Riotous Assemblies: Rebels, Riots and Revolts in Ireland - Edited By William Sheehan and Maura Cronin
Dates - 6th September to 11th October
Book Number of 2014 - 50 of 52
Synposis -
Why riot? Against whom? For what? Riotous Assemblies is an account of Irish riots, urban and rural, across the island from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. Ireland has seen many acts of violent protest. From the urban riots against new taxes in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the streets of Ireland have long been a forum for popular insurrection. Covering nearly 450 years of protest, this is the story of an anarchic Ireland, including the tithe riots of the 1830s, riots in Limerick throughout the nineteenth century and the reaction of the forces of the state to twenty-first century protesters
My thoughts -
This book by my standards of knocking a book out in an afternoon the better part of six weeks it took me to get through this book is like an eternity. There were a couple of reasons for that. Firstly it was dense, packed with information about time periods and places that I wasn't familiar with. At points, I had to be reading with one hand ready to google the location of places and events to put the essays into context. The book was not one single narrative but a series of long essays each dealing with a different period of Irish history.
Whilst I found the book interesting and informative, it did have the feel of a first year history textbook about it rather than something enjoyable for the layman.
I was also hoping for a little bit more coverage on the second half of the 20th century, however there was just one short essay covering this.
Would I recommend it - Yes, but only if you have a firm grasp of Irish history