Social Conflict in Pre-famine Ireland: The Case of County Roscommon

The author investigates social conflict in Roscommon during the fifty years before the Famine. He demonstrates that both nationalist and modernization explanations of social conflict in pre-Famine Ireland are unsatisfactory. Where nationalist historiography viewed such conflicts as proto-national, and modernization theories saw them as primitive rebellions, Huggins considers that pre-Famine unrest is best understood in terms of an Irish ‘moral economy’ in which traditional and customary notions of justice and rights were conjoined with radical ideas. He examines the use of the ‘moral economy’ concept in an Irish context, assesses the reliability of the sources and conducts a detailed analysis of the evidence from Co. Roscommon, concluding that pre-Famine popular protest originated in considerably more complex and sophisticated beliefs, influences and objectives than has hitherto been understood.