Among historians there is an enduring temptation to overstate the novelty of their interpretations. More than a decade ago, the bicentenary of the 1798 rebellion spawned a commemorative industry in which, in Jim Smyth's phrase, the mass politicization of the age formed the “master theme.” Yet while Samuel McSkimmin (1775–1843) claimed the ambition of the Society of the United Irishman was to “make every man a consummate politician,” Padhraig Higgins argues that rather than initiating a process of mass politicization, they were advancing the achievement of the previous decade. A Nation of Politicians aims to locate “the beginnings of Ireland's richly vocal political tradition” in the context of the Volunteer movement (quotes from back cover). This brings a welcome dynamism to a familiar narrative, in a study that is provocative rather than definitive.

This is not, nor does it claim to be, a history of the Volunteers. It is, in many respects, a collection of essays on aspects of Volunteering, which apply the insights of the new social history, gender theory, and postmodern interpretations to the age. The result is a stimulating volume that assimilates the “harp untuned,” the scholarship of James Kelly, Toby Barnard, David Dickson, Jacqueline Hill, Peter Smyth, and a generation of historians whose work has called for an effective synthesis. The study relies heavily on printed sources, and where manuscript material is employed the footnote citations are frequently inadequate, consisting simply of archival call numbers. However, Higgins demonstrates the vitality of the period and a new type of politics that turned the world upside down.

This is a richly layered volume that assesses the varied dimensions of politicization, sociability, consumption, and gender. Geographically, too, Higgins takes Volunteering beyond the urban focus, and the broad scope of patriot penetration is reflected in the diverse addresses and toasts from across the island. Prints, broadsheets, ballads, pamphlets, and the press all possessed potential, but effective communication required a judicious choice of the appropriate medium; the pamphlet was an expensive option, but one which Drennan believed afforded “an air of authority” (49). The press, in Eden's estimation, was the “principal operative power in the government of this kingdom” (46), but Higgins's intent is not to narrate but to demonstrate the dynamics of the media that allowed readers to “imagine themselves” part of the national, international, and imperial community (35).

The unprecedented scale of this imagined community gave patriotism its potential, but it was perhaps the paramilitary muscle rather the moral force of this “nation of politicians” that secured the constitutional fruits of the Volunteer agitation. Higgins goes beyond the familiar narrative and adds a vital gendered perspective, correcting a conspicuous deficiency in the traditional historiography. This discussion is not confined to rescuing the female voice, but it addresses the gender issues at the heart of a “manly defence” of independence (18). He engages not just with “masculine patriotism,” “petticoat government,” and “Amazon ladies” but with a gendered polemic, in which patriots attacked a corrupt, prostitute parliament, while their opponents in London employed similar metaphors to portray a sexualized Hibernia with her “ports open for trade” (189). At stake was not an ethnic patriotism but a defense of civil liberties, and employing concepts similar to Colin Kidd's “north-Britishness,” Higgins expands on Ian McBride's assertion that Irish patriotism became more Anglocentric (23), in a line of argument that allows him to demonstrate the apparent paradox of patriotic exploitation of the Keppel case (64).

The traditional criticism of Volunteer historiography is that it worked backward, interpreting the movement from the perspective of its achievement rather than its origins. There is an element of this in Higgins, too, and there is no sustained attempt to engage with the limited ambition of the first Volunteers who assembled in response to the “Apprehension of Invasion.” Similarly, references to “the half-naked and starving” cited in a Wicklow address could be expanded (116), and more might be said about the severe economic crises that gave the politics of consumption an immediate appeal. Moreover, Volunteer recognition of Swift as the progenitor of consumer politics is perhaps an acknowledgment that the patriots themselves were less mindful of their originality than Higgins. The same might be deduced from the presence of Boyne, Aughrim, and Culloden companies in the ranks of the Cork Volunteers that, as ATQ Stewart argued, reflected their self-conscious continuity from the 1640s. Certainly enhanced “participatory citizenship” was the hallmark of the age, but Higgins provides tantalizing glimpses of ubiquitous class tensions that warrant fuller elaboration (127). Neither is it apparent whether the Enlightened and Catholic character of the age was a consequence of Volunteer agitation or whether they were themselves the product of that spirit (157). Indeed, the absence of a contextual chapter deprives the uninitiated reader of the keys to the age. This is especially true in the treatment of the Catholic Question, which pays scant attention to the vital context and a series of contested relief measures that provoked visceral reactions in certain protestant quarters and significant divisions within Catholicism itself.

Higgins's conclusion, however, is a vindication of his original thesis. Such was the “democratical spirit” of the age that no movement could remain united given the scope of the political and reform agenda that it confronted. Ironically, the eventual split, rather than betraying a weakness within patriotism, was in fact a testament to its success. This is, indeed, a provocative volume. It provokes questions rather than providing answers, but the novelty of Higgins's methodology and perspective have established a new standard and a challenge to the historians of the 1780s.