Jonathan Jeffrey Wright is Lecturer in British History at Maynooth University.
Jonathan Jeffrey Wright's The 'Natural Leaders' and their World is an important contribution to the history of Belfast as well as to the broader subjects of Ulster liberalism and Presbyterianism. By stepping out of the usual historiographical constraints placed upon the period, Wright has produced a confident and enlightening first monograph, one that hopefully will help to steer future research into what is perhaps the most neglected period of modern Ulster's history. A great deal of impressive research has been published on the momentous events which brought the 18th century to a close and resulted in a new political reality for the Irish. However, scholarship focusing on the first decades of the 19th century has been surprisingly thin, bookended between the Act of Union and the era of Daniel O'Connell, the campaigns for Catholic emancipation, repeal and finally the Great Famine. In the case of Ulster, a great amount of historical writing has focused on developments within Ulster Presbyterian thought and the shift from the radicalism of the late 18th-century to the eventual rise of Henry Cooke and the perceived shift towards political and theological conservatism. Wright however attempts to move beyond these previous scholarly guideposts. In short, Wright seeks to build upon the body of scholarship concerning Ulster during this period and to marshal it forward. He does this with what he calls a 'quasi-biographical' approach. Wright is to be commended for how well he applies this potentially difficult methodology. He bases his research in the extensive correspondence of the Tennents, an important middle-class Ulster family in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Through them he is able to trace the activities of the 'natural leaders', a small group of Belfast's leading reformers. This term, which was recorded by their contemporary A. H. Thornton, was chosen by the members of this clique to describe their relation to the people of Belfast (p. 49). As Wright demonstrates and newspapers of all political stripes observed, members of the Tennent family were a part of a small group that championed liberal causes in Belfast during this period. This faction was made up of the most advanced reformers in Belfast and included William Drennan, John Templeton and others. This group is set against the Reverend Dr. William Bruce and Henry Joy, who were the pillars of a more moderate group of liberals. It is important to note that the 'natural leaders' were by no means representative and Wright is quite clear that his book is an exploration of their particular cultural milieu. Wisely, Wright also sets strict chronological and geographical parameters for the book, providing it a focus of vision that other recent works on the subject have lacked. One of the book's significant strengths is Wright's use of the most recent scholarship in the field, including recently completed dissertations. Much of this scholarship concerns developments within the wider British historiography. Central to Wright's purpose is to incorporate the cultural and political environment of Belfast's radicals in the decades after the Act of Union into a decidedly 'British' context. In doing so Wright casts new light upon the political culture of the period, rescuing it from previous negative assessments. Wright begins with a chapter that provides a brief biographical sketch of the Tennent family. The Reverend John Tennent, the family patriarch, was a Scottish Presbyterian minister who settled in Ulster in the mid 18th century and was associated with the seceding faction of Ulster Presbyterians. Two of his sons, William and Robert, are the central figures of the book. William Tennent would eventually become a wealthy Belfast merchant, but prior to his later economic successes he was a member of the Ulster circle of the United Irishmen. There has been some debate over the extent to which Tennent was involved with the society. Wright provides a comprehensive survey of the evidence and concludes that Tennent must be considered one of the highest-ranking members of the secret organization in Ulster. He would eventually be imprisoned for his activities in the spring of 1798 and his life would eventually be spared after several years of incarceration. The fact that he would eventually play an important role in Belfast social and political life serves to make one of Wright's key points: that the vibrant urban culture of Belfast in the first decades after the Act of Union allowed William Tennant to reintegrate into society with little moderation of his reformist views. William's younger brother Robert held similar ideological views to his older brother. He was abroad for much of the turbulent decade of the 1790s, seeking employment as a surgeon. He followed this ambition to Jamaica, where he would work as an estate manager for several years before spending an additional