- Department: History
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: H
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
Eighteenth-century Ireland was the site of an uneasy peace. The plantations and wars of the seventeenth century had seen the transfer of land and power to an Anglo-Irish Protestant minority, while the dispossessed Catholic majority endured under an oppressive penal code. If an uneasy peace prevailed for much of the century, it would culminate in the brutality and bloodshed of the 1798 rebellion. Yet the preceding decades had been characterised by a certain optimism. Over the course of the eighteenth century the embattled Irish Protestant community increasingly came to identify as Irish and to champion Enlightenment ideas. Though many Irish Catholics continued to profess loyalty to the Stuart Pretender there would be no Jacobite rebellion in Ireland. Emerging from this background of Irish Protestant Patriotism and greater toleration for Catholics, the Society of United Irishmen was founded in Belfast and Dublin in 1791. Inspired by the French Revolution the movement campaigned for radical political reform and ultimately the creation of an independent, non-sectarian Irish republic. They would begin the decade as highly effective political polemicists, they would end it as armed revolutionaries.
This module will provide a detailed introduction to the contested history of eighteenth-century Ireland, focusing in particular on its final decades. Drawing on a rich array of primary sources – parliamentary speeches, political pamphlets, poetry, diaries and memoirs – we will explore a range of issues and questions. We will engage with well-established debates in Irish history and study more recent approaches and perspectives, including gender, race and memory.
Students taking this module must also take the second part in Semester 2.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Semester 1 2024-25 |
The aims of this module are:
Students who complete this module successfully will:
Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1 and a 3-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11 of semester 1. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW). Students prepare for and participate in eight three-hour seminars in all.
Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
None
For formative work, students will produce a text commentary.
The summative assessment will consist of two parts, to be submitted together:
a) Two text commentaries of 500-750 words; and
b) One 1,500-word essay.
The commentaries comprise 50% and the essay 50% of the overall mark for this module. Summative assessments will be due in the assessment period.
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
Following their formative task, students will typically receive written feedback that will include comments and a mark within 10 working days of submission.
Work will be returned to students in their seminars and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their formative work during their tutor’s student hours. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.
For summative assessment tasks, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.
For semester time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading: