Daragh Curran has chosen for his volume a title that begs all the really important questions. Ulster Protestantism in the first half of the nineteenth century was divided in a variety of ways: between the heirs to the reform movement of the 1780s and 1790s and supporters of the established order (hardening from the 1830s into a party division between Liberals and Conservatives), between Presbyterians and members of the established Church, between Evangelicals and theological traditionalists, and on economic lines, between landlords and tenants, employers and workers. Most of these cleavages are briefly acknowledged. However they are then subordinated to a simplistic, linear narrative, in which the rising power of Catholic nationalism and diminishing government support combined to unite Ulster Protestants in a shared defensive mind-set that found expression primarily through the Orange Order. This depiction of a monolithic, Orange-dominated Protestantism is strikingly at variance with the conclusions of other recent work. In particular there is no mention of G. R. Hall's Ulster Liberalism, 1778–1876 (2011), a richly documented study that convincingly demonstrates the continuing vitality of Protestant liberalism throughout the 1830s and 1840s. (Hall's study, it should be noted, focuses particularly on urban Ulster: Curran, by contrast, shows remarkably little interest in variations between town and country, or between counties that differed considerably both in economic conditions and in their religious demography.) Where religion is concerned, Curran briefly notes Henry Cooke's crusade to restore religious orthodoxy within the Synod of Ulster, and the rise of popular Evangelicalism, giving both a minor role in his narrative of a hardening of Protestant attitudes. But a throwaway comment to the effect that the political events that are his main concern unfolded against ‘a backdrop of religious hysteria’ (p. 10) indicates that his feel for this part of his subject has rather definite limitations.