The End of Outrage
Post-Famine Adjustment in Rural Ireland
Published on 17. August 2017
Book
Hardback
338 pages
978-0-19-873861-9 (ISBN)
Description
South-west Donegal, Ireland, June 1856.
From the time that the blight first came on the potatoes in 1845, armed and masked men dubbed Molly Maguires had been raiding the houses of people deemed to be taking advantage of the rural poor. On some occasions, they represented themselves as 'Molly's Sons', sent by their mother, to carry out justice; on others, a man attired as a woman, introducing 'herself' as Molly Maguire, demanding redress for wrongs inflicted on her children. The raiders might stipulate the maximum price at which provisions were to be sold, warn against the eviction of tenants, or demand that an evicted family be reinstated to their holding. People who refused to meet their demands were often viciously beaten and, in some instances, killed -- offences that the Constabulary classified as 'outrages'. Catholic clergymen regularly denounced the Mollies and in 1853, the district was proclaimed under the Crime and Outrage (Ireland) Act. Yet the 'outrages' continued.
Then, in 1856, Patrick McGlynn, a young schoolmaster, suddenly turned informer on the Mollies, precipitating dozens of arrests. Here, a history of McGlynn's informing, backlit by episodes over the previous two decades, sheds light on that wave of outrage, its origins and outcomes, the meaning and the memory of it. More specifically, it illuminates the end of 'outrage' -- the shifting objectives of those who engaged in it, and also how, after hunger faded and disease abated, tensions emerged in the Molly Maguires, when one element sought to curtail such activity, while another sought, unsuccessfully, to expand it. And in that contention, when the opportunities of post-Famine society were coming into view, one glimpses the end, or at least an ebbing, of outrage -- in the everyday sense of moral indignation -- at the fate of the rural poor. But, at heart, The End of Outrage is about contention among neighbours -- a family that rose from the ashes of a mode of living, those consumed in the conflagration, and those who lost much but not all. Ultimately, the concern is how the poor themselves came to terms with their loss: how their own outrage at what had been done unto them and their forbears lost malignancy, and eventually ended. The author being a native of the small community that is the focus of The End of Outrage makes it an extraordinarily intimate and absorbing history.
From the time that the blight first came on the potatoes in 1845, armed and masked men dubbed Molly Maguires had been raiding the houses of people deemed to be taking advantage of the rural poor. On some occasions, they represented themselves as 'Molly's Sons', sent by their mother, to carry out justice; on others, a man attired as a woman, introducing 'herself' as Molly Maguire, demanding redress for wrongs inflicted on her children. The raiders might stipulate the maximum price at which provisions were to be sold, warn against the eviction of tenants, or demand that an evicted family be reinstated to their holding. People who refused to meet their demands were often viciously beaten and, in some instances, killed -- offences that the Constabulary classified as 'outrages'. Catholic clergymen regularly denounced the Mollies and in 1853, the district was proclaimed under the Crime and Outrage (Ireland) Act. Yet the 'outrages' continued.
Then, in 1856, Patrick McGlynn, a young schoolmaster, suddenly turned informer on the Mollies, precipitating dozens of arrests. Here, a history of McGlynn's informing, backlit by episodes over the previous two decades, sheds light on that wave of outrage, its origins and outcomes, the meaning and the memory of it. More specifically, it illuminates the end of 'outrage' -- the shifting objectives of those who engaged in it, and also how, after hunger faded and disease abated, tensions emerged in the Molly Maguires, when one element sought to curtail such activity, while another sought, unsuccessfully, to expand it. And in that contention, when the opportunities of post-Famine society were coming into view, one glimpses the end, or at least an ebbing, of outrage -- in the everyday sense of moral indignation -- at the fate of the rural poor. But, at heart, The End of Outrage is about contention among neighbours -- a family that rose from the ashes of a mode of living, those consumed in the conflagration, and those who lost much but not all. Ultimately, the concern is how the poor themselves came to terms with their loss: how their own outrage at what had been done unto them and their forbears lost malignancy, and eventually ended. The author being a native of the small community that is the focus of The End of Outrage makes it an extraordinarily intimate and absorbing history.
Reviews / Votes
Mac Suibhne's superb account brings us face to face with subaltern nineteenthcentury rural Ireland. * Peter Leary, Irish Historical Studies * ... a sweeping historical tale ...Mac Suibhne paints an evocative canvas of clashing tribes and morally opaque characters. ...a historical companion to understanding the Irish Catholic experience not only in Donegal, but also in northeastern Pennsylvania. * Charles McElwee, American Conservative * Mac Suibhne provides an insight not only into Beagh during the famine but also into the later troubles in Beagh: clearances, land-grabbing and informing ... Mac Suibhne has reminded us of the importance of the way that the response to local events can illuminate a moment in a country's history. * Maureen Murphy, History * For Mac Suibhne nothing is simple; no one is purely victim or villain; the dominant colour is not green or orange but grey. There are dramatic events and extraordinary characters ... Through it all there is imagination, a commitment to showing people as "more than shadows cold and wan" ... It is impossible not to be moved by the humanity with which Mac Suibhne writes of his ancestors and their neighbours, or to be provoked by his unconventional epic. From a local row he has crafted an extraordinary work of history that makes its own importance. * Christopher Kissane, Irish Times * Breandan Mac Suibhne has provided us with a remarkable new history in his new book The End of Outrage ... he not only tells that story of integration into the market order, but of, in his words, the end of moral indignation in the face of despair and disaster, and of the fate of rural poor -- for it is from those families that the casualties of the famine came. It vividly describes a process of marginalisation, of the consolidation of holdings on the eve of the Famine, the extinguishing of commonage -- all facilitated by the instruments of a new technology of the state, the ordnance survey. * President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins * The End of Outrage is a remarkable book ... The reader of this book is from the outset captured and captivated by its bivalve nature as both a local and personal memoir, as an historical record and a meditation on generational change. * Seamus Dean, Dublin Review of Books * a minute and exacting analysis of one very small place in Southwest Donegal becomes a rumination on how the living rub along with the dead, how forgetting happens and how outrage (grudges, feuding, revenge, violence) ends. It is an extraordinary act of recovery and is set to become a classic of Irish historiography ... [a] marvelous book * Frank Shovlin, Liverpool Postgraduate Journal of Irish Studies * [a] remarkable book ... Mac Suibhne's forensic interrogation of local 'memory' -- scrupulously avoiding verdicts, vindications or sentimentality -- is a masterclass in assessing an extraordinary range of historical sources in both vernaculars, Irish and English. This is an exceptional work of scholarship and historical reconstruction. Rich in evidence, conceptually sharp and challenging, and beautifully written, it will be compulsory reading for all students of modern Ireland for a long time to come. * Gearoid O Tuathaigh in Canadian Journal of Irish Studies *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
557 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-873861-9 (9780198738619)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2017
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€16.99
Available for download
E-Book
08/2017
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€16.99
Available for download
Person
Breandan Mac Suibhne is a historian of modern Ireland (PhD, Carnegie Mellon). His publications include, with David Dickson, The Outer Edge of Ulster (2000), an annotated edition of the longest lower-class account of Ireland's Great Famine. He was born in the community that is the focus of The End of Outrage, making it a particularly intimate and absorbing history of a small place in a time of great change.
Content
PART I; PART II; PART III; PART IV