corpus and the road to revolution in Tipperary in July 1848.
The judicious use of archival sources, coupled with the author's local knowledge, makes this the most comprehensive reconstruction of the failed 1848 Rising yet undertaken.
Volume 2:
Beyond the Rising shows how the Young Irelanders, at home and in exile, were divided between those who espoused constitutional politics and those who persisted with physical force. The constitutional Young Irelanders, such as John Blake Dillon, sought incremental political change through participation in the Westminster parliament. James Stephens, Michael Doheny and John O'Mahony, the physical force men, established the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood in Ireland and the Fenian Brotherhood in America, thereby creating the first trans-Atlantic, mass separist movement in Irish history. Volume 2 is also concerned with the interaction of the exiled Young Irelanders, with the great open frontiers and emerging cities in the new worlds of Australia, North America and Canada. Charles Gavan Duffy's premiership in Victoria, and Thomas D'Arcy McGee's political career in Canada are assessed. In North America, the Civil War complicated matters for the exiles. Thomas Francis Meagher and his Irish Brigade were on the Union side, wheras John Mitchel supported the Southern Confederacy and slavery. The books bring the Young Irelanders from the cradle to the grave. It is the literary legacy of the Young Irelanders and their intense love of Ireland which endures.