period as a naval surgeon. Robert returned to Ireland when word reached him that his brother had been imprisoned (p. 33). Though he would not be as financially successful as his older brother, Robert Tennent would be active in an impressive number of charities and public organizations as well as a committed evangelical. The final member of the Tennent family to appear in the text is Robert's son, Robert James Tennent. His youthful correspondence is put to excellent use to provide depth to the final chapters of the book, where Wright turns his attention to the educational and charitable institutions of Belfast. Taken together, the biographical material of the Tennent family serves as both the base, but also as the 'through line' for Wright's wider thematic arguments. Wright is able to strike a fine balance and this structure proves to be very effective. With this biographical base established, the author then turns to the political context of the period, which he covers over the next two chapters, which make up the core of the book. The first of the two chapters focuses on the political environment in Belfast between 1801 and 1820. In surveying the political atmosphere of the post-union period, Wright concedes what many contemporaries observed: Belfast during this period had a strangely 'muted' quality (p. 57). However, building upon the theories of Habermas, Wright argues that Belfast also boasted an expanding public sphere, which included town meetings, public dinners and a significant growth of newspapers in the town. This environment served as a counter to the unreformed electoral politics of the day and the considerable influence of the Marquess of Donegall and his allies. Wright demonstrates how these venues served as sites of conflict between both radical and more moderate reformers but also with the establishment as well. Wright highlights moments of tension between these parties: the establishment, the 'natural leaders', and the moderates, to draw out the divisions within Belfast political life. These moments included the failed subscription in support of the radical journalist Peter Finnerty, Robert Tennent's trial for assault (which stemmed from an altercation which occurred at a public meeting), the infamous St. Patrick's Day dinner at the Belfast Academical Institution and the Queen Caroline affair. For much of this chapter the author relies on the Belfast Monthly Magazine, which served as the mouth piece for the interests of the Tennents and their allies (p. 67). This chapter shows a Belfast with a lively and sometimes contentious civic culture. Importantly, it was one that was very much a part of a wider British popular political context, as the carefully orchestrated outpouring of sentiment in support of Caroline in Belfast demonstrated. The second political chapter extends Wright's frame of reference up to the general election of 1832 and incorporates the wider European political currents as they presented themselves within Belfast's civic culture. Again using the Belfast Monthly Magazine as a guide Wright points to the numerous continental events which served to encourage and inspire the 'natural leaders'. This included the ambiguous figure of Napoleon, but also the news of the southern European revolutions as well (p. 111). It is here where the younger generation of the 'natural leaders' make their first appearance, in the form of Robert James Tennent with his interest in romanticism and eventual participation in the conflicts on the continent. This interest serves to further one of Wright's main arguments: that the cadre of the 'natural leaders' represented the 'cosmopolitan' side of Belfast cultural life, one that was at once British and European (p. 119). While Belfast reformers took an interest in European issues during the early 1820s, they showed a resurgence of activity during the heady period which ushered in the Great Reform Bill. This included increasingly unpopular support for Catholic Emancipation and opposition to the activities of the proselytizing Reformation Society. Wright argues that the leading reformers of Belfast were very much in line with the wider trends within British politics during this period, though the election which followed in 1832 proved to be a disaster for the 'natural leaders.' While support for reform seemed to swell in Belfast after the passing of Catholic emancipation, the popularity of the 'natural leaders' faltered. Wright argues that they had perhaps overplayed their hand with the more moderate reformers, and that the term 'natural leaders' was even used against them sarcastically during the lead up to the 1832 general election (p. 133). Both candidates put forth by the advanced reformers failed to win seats against the two candidates supported by the town corporation, including one, James Emerson Tennent, who had previously been a member of the advanced reformers. He had been enticed to run by the corporation after being passed over by his former