Publisher's Synopsis
The late 17th and early 18th century saw the consolidation of the power of the Protestant landed class, the enactment of penal laws against Catholics, and constitutional conflicts that forced Irish Protestants to redefine their ideas of national identity. The author examines these developments and sets them in their historical context. The Ireland which emerges from his analysis was essentially a pre-industrial society in which the dominance of a landed elite depended on maintaining the balance between coercion, deference and an absence of credible pretenders to power; in which the ties of patronage and citizenship were often more important then horizontal bonds of shared economic or social position; and in which religion remained a central part of personal and political motivation.;This book should be of interest to scholars and students of early modern and modern social, religious and political British and Irish history, historians of colonial societies and specialists in 18th-century studies.
