What is the place of Irish reform in the British ‘age of reform’, and how did the 1801 Act of Union between Britain and Ireland affect the development of reform in Ireland? The historical literature on reform has usually focused on the development of centralized interpretations of reform, their imposition on the ‘periphery’, and the local responses to central initiatives. These themes are particularly prominent in the Irish case since English historical interpretations of reform in Ireland usually focus on Ireland as a problem for British reformers or as a ‘social laboratory’, while Irish interpretations usually concentrate on responses to British policy (including reforming initiatives) as key elements in the emergence of two opposed forms of political identity in Ireland, namely Irish nationalist and Protestant Unionist identities. In contrast, this chapter considers reform movements that emerged within Ireland, which were locally led, and which represented responses to changing Irish circumstances, but which were shaped by their competitive relationship with one another, and by a changing relationship between locality and centre under the Union.

In Ireland there were two main and competing approaches to reform during the first half of the nineteenth century, which shared an emphasis on using British political structures to achieve Irish ends, and which can therefore be seen as different ways of positioning Ireland within the framework of the Union.