Violent disorder in Ireland provided a bloody backdrop to the first decades of Union government. While the conspicuous failure of the abortive rising led by Robert Emmet in 1803 marked the end of any serious threat to British rule in Ireland, periodic challenges to the rule of the law in the form of violent outrages and agrarian disorder acted as repeated and uncomfortable reminders of the failure of government to assert its authority throughout the country or to win popular acceptance. Agrarian violence has generally been presented as conservative in character and agrarian protest movements as nonpolitical even though the latter clearly had political consequences in terms of the reaction of the authorities. By seeking to establish an alternative code of behavior by which the rural community was to be regulated, agrarian movements presented a direct challenge to government and to the primacy of the law.

The Rockite movement, which was named after its mythical leader Captain Rock, convulsed central and the south-western counties of Ireland in the years from 1821 to 1824. Grievances included the level of rents and tithes (a land charge paid to the established church and thus much resented by Catholic tenants); the behavior of landlords and land agents, particularly where evictions had taken place; the employment of strangers; and the role of middlemen. The movement was notable both for the violence that characterized its progress, including murder, arson, mutilation of people and animals, and, unusual for Ireland, the use of rape as a means of punishment and intimidation, and for the challenge it posed to the authorities. It led to the introduction of emergency powers, the reorganization of the police and the magistracy, and a substantial increase of the military force stationed in Ireland. The violence of the movement reflected the powerlessness of the lower strata of rural society but also the bloody nature of law enforcement in this period.

Donnelly provides a gripping account of the years of Rockite activity, arguing convincingly that the term “movement” in this context is fully justified. Far more than a series of localized outbreaks of violence motivated primarily by economic factors, as many earlier accounts had maintained, this was “a regional agrarian revolt” (18), and those involved acted from a mixture of economic, sectarian, and political motives. It is in dissecting and disentangling these mixed motives that the study is at its strongest, presenting a fascinating picture of the mechanics and dynamics of rural unrest. The product of many years of research, the book's long gestation is both a strength and a weakness. Donnelly's extensive knowledge and deep understanding of Irish rural society irradiate the text, which is consistently informative and illuminating. At the same time, however, he appears more familiar and more comfortable engaging with studies written when he started the project than those produced more recently. Thus, his account of the historiography of the Rockite movement concentrates on works produced in the 1970s and 1980s, largely ignoring more recent works that have challenged earlier interpretations. His emphasis on the political content of the Rockite movement will come as little surprise to readers of Michael Huggins's Social Conflict in Pre-Famine Ireland: The Case of County Rosecommon (Dublin, 2007), which argues that the reluctance of the authorities to see agrarian violence as politically motivated tells us more about official preconceptions than the real character of these movements.

The book is organized thematically with chapters addressing a range of issues including origins and causation, ideology, social composition, patterns of violence, and repression. This allows for much incisive analysis but also produces much repetition. Moreover, while Donnelly demonstrates an impressive mastery of his source material, negotiating his way through a varied assortment of sources with verve and authority, he is at times overly confident of the reliability of the information provided, seeming to take everything on trust. Thus, newspaper reports are assumed to be accurate, outrage reports (produced by the police or stipendiary magistrates) to be based in fact, and the writers of letters to Dublin Castle to be motivated by no more than civic duty. Yet, none of these sources can be taken at face value. Newspapers often reported rumor and gossip rather than facts, and local newspapers frequently contradicted accounts that appeared in the Dublin or London papers. Ministers and their officials quickly came to realize that some stipendiary magistrates could be relied on while others were credulous and alarmist. Writing “history from below” with sources from above, as this study attempts to do, is always going to be problematic. It can be done, but it requires constant questioning of the source material under discussion. Such an approach makes for a less smoothly flowing narrative but a more nuanced history. This is not to detract, however, from the real strengths of this immensely readable and engaging book, which is certain to become the definitive account of the Rockite movement.