“In the late eighteenth century British politics were widely understood to be corrupt; an entrenched elite protected its own interests and suppressed all who sought change, be they working people of the growing industrial cities, or Roman Catholics forbidden from participating in public life for being on the wrong side of dynastic change over one hundred years earlier. As a result of this dynastic struggle, Ireland had a nominally independent Parliament but remained essentially under military rule from London, and would not be incorporated into the British state until 1800. Inspired by the French Revolution that had preceded it by fifteen years, leftist intellectuals and politicians argued for degrees of change; from electoral reform to republican revolution.
Introduced here are several of the men and women who engaged in this struggle over a period of five years, starting with the public execution of King Louis XVI of France in January 1793, to the failure of the Irish uprising against British rule in 1798.”
Black-and-white portraits of 18th-century revolutionaries against British rule preceded by selections of poetry and followed by an index of each historical figure and their contributions to the cause. -Printed Matter
