Book review: Ribbon Societies in Nineteenth-Century Ireland and its Diaspora by Kyle Hughes and Donald M. MacRaild

In the 1810s, Ribbon societies appeared in Ulster, emerging from the aftermath of 1798, Defenderism and the sectarian tensions of the late-eighteenth century. Throughout most of the nineteenth-century Ribbonism, and anxieties about it, reached into multiple aspects of Irish society, yet very few people ever openly admitted membership and almost all evidence of Ribbon activities lies in police and court records. Varieties of Ribbonism have generated very rich historiography, but most historians have framed their studies within a particular chronological or regional framework. This engaging book by Kyle Hughes and Donald MacRaild presents the first full-length study that ranges across the nineteenth century and investigates multifaceted dimensions of Ribbonism in Ireland and the diaspora.