Outline The Aims Of The United Irishmen, 1791-1794 - Essay Example

The first organizations were begun in Dublin and Belfast in 1791. The reasons behind the formation of the United Irish Society included frustration with the Whig Clubs lack of interest in parliamentary reform, and inspiration from events in France (Dickson 182). Complete and radical reform of parliament was one early United Irish goal. Although the original militant republican aims that the United Irishmen held accepted monarchy, the United Irishmen would later become anti-English as well as an anti-monarchical republican movement.

The original republican aims also included to: "curb powers of central government; to preserve fundamental liberties; and to secure religious toleration" (Elliott xiii). It was only after their original aims were frustrated that the United Irishmen became anti-monarchical and began to consider armed insurrection, with the aid of the French, as a means of liberating Ireland. The United Irishmen were political reformers, but not social reformers (Elliott xvii). Their aim was not to return land back to the Catholics that the English protestants had confiscated.

The United Irishmen sought national self-determination for all religions within Ireland. Their main aim later in the 1790s was an Irish revolution. The United Irishmen movement consisted of roughly equal numbers of Catholics and Protestants; however, the leaders of the movement were mainly Protestants (Elliott xiii). It is through this later aim for revolution that the United Irishmen formed an alliance with the Defenders, a Catholic lower class secret society. Unlike the United Irishmen, the Defenders did support land being returned to the original Catholic owners.

But the Protestant leaders within the United Irishmen were not interested in this type of social reform. In fact, the leaders of the United Irishmen feared that the lower class Catholics would retaliate against the Protestants and attempt land reversal