compatriots in favor of the outsider William Sharman Crawford. While the advanced reformers of Belfast fumbled the political opportunity at the end of 1832, the language which they employed raises some important questions about developments within Ulster Presbyterianism. As Wright demonstrates, a number of prominent Belfast reformers during this period had direct connections to the United Irishmen, and had continued to employ similar political rhetoric (p. 136). It is to this language that Wright turns in the final chapters. Here he reassesses the validity of Belfast's reputation as 'the Athens of the North'. He does so skeptically, casting a critical eye on the cultural and intellectual institutions that were popular within middle-class society during this period. Wright focuses on three: The Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge, the Belfast Literary Society and the Belfast Historic Society. The author rightly places them into the context of similar organizations which were rapidly spreading through the British world. Though all of the organizations examined here claimed to be apolitical, the same political divisions identified by Wright in earlier chapters manifest themselves here and thus limited these organizations' effectiveness in maintaining membership and funds. To this portrait of Belfast intellectual life Wright adds the Belfast Academical Institution, which opened in 1814 and, as Wright argues, injected new life into the intellectual climate of Belfast. This included the teaching of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy as well as the classics, both of which played an important part in the political vocabulary used across the Atlantic world. Here the reflections of Robert James Tennent are particularly useful. Educated at the Academical Institution and active in the Belfast Historic Society, Wright is able to draw out these varied influences in Tennent's sometimes colorful correspondence. There he is also able to isolate the influence of romanticism as well, which places Tennent and his compatriots squarely (though at times a bit behind) in a cosmopolitan British literary sphere (p. 190). The final chapter turns to the influence of evangelicalism in Ulster. This focus is appropriate as it fits with the biographical aspect of the book in Robert Tennent's numerous philanthropic activities. It is also fitting chronologically as well, for Belfast's rapid economic and demographic expansion created a wealth of social problems during the period. An in-depth examination of the institutional structures of charity in Belfast is not Wright's intent and he instead focuses on the ways in which evangelicalism came to influence Ulster Presbyterianism and the various voices that spoke out for and against it, especially as manifested in the city's charitable institutions. In doing so Wright is able to draw out a number of important influences on charity in Belfast, including that of Thomas Chalmers. Importantly, while Chalmers famously championed charitable works in a providentialist context, Wright argues that he was particularly well-received in Belfast in part because of the providentialism that had already existed amongst Belfast's Presbyterians prior to Chalmers growth in popularity in the early 19th century. This links Belfast's charitable imposes, at least in part, to the period before the arrival of widespread evangelical influence. Jonathan Wright's The 'Natural Leaders' and Their World is an important contribution to the history of Ulster. He has heeded the numerous calls to view the history of Belfast during the post-Union period within a 'British context'. It is helpful to read Wright's book alongside John Bew's well-received The Glory of Being Britons: Civic Unionism in Nineteenth-Century Belfast.(1) Bew sought to identify the origins of Ulster unionism within the urban culture of late 18th- and 19th-century Belfast. Wright, in dialogue with Bew's work, contributes greatly to a fuller understanding of that urban culture. While not a comprehensive history of this period, the work does much to fill in important gaps and to suggest interesting new connections. Informed by the most recent historiographical trends and research, Wright's book demonstrates the numerous new avenues available to historians of Ulster. Smartly organized and engagingly written, it is an important work. Notes 1.John Bew, The Glory of Being Britons: Civic Unionism in Nineteenth-Century Belfast (Sallins, 2008).Back to (1) The author is happy to accept this review and, beyond thanking the reviewer for his generous and thoughtful appraisal, does not wish to respond. A rigorous, painstaking study by Jonathan Wright that authoritatively skewers myth after myth. It shines a revealing light on the political, cultural and social life of Belfast in the early 19th century. An important contribution to the history of Belfast as well as to the broader subjects of Ulster liberalism and Presbyterianism. By stepping