In the 1970s Irish historians were expected to look at the 1790s primarily through the lens of the contemporary Northern Ireland crisis: Did the alliance of Presbyterian radicals and Catholics in the events leading to the 1798 rebellion demonstrate that the Ulster Protestants were “really Irish” and reconciliation inevitable once “the British” stopped interfering? Or did the breakdown of that alliance demonstrate how ineradicable was the sectarian divide in Irish society? One benefit of the retreat of Northern Ireland from the headlines in the 1980s has been the liberation of historians from such loaded questions and the redirection of their attention to what was actually happening in the period.