Hibernian Sans-Culottes? Dublin’s Artisans and Radical Politics 1790-1798
Timothy Murtagh
La Révolution Française, 11, 2016
Abstract
In Ireland during the 1790s, middle-class radicals and republicans were denigrated by conservatives as Irish ‘Jacobins’. Simultaneously, Irish urban workers (tradesmen, journeymen and apprentices) came to be seen as a potentially dangerous force which resembled – not the bourgeois Jacobins – but the Parisian Sans-culottes. Despite very significant differences between Dublin and Paris, the workers in each city shared certain features, such as a strong egalitarian ethos and a highly literate culture of remonstrance and protest. While Dublin, unlike Paris, was not the site of a successful revolution, it too contained a vibrant radical underworld in which urban workers voiced their political aspirations. This article examines some of the factors that contributed to Dublin’s network of artisan clubs, such as municipal politics, a lively print trade, the ethos of the city guilds, and the interactions between Irish Parliamentarians and the urban ‘mob’. It then examines how Dublin’s artisan radical clubs interacted with, and were eventually incorporated into, the middle-class United Irish Societies. It finally suggests that Dublin’s artisans represent an intriguing case of how revolutionary doctrines were received in Ireland at the popular level.