‘Representing Ireland in the Periodical Press During 1848

Abstract

The year of revolutions, 1848, stimulated a passionate discussion of
Irish politics in the British and Irish periodical press. This article  considers the range and nature of that debate. Periodicals represented every shade of opinion across a spectrum extending from the reactionary to the liberal to the revolutionary. Periodicals were deployed by governments in defence of their policies; they were quickly suppressed when they were accounted treasonous and as promptly replaced. The creation of stereotypical versions of the Irish character provided a context for the conditioning of opinion within the public sphere. This coloured the reporting of the Famine and the debate about measures
taken in response to it, and influenced the different responses to agitation, agrarian discontent and sectarian violence. The periodicals imported into the debate about Irish issues some of the effects of political tensions arising from European revolutions, especially those in France and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Various rhetorical strategies were directed at periodical readers in the interests of the competition between agitation and conciliation.