Abstract

When Theobald Wolfe Tone arrived in France in February 1796, intent on securing French help to win Irish independence from England and to establish a republic in Ireland, his greatest challenge was not to convince the Directory to launch an expedition to Ireland, but in persuading them that the Irish were mature enough to become republicans and were not mere Chouans. Was Tone deluded and did he embellish the revolutionary potential of the Irish, especially the secret society of the Defenders, as the dominant (revisionist) historiography claims? A close look at the available sources, and a new reading against the grain, or under a ‘satanic light’, of the available sources, allows us to better delineate what could have been an Irish republic or, at least, to situate the Defenders within an Atlantic context of popular politicisation – the ‘Atlantic Republic’.