Type: Article
Bartlett, Thomas. ‘Religious rivalries in France and Ireland in the age of the French Revolution.’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 6 (1991), pp 57-76..
This article compares and contrasts domestic religious feuding in Ireland and France during the 1790s. Bartlett examines the religious history of France and the counter-revolution in the west and south, fuelled by sectarian rural disturbances. The article makes comparisons with the situation in Ireland, particularly in counties Armagh and Wexford, where protestant settlement was high. Bartlett discusses similarities in the types of violence and response from the authorities in France and Ireland, where in both cases there was an, Acceptance of violence as a customary form of leisure activity. Bartlett discusses the effects of rural industry on rural relations and the fact that disturbances in Armagh were directly related to sectarian resentment over the linen industry. Bartlett concludes that rural revolt in both France and Ireland reflected a peasantry trying to get to grips with a world which was changing fast, in which localism and community were under attack from state interference, the forces of market economy, and from individualism.