Between the years 1778 and 1784, groups that had previously been excluded from the Irish political sphere--women, Catholics, lower-class Protestants, farmers, shopkeepers, and other members of the laboring and agrarian classes--began to imagine themselves as civil subjects with a stake in matters of the state. This politicization of non-elites was largely driven by the Volunteers, a local militia force that emerged in Ireland as British troops were...