‘The first chapter of 1798’? Restoring a military perspective to the Irish Militia riots of 1793

Extract

The riots that followed the introduction in 1793 of a system of raising the newly refounded Irish militia regiments by ballot have attracted the attention of several historians. In more recent years the political importance of the episode has been emphasised, and the riots have been represented as marking a crucial stage in the breakdown of social and political relations within Ireland in the 1790s that eventually resulted in rebellion.

This was not the view of Sir Henry McAnally, author of the only complete history of the militia itself, which was written in the 1930s and published in 1949. As befitted the work of a retired civil servant, McAnally’s history was very careful and restrained in its account and analysis of the Militia Act of 1793 and the introduction of the ballot. He did not devote much attention to the operation of the act, regarding the ensuing riots as peripheral to his main focus of interest. Indeed, in comparison to the widespread and serious rioting that accompanied the establishment of the English Militia in 1757, the Irish disturbances appeared to McAnally to be a transient phenomenon, of limited significance. They did not leave ‘in the popular soul any such bitter memories as remained after other episodes in Irish history’. ‘May 1793 is not one of the black months in that story,’ he wrote; ‘it is not the first chapter of 1798.’