Considering Ireland's move from its mid-twentieth century self-identification as a policeman's paradise to the current awareness of crime as an issue in Irish media and society, even if it does not yet register as an issue at election-time, Watt's book on eighteenth-century policing, society, and protest is as timely as it is welcome. While perhaps not the explicit purpose of the book, policing by consent and with public support and approval is an important theme in the book. So too is policing in a fragmented, post-war society. What is interesting in a study of the breaches of criminal law and state authority, is that the book frequently considers issues not always related to ethnic, national, or religious identity, which has in the past been all too evident in studies of Ireland's penal age and golden era. While these were of course issues that did emerge on occasion in this book, it is also very much a study of violence and protest as a manner by which the population vented at the onerous taxation burden and as one chapter is titled, ‘collective bargaining by riot’.

Watt's book is divided into two parts. The first is concerned with the various aspects of policing. In the first chapter he describes the operation of local law enforcement groups that varied according to location, usefulness, and cost to the state. In the first instance, there are those that Watt terms the ‘civil law enforcers in a “self-policing” society’: the local justices of the peace, constables (who were, perhaps, sometimes women), watchmen, sheriffs, all acting occasionally with a posse comitatus or public by-standers, giving rise to a willingness to enforce the laws that were popular and within the framework of a self-policing society. This is followed by chapters on the use of, and the challenges of using, the army and also the militia in regular policing roles in the eighteenth century, but also in their engagement with houghing and agrarian protest, and tories and rapparees. This allows Watt to build on recent works on the growth of the fiscal-military state and particularly barrack-building and military deployment in early eighteenth-century Ireland.

Part Two consists of five chapters, each dealing with particular aspects of popular protest and the reaction of authorities to it. The first of these is the study of the mob, both the self-directed and self-interested mob, frequently community-led, and the mob controlled from above. This is followed by an examination of mob and protest culture in Ireland and the extent to which theories from other states and times might be applicable, particularly those of E. P. Thompson's ‘moral economy’, which is undertaken in a convincing manner. Two chapters then deal with riot and rescue as an anti-taxation expression by Irish communities as Irish military spending put increasing strain on the kingdom, as well as consideration of protest and riot as a reflection of the difficulties in industrial relations in eighteenth-century Ireland's proto-industrial development. The final chapter is concerned with gangs, authority, and corruption in Dublin. Of particular interest is the issue of policing and prison corruption, taken and given serious consideration by both the Irish house of commons and eighteenth-century news outlets.

Source material for this book is wide ranging. The output of Dublin and London's busy newspaper trade has informed the book well, as has the wide spread of manuscript sources used. The minutes of the revenue commissioners to be found in the National Archives at Kew are particularly revealing. This employment of a relatively broad array of sources has given the work a well-rounded feel, and the reader's trust in the author is assured. A very positive aspect of this book is that aside from being a fine study of policing in its own right, it also opens up further, from different angles than sometimes traditionally viewed, the study of inter-denominational relations, class interactions, as well as studies of the relationship between society and the ever-growing state. Watt does an exceptional job at pulling together all of the divergent strands that make up this book, and he presents his convincing and perceptive conclusions in an eloquent manner. There is no doubt that this superb work will remain relevant for a long time to come, and a must-read for anyone interested in crime, policing, protest, and the difficult interaction between the state, its agents, and the subject in the eighteenth century.