Introduction

The introduction will begin with a general account of the Rockite disturbances in the south of Ireland in the early 1820s. The Rockites were on the one hand agrarian activists dealing with local economic issues, on the other they were underground insurrectionaries with distinct political notions such as launching a ‘general rising to upset the established order of things’. That introductory account will be followed by a survey of historiographical background and an analysis of sources. While the book is unique in its approach of a mixture of ‘low’ and ‘high’ history, it is based on an extensive range of primary sources, some of which have never been used before.