out of the usual historiographical constraints placed upon the period, Wright has produced a confident and enlightening first monograph, one that hopefully will help to steer future research into what is perhaps the most neglected period of modern Ulster's history. Informed by the most recent historiographical trends and research, Wright's book demonstrates the numerous new avenues available to historians of Ulster. Smartly organized and engagingly written, it is an important work. The 'Natural Leaders' and their World: Politics, Culture and Society in Belfast, 1801-1832 By Jonathon Jeffrey Wright Liverpool University Press, 284pp, GBP75 Belfast: The Emerging City 1850-1914 Edited by Olwen Purdue Irish Academic Press, 322pp, GBP18.99 During the final decade of the 18th century, when Ireland was inflamed by radical fever and then soaked in blood, the Presbyterians of the northeast appeared to be the leading firebrands, the prime movers of conspiracy. After humiliating defeats in June 1798, that northern radical zeal seemed to evaporate with unseemly haste. Just a few decades later Belfast had become, apparently, a right-wing bastion where municipal leaders intolerantly and inflexibly resisted the legitimate demands of the island's majority. That is a widely held view, and those holding it have long been baffled by this perceived seismic change. Many years ago ATQ Stewart did attempt to point out that Presbyterian radicalism did not suffer instant death after 1798, but not many paid heed to him. Now, at last, we have a rigorous, painstaking study by Jonathan Wright that authoritatively skewers myth after myth. It shines a revealing light on the political, cultural and social life of Belfast in the early 19th century, years during which so many historians have concluded that nothing very much happened in the town. Some northern United Irishmen were hanged, and others sought refuge on the other side of the Atlantic. But what about those who stayed put? The assumption that they all buried their heads in their ledgers and kept them there is a false one. Wright starts out on his journey of revelation by examining the careers of members of the Tennent family. Wright not only proves that William Tennent, a prosperous Belfast businessman, was a United Irishman but also that he was a key leader, an advocate of violent revolution. Fortunate not to have shared Henry Joy McCracken's fate at the end of a rope, he spent more than three years in a Scottish prison. Returning to Belfast in November 1801, Tennent soon afterwards became the town's richest merchant and banker. Root and branch reform Making no attempt to deny his revolutionary past or the fact that he had fathered no fewer than 13 illegitimate children (all of whom he provided for), Tennent publicly led a 30-year campaign to seek root-and- branch reform in the town. Joined by other former United Irishmen, including his brother Robert, the gifted naturalist John Templeton and the obstetrician Dr William Drennan, he headed a vibrant Presbyterian elite, men who regarded themselves as natural leaders - hence the title of Wright's book. Dominating the intellectual and cultural life of the town, these reformers strove energetically to supplant the autocratic, corrupt and indolent Belfast Corporation with a body that represented the people. Wright chronicles in absorbing detail how these bourgeois Presbyterians campaigned with relentless energy for Catholic emancipation (probably against the wishes of most of the town's inhabitants) and parliamentary and municipal reform. For them violent action no longer had any appeal; instead they pressed their case unceasingly in print and by every other means open to them, including the hosting of public dinners (100 between 1816 and 1826). Actually, they were preparing the ground for their own political demise: the citizens of Belfast, newly enfranchised by the 1832 Reform Act, rejected their candidates comprehensively. The Protestant majority, alarmed as Catholics poured into the fast-growing town, found the views of this Presbyterian elite increasingly unpalatable. Belfast: The Emerging City 1850-1914, edited by Olwen Purdue, handsomely illustrated with 30 well-chosen colour plates, is the outcome of a conference organised by Queen's University Belfast and the University of Northumbria in 2010. Publishing the papers of a conference can be a perilous business: key developments can be overlooked. Hardly a heated rivet is hammered home, barely a ship slips down the ways, no cigarettes are leaping out of elaborate machines in York Street, no artesian well is sunk at Cromac in search of pure water for the world's largest fizzy-drinks manufacturer and no mention is made of huge powered fans made at Bridge End (German warships were fitted with them, for example). In short, there is very little here to describe and explain the industrial prowess that for several decades made Belfast the fastest-growing urban centre in the United Kingdom. The