This volume of nine essays had its genesis in A.H.R.C.-funded symposia held in Queen’s University, Belfast in 2008 and 2009, on the theme of multi-lingual radical poetry and song in Britain and Ireland, 1770–1820. A companion volume, with the same editors and publisher, appeared in 2012 under the title United islands? The languages of resistance. The publishers promise further volumes in its series, Poetry and Song in the Age of Revolution.
The essays under review focus, perhaps rather more tightly than those in the 2012 collection, on the key issues raised in the respective volumes’ titles – in the former case, ‘the languages of resistance’, in this case on ‘cultures of radicalism’. Most of the present essays engage, in one way or another, with the widening of the public sphere, arising from growing literacy and (in some cases) reading aloud, which have been well established for the period in question. Overall, however, it is noteworthy that several of the authors find that this widening public sphere, while it might well contribute to the spread of political radicalism, did not necessarily or invariably have that effect. As argued in the essays by Ffion Jones on Welsh ballad singers’ response to the war of American independence, Martyn Powell on Scottophobia in Ireland, Niall Ó Ciosáin on printed anthologies in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Maura Cronin on broadside literature and popular opinion in Munster, and Dan Wall on literary magazines, such widening could sometimes foster or express conservative, loyalist, and/or Unionist views. Much depended on the particular geographies and political constituencies of the expanding public sphere. And in her essay on serial literature and radical poetry in Wales, Marion Löffler reminds us of how tiny some of these constituencies were. The only Welsh town, apparently, that possessed anything approaching an urban culture was Swansea – with a population in 1801 of just 6,099.
The sheer complexity of political stances in the material under review is striking. E. Wyn James discusses William Williams of Pantycelyn (d. 1791), a leading Methodist, and ‘the father of the Welsh hymn’. Most of his writing was in Welsh. James notes that despite its millenarian aspects and its difficulties with the Church of England establishment, Welsh Methodism was in general a force for loyalty and conservatism during the revolutionary era. However, in two ways – its support for the missionary movement and the anti-slave-trade campaign – Methodism also contained more radical tendencies. For Williams, the Welsh (and other peoples) needed to be educated about the religions of the world, so as to promote his post-millennial expectations of the orderly global spread of the Christian gospel. To this extent, his outlook was consistent with Enlightenment values. Moreover, one of his most popular hymns (in English) envisaged that Christ’s saving power should extend to freedom for slaves. Thus James suggests that Enlightenment and evangelical values were not necessarily at odds – a view that would be worth exploring further with respect to the Irishman Whitley Stokes, one of the writers discussed in Niall Ó Ciosáin’s essay.
Similarly, Bob Harris examines the political views of the Scot Lord Daer (d. 1795), which had particular implications for the ‘British’ dimensions of radicalism. A political reformer who joined the London Corresponding Society, Daer was a strong critic of the Anglo–Scottish Union of 1707. He was also deeply involved in Enlightenment projects. While all that sounds consistent enough (reminding us that aristocrats could be at the heart of reform in this period), Harris argues that Daer rejected United Irish efforts to appeal to Scottish nationalism. Rather, he favoured promoting a union of hearts, interests, and ‘improving’ measures as the best means of avoiding the destruction that ‘is coming on all the earth’. Thus Daer’s vision, with its apocalyptic overtones, involved eclipsing the 1707 Union in favour of a genuine people’s union. Achieving that would involve closer cooperation between radicals in the various parts of Britain and Ireland.
Taking a different approach, Chris Whatley considers the political and cultural legacy of Robert Burns, discussing how first Scottish Tories and subsequently many other political groupings attempted to shape Burns’s memory in their own interests. Such groups included radicals, advocates of laissez-faire, freemasons, and Chartists. It is apparent, too, that Burns enjoyed a ‘four-nations’ appeal.
Overall, these essays will appeal particularly to those interested in the expanding public sphere, the range of political opinions expressed in the various languages under discussion, and in the ‘British’ dimensions of these ideas.
