Society of United Irishmen
연합아일랜드인 협회
An Irish political society of the late eighteenth century that began by seeking reform through parliamentary politics, turned into a republican revolutionary organization under the influence of the American and French revolutions, and rose in the 1798 rebellion.
In depth
Founding
The society was formed at a meeting in a Belfast tavern in October 1791, and the meeting-house in Dublin adopted the same resolution. Most of the founding participants were Presbyterians; the exceptions were Thomas Russell, a former East India officer from Cork, and Theobald Wolfe Tone, a political writer in Dublin. The founders resolved to reform the Irish government on 'the principles of civil, political and religious liberty'. The Belfast body was led by Presbyterians, while the Dublin body was a middle-class organization mixing Catholics and Protestants.
A cross-confessional republican program
The Belfast founders called for 'a cordial union among all the people of Ireland' and a complete and radical reform of parliamentary representation, so that 'the rights of man' would be distributed equally 'among all the sects and denominations of Irishmen'. On Tone's proposal the name chosen was the Society of United Irishmen.
The 'Test'
The first pledge, drafted by William Drennan, was approved at the first meeting of the Dublin society in November 1791. It was an oath to seek a fair and adequate representation of the Irish nation in parliament through 'the brotherhood of affection, an identity of interests, a communion of rights, and a union of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion'.
Revolutionary turn
In February 1794 the society demanded manhood suffrage, and in May 1794 it was proscribed; on 10 May 1795 a meeting of delegates from seventy-two Belfast societies revised Drennan's pledge to 'an equal, full and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland', deleting the reference to the Irish parliament. The Insurrection Act of 1796 prescribed capital punishment for administering the oath and life transportation for taking it.
The French alliance
In June 1795 in Belfast, Neilson, Russell, McCracken and Simms, together with Tone, swore 'never to desist until we have subverted the authority of England over our country and asserted her independence'. Tone went to Paris to lobby for French support, and the society reorganized itself on secret and military lines in expectation of French military aid. The French expedition of December 1796 under Hoche reached the sea off Bantry Bay but could not land because of storms.
The 1798 rebellion and suppression
From late May 1798, arrests and martial law exposed the conspiracy and unsystematic local risings broke out across Ireland; in August a small French expeditionary force landed in Mayo but failed to join the rebels. The society aimed to found a republic, but the rebellion was put down. After the suppression the British government forced the Irish parliament into union with Britain, and by the Act of Union of 1800 the Irish parliament was abolished and a Protestant-weighted representation moved to Westminster.
Competing end-dates
The point at which the organization ended is recorded differently across sources. The English Wikipedia infobox gives 'Dissolved 1804', and a Korean Wikipedia table of paramilitary lineage lists 'Society of United Irishmen (1791-1804)', likewise indicating 1804. The article on the 1798 rebellion records that, alongside the renewed attempt in Dublin in 1803, guerrilla activity continued in Wexford and Kilkenny until 1804. Other records hold that after the suppression of 1798 William Putnam McCabe and Robert Emmet and others tried to rebuild on military lines under a 'new organization plan', that Emmet's Dublin rising of 1803 came down to street fighting and ended with his execution, and that the network only unwound when news of Trafalgar in 1805 ended hopes of French support. The period of activity therefore falls between 1791-1803 and 1791-1804.
Distinguishing the name
The charter of the 'American Society of United Irishmen', adopted at a convention in Philadelphia in August 1797, belongs to an emigrant organization separate from the society in Ireland. Reports of United Irish oaths in Newfoundland in 1800 and New South Wales in 1804 must likewise be distinguished from the society in Ireland.