first chapter, "Markets and Messages: Linenopolis Meets the World", by Edwin James Aiken and Stephen Royle, should have helped to fill this gap. Unfortunately this does not even adequately answer the question asked by the authors: How did the linen industry become such a dominant feature of Belfast's economy? Most of the chapter is dominated by a tedious survey of rather dry annual reports published by the Linen Merchants' Association, formed in 1872. This is a pity: linen manufacturers and traders wrote a great deal about themselves and their business, much of it very lively reading, and this rich material is overlooked. Other chapters are more engaging and enlightening. "Belfast: The Rise and Fall of a Civic Culture", by Sean Connolly, overlapping a little with the final part of Wright's study, provides a vivid picture of the way in which Belfast was governed in the wake of parliamentary and municipal reform. He reinforces Wright's conclusion that the Presbyterian elite rather arrogantly misjudged the new electorate in 1832. Connolly also demonstrates how shrewdly the Conservatives adapted to the changed circumstances. They were no diehards: followers of Sir Robert Peel's progressive interventionism, they were imaginative and dynamic in the way they embarked on ambitious civic building programmes as Belfast grew with breakneck speed to become a booming city. However, the Conservative political machine, operated by John Bates, adopting "a petty and spiteful sectarianism", Connolly explains, worked unceasingly "to ensure that neither Catholics nor Protestant Liberals played any part in the management of the town". The generation game What is the quickest way to arouse in nerdy googlers an interest in Irish history? Get them to search for forebears by looking at the 1911 census online. (It's free.) "Edwardian Belfast: Marriage, Fertility and Religion in 1911", by Liam Kennedy, Lucia Pozzi and Matteo Manfredi, should keep the appetite whetted. Their chapter is packed with absorbing social detail, some of it from their BelFam database, consisting of 40,000 individuals, just over 10 per cent of those enumerated. This book is exceptionally strong on demographics. "The Family Wage: A Factor in Migration?", by Lesley Donaldson, shows that it was frequently worthwhile for English and Scottish shipwrights to cross over to settle in Belfast. In "Migration in Belfast History: Trajectories, Letters, Voices", Brian Lambkin, Patrick Fitzgerald and Johanne Devlin Trew triple-distil the maturing mash in their vat containing decades of dedicated research material to produce a limpid and highly quaffable liquor. After providing a helpful survey of the movements of people over 400 years, 1613-2013, the authors draw on another recently developed resource, the online archive Documenting Ireland: Parliament, People and Migration, to illustrate their overall conclusions. Our knowledge about Belfast's history is being augmented all the time. Every little helps. This book contains some interesting microstudies, including the story of the Belfast Society, founded in 1821 by the "natural leaders" and still meeting today, by Ruth Bayles; Pamela Emerson's chapter on a tiny book-reading club for middle-class Protestants; and Caroline McGee's on the drama surrounding the building of the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer in Clonard, in west Belfast. This last casts intriguing light on the domineering Bishop Henry Henry (what were his parents thinking of?), going for Gothic Revival if only to distance the project from the unprepossessing romanesque Church of Ireland cathedral of St Anne's. By extending our knowledge, all these specialist studies, fast becoming a torrent, signal the urgent need for a fresh synthesis. A new general history of Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian Belfast is surely overdue. Recent years have seen a real growth in work on the history of nineteenth-century Belfast, perhaps best represented by Sean Connolly's excellent synthesis, Belfast 400 (Liverpool, 2013). Even with this new work, however, the early nineteenth-century Belfast experience remains relatively neglected, which makes Jonathan JeffreyWright's insightful study of politics and culture in the Georgian city a particularly welcome addition to the literature. Wright's analysis of early nineteenth-century political culture is rooted in his analysis of the extensive Tennent papers, as well as underutilized sources like the Belfast Monthly Magazine. Using the Tennent family as a biographical focus, Wright argues for a more complex portrait of Belfast politics, showing how the Tennents and their allies maintained liberal (and sometimes radical) political commitments throughout this increasingly conservative era. Particularly effective is his examination of the Belfast response to events like the Saint Patrick's Day Controversy and the Queen Caroline affair, controversies often neglected in narratives of nineteenth-century