Introduction: Militia issues

Summary

Historians have long recognised the importance of the militia in eighteenth-century England, Scotland and the American colonies. This has been seen to lie not just in its military roles, but in its provision of a key political battleground, on which issues of the relationships between rulers and ruled, and the structure of the constitution, were disputed. Militia-type organisations outside the Anglophone world have also drawn the attentions of historians, in particular those in the United Provinces, Geneva and France. The rights of citizens to bear arms, their consequent roles in the state, and the implications of such service for subjects and rulers, have all been recognised as having profound consequences within legislative and governmental systems. They were especially acute in this period because a central part of the process of the consolidation of state power in eighteenth-century Europe was the expansion of national armed forces, and in particular standing armies. Considerations of conflict, competition and empire led to the rise of the ‘fiscal–military state’, in which the expansion of regular armed forces was coupled with increasing taxation, and growing professionalism in government. Arguably the composite monarchy of Britain and Ireland represented the archetypal example of such changes. However, the political, constitutional and military issues that surrounded the concept of the militia in eighteenth-century Ireland have rarely been considered. Where the force itself has been mentioned it has generally been as a social project rather than a military or political one, and stress has usually been laid upon its inefficiency and ineffectiveness.