Captain Rock

“Donnelly’s knowledge of Irish rural society is both broad and deep, and this is by far the most thorough and insightful study of this tragic, complex, and very important episode in pre-famine Irish history.”—Kerby Miller, author of Emigrants and Exiles|“No account of pre-famine Ireland will be considered even remotely complete without taking on board the findings of this excellent book. Accessibly written and often elegant, Captain Rock will appeal not only to historians of Ireland but also to specialists in political violence and official responses to it.”—Thomas Bartlett, author of The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation|

“In probing this remarkable episode so thoroughly and acutely, Donnelly has also given us a fascinating anatomy of pre-Famine peasant society. As an exposure of a hidden mental universe, an exploration of the roots of a particularly psychotic strand in Irish Catholic nationalism and a reflection on violence itself, Captain Rock is as important as it is startling.”—Fintan O’Toole, The Irish Times

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“Donnelly relates a complex story in telling detail. . . . An important acquisition for all Irish studies collections. Summing Up: Highly recommended.”—Choice     

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“No historian has done more than Jim Donnelly to clarify the endemic tensions and conflicts bedeviling rural Ireland throughout the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ever since the appearance in 1975 of The Land and the People of Nineteenth-Century Cork, Donnelly has tirelessly explored the interaction between political, legal, economic, and religous factors in generating particular episodes of rural unrest. . . . Captain Rock . . . is also an important contribution to the study of agrarian societies and a monument, weighty in both senses, to the career of a remarkable historian of Ireland.”—David Fitzpatrick, Studia Hibernica

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“This is an excellent book and one upon which others are sure to build. Besides its presentation of the subject and sterling analysis three things merit note. One is the author's introduction to the work, an introduction which admirably serves to prepare the reader and promises where the reader where the story is going to go. The second is to say that this is a book well suited to use in courses in modem Irish history. The final note is topraise the book's use of numerous illustrations. Not only are these illuminating but they bear truly useful captions. In a time when Irish history is actively exploring the visual evidence of the past, one could only wish that more publishers would use these types of sources in this way. The illustrations make clear, in the same way Jim Donnelly has in his exploration of this subject, just how important all those rebels were helping to forge the politics of an emerging nation.”—Sean Farrell Moran, Irish Literary Supplement

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“Donnelly’s Captain Rock is, in short, a substantial achievement. Its detailed study of the origins, ideology, organization, and violence of the Rockite movement manages to be both measured and profound, and future discussions of the popular politics and agrarian agitation in nineteenth-century Ireland will have to engage its conclusions.”—Timothy G. McMahon, New Hibernia