Ireland. Using these as fresh entry points for his analysis of Georgian Belfast's contested politics,Wright shows how reformers consistently (and sometimes successfully) fought the conservative establishment in post-Union Belfast. Another strength of the book is Wright's determination to ground his study of political culture in its urban social context. Like many other British industrial cities, the twin forces of industrialization and rapid demographic growth transformed Belfast in these years, and unlike so many treatments of British and Irish politics in recent years, Wright's nicely balanced portraits of local politics and civic culture never lose sight of that fact. The book's biographical focus on the Tennent family provides a stable center for an otherwise wide-ranging narrative, as well as the occasion for vignettes about a fascinating and influential political family. Both the core of the study and a metaphor for the complexity of the city's Georgian politics, the Tennent family may have left the Society of United Irishmen (Wright argues convincingly that William Tennent was involved in the famous revolutionary association), but they did not abandon their reforming beliefs, supporting Catholic emancipation and other reforms while opposing the conservative establishment across the era. But this is not simply a book about the Tennents; Wright's study of Belfast's largely Presbyterian reformers also features fleshed out portrayals of oft-mentioned but rarely featured figures like William Drennan and John Lawless. The latter, often associated with O'Connellite politics and the ill-fated Invasion of Ulster, emerges as an influential participant in the city's tumultuous early 1820s, keeping radical politics in full public view in lively and pointed critiques in his newspaper, The Irishman. IfWright's biographical structure lends a sense of cohesion to his story, other features of the book's organization challenge the coherence of the author's narrative. While chapters on Belfast reformers' involvement in European politics and romanticism and classicism are full of interesting details about Belfast intellectual life and associational culture, and certainly underline both the diversity and the relative cosmopolitanism of this liberal-minded clique, they undermine the narrative flow of the overall argument, which has something of an uneven quality that is reinforced by some of the short sections within the book's chapters. Thankfully, Wright's prose style is both lively and balanced, helping to hold this rather diverse study together. It is not only the organization of the book that raises questions. The author's repeated insistence that the Tennents and their Belfast circle lived in a British political and cultural milieu is true in a contextual sense; there is no doubt that these Belfast reformers both participated in and responded to the dominant British issues and trends of their day. Moreover, Wright's determination to place his subjects in a British context strengthens the historiographical framework of the monograph, because he brings in a range of British historical scholarship rarely seen within an Irish historiography that is still too often shaped by national difference. That said, the analytical value brought by the author's insistence on the British nature of key aspects of Belfast's early nineteenth-century civic culture is unclear and/or undeveloped. The overlapping nature of nineteenth-century British and Irish political contexts and identities is a fruitful and hitherto undervalued area of research in the vast historiography of nineteenth-century Ireland, but, despite repeated assertions, this study of Georgian Belfast's political culture only scratches the surface of possibilities here. I do not want to end this review on such a negative note, however, for this is a fine book, a well-written and insightful study on early nineteenth-century Belfast politics. By focusing on the Tennent family and using a rich array of underutilized sources, Jonathan JeffreyWright has produced an important book that greatly adds to our understanding of this critical era. If the book raises as many questions as it answers, we are further indebted to the author's work, particularly if this stimulating study leads other talented scholars to examine the rich and often ignored experience of early nineteenth-century Belfast. A fine book, a well-written and insightful study on early nineteenth-century Belfast politics. By focusing on the Tennent family and using a rich array of underutilized sources, Jonathan Jeffrey Wright has produced an important book that greatly adds to our understanding of this critical era. If the book raises as many questions as it answers, we are further indebted to the author's work, particularly if this stimulating study leads other talented scholars to examine the rich and often ignored experience of early nineteenth-century Belfast.
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