Was Ireland a Colony? a collection of essays edited by Terrence McDonough, wastes no time in answering the question posed in the title. McDonough definitively states in his introduction that Ireland in the nineteenth century was a colony, and the bulk of the contributors to the book agree with him. Indeed, there is no lack of cohesion among the seventeen essays here; the book is strongly antirevisionist, detailing British colonial policies and abuses throughout.

While the book is cohesive, the topics covered by the essays are by no means narrow in scope. While the first two sections of the book focus on the economic and political situation of nineteenth-century Ireland, the third and fourth sections of the book focus on culture, including essays analyzing the works of Maria Edgeworth and John and Michael Banim. The contributors to Was Ireland a Colony? take a variety of approaches, and as such the book provides a good overview of the variety of work being done in the field of Irish Colonial studies.

What is missing from the book is a full consideration of the question asked in the title. While some of the essays do not focus directly on the structures of imperial control, none question the basic colonial status of nineteenth-century Ireland. The contributors to Was Ireland a Colony? either argue for Ireland's colonial status or accept it as an established fact. The quite obvious issue with the choice of title aside, more problematic is the fact that Ireland's colonial status in the nineteenth century is more ambiguous than is presented in the book. Salient questions that could have been raised are not considered, such as the degree to which emancipation and land reform gave the Irish a voice in the kingdom. The Catholic population of Ireland gained political rights throughout the nineteenth century beginning in 1829 with Catholic Emancipation. The representatives of Irish Catholics were a major player in nineteenth-century politics at Westminster, with the issue of Irish Home Rule effectively splitting the Liberal party. Catholic political action did not result in the repeal of the Union or in Home Rule, but important victories were won, among them the Land Acts of 1881, 1885, and 1903. The Land Acts first lowered rents and then transferred land ownership from the landlords to their former tenants. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Irish Catholics owned a significant portion of the land and enjoyed political rights on par with the Protestant inhabitants of Ireland and Britain. This is not to argue that Ireland was a free and equal part of the United Kingdom, but the Land Acts, peasant proprietorship, and Catholic political participation all raise fundamental questions about the changing colonial status of nineteenth-century Ireland.

However, these questions, most importantly the issues of how the Land Acts altered the colonial character of Ireland, are not touched on in any of the contributions to Was Ireland a Colony? Editor Terrence McDonough, Eamonn Slater, and Thomas Boylan come closest to approaching the issue of the Land Acts in their essay “Irish Political Economy, before and after the Famine,” which shows how the Famine made peasant proprietorship an option that the British government was willing to consider. McDonough, Slater, and Boylan show how the Land Acts became possible within British politics and economics but fail to examine how the Land Acts changed Ireland's colonial nature. Terry Eagleton in his afterword briefly touches on the issue, admitting at least the possibility that full political participation on the part of Catholics could represent an end to colonialism. This is the closest any contributor in the book comes to considering the implications of increased Catholic rights in the debate over Ireland's colonial nature.

The majority of the essays accept Ireland's colonial status as unproblematic, and as such present an overly simplified picture of nineteenth-century Ireland. Christine Kinealy's contribution, “Was Ireland a Colony? The Evidence of the Great Famine,” details how the Irish colonial situation made mortality during the Great Famine worse. She is correct in showing how famine relief was hindered by the British economic philosophy of the time; however, she suggests that the British elite in Westminster viewed the Famine as a beneficial event that would allow Ireland to be remade in Britain's best interests. This comes close to arguing for an official policy of genocide on the part of the British government during the Famine. As Cormac O’Grada argues in his seminal Black ’47 and Beyond (Princeton, NJ, 1999), British economic policy during the Famine never represented an active policy on the part of the British to exterminate the Irish race. Kinealy also does not mention recent arguments made by O’Grada and others that the scope of the Famine was such that no level of relief could have completely prevented mortality.

Pamela M. Clayton's chapter, “Two Kinds of Colony: `Rebel Ireland' and the `Imperial Province’” comes to the predictable conclusion that Unionists in Ireland supported the British Empire, while Nationalists resisted it. Clayton claims in her conclusion that Irish Catholics made a significant contribution to building the British Empire abroad, but this assertion is reflected nowhere in her chapter, which focuses on the imperial activities of Irish Protestants. Indeed, the majority of the essays in the book cast the Irish Catholic population of the nineteenth century as pawns of British imperial policy, completely devoid of agency.

Not surprisingly, the best chapters in the book are those that complicate this picture. In his chapter “The Material Implications of Colonialism in Early Nineteenth-Century Ireland,” Charles E. Orser Jr. uses archeological evidence to argue that Catholic tenants withheld their rent money during the nineteenth century in order to enter the consumer marketplace. Here at last the Catholic tenant emerges as an active agent, resisting colonial domination in order to participate in British consumer culture through the purchase of ceramics. Sean Ryder, in his contribution “Defining Colony and Empire in Early Nineteenth-Century Irish Nationalism,” shows how the meaning of colonialism shifted during the nineteenth century, taking on alternately positive and negative connotations for Irish Nationalists. Finally, Eagleton's afterword, “Ireland and Colonialism,” at last takes time to present briefly the arguments for and against the colonial status of Ireland instead of assuming it as given. Eagleton argues that Ireland was a colony but at least admits that alternate viewpoints are possible. Both Ryder and Eagleton argue that Ireland's status as a colony was never a simple matter, an idea that is unfortunately not reflected in the majority of the book. Except for a few contributions, Was Ireland a Colony? never fully considers the complex nature of Ireland's colonial status, making its contribution to the field of Irish colonial studies limited.