Protestant Culture Research Articles

Cinema-going during the Gezi protests: claiming the right to the Emek movie theatre and Gezi Park

This paper explores the relationship between social movements, urban regeneration programmes and media outlets in cities, with a focus on the transformation of urban culture in regards to people’s engagement with the spaces of media platforms. The argument is based on the study of cinema-going practices of an audience community in Istanbul, during and preceding the Gezi uprising. By employing ethnographic methods, this paper interrogates the activism of an audience community against the impact of shopping-mallisation and commodification of Istanbul’s urban spaces under AKP rule. In order to reclaim ownership of their spaces and future, this audience community claimed their right to the Emek movie theatre, Gezi Park and other parks whilst creating their own outdoor screenings and social media platforms. This paper also provides an interpretation of social movement development attached to media outlets such as film festivals and screenings, particularly the development of spatial activism in relation to people’s use of films, streets and movie theatres, thus illustrating, challenging and reinforcing rights to the city. More broadly, it gives new insights on the film and protest culture of a ‘secular’ group within a predominantly Muslim population and shows alternative and creative methods of protesting during a popular uprising.

The material culture of Korean social movements

Through interviews with Korean political activists, this research explores the material culture of Korean social movements, with a particular focus on artifacts of the police and protesters from the 1980s to the 2000s. First, the article analyses the symbolic meaning of artifacts and their sensory–emotional impact on protesters. Second, it explores the relationship between artifacts and protest culture, looking at how artifacts concern the gendered performance and hierarchical culture of protesters. Finally, the author examines the correlation between artifacts and protest space in terms of how the emergence of artifacts involves the availability and mobility of protest space. Through artifacts, protesters’ emotions are less spiritual than sensory or corporeal. Hierarchical and gendered aspects of protest culture depend on the types of protest artifacts and their use in protest performances. The use of artifacts in protest performances is restricted by the characteristics of protest space.

'Clean Hearts and Clean Homes': The Work of Methodist Women Missionaries Among Ukrainian Immigrants in East-Central Alberta, 1904-1925 (Master's Thesis, Carleton University, 1991) AMICUS No. 13539920

Between 1904 and 1925 the Woman's Missionary Society of the Methodist Church committed financing and forty-four female missionaries to conduct educational missions in the Ukrainian Star bloc settlement in east-central Alberta. Their aim was to fulfil the social service, educational and spiritual needs of new Canadians. Like other non-English-speaking and non-Protestant peoples in Canada, unassimilated Ukrainian immigrants were perceived by English Canadians as representing the danger of cultural pluralism. The primary and religious schooling established by these missionaries was greeted as both serving the community through developing literacy and for delivering Christ's message. Domestic science instruction was implemented in school curriculums to inculcate women and girls in the foreign communities with Protestant domestic ideology. Despite a strong commitment to educational and social service ministries the primary mandate of these women missionaries remained that of conversion-through-uplift and assimilation to Protestant English-Canadian culture.

Hearing the voice of Donbas: art and literature as forms of cultural protest during war

This paper analyzes literary, visual, and street art works of writers and artists from Eastern Ukraine produced during 2014. Two Donetsk artists, Serhii Zakharov and Anzhela Dzherikh, and two Luhansk writers, Serhii Zhadan and Olena Stepova, play with the myth of the proletarian Donbas, on the one hand, and debunk the popular perception of Donbas people as being in consent with the politics of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, on the other. They explore familiar tropes and images of Donbas and use guerrilla tactics (shock effects, provocativeness, and deception) to initiate public reaction to the war. Their works are united by their search for a shared communication space and direct access to the audience on occupied territories. These artists challenge the accepted perception of Donbas as a free but uncivilized space and participate in the creation of a new Donbas text. The interaction between politics, art, and activism makes their voices and vision powerful and infectious and can help achieve civic consolidation in Donbas.

Recreative activism in Romania How cultural affiliation and lifestyle yield political engagement

The present article analyzes the new culture of protest in Romania, a type of engagement we define as recreative activism. During the past years, young and culturally-inclined citizens started demanding more and more to have a share in the political process. To explain the novelty of this phenomenon, we argue that patterns of cultural consumption in the scene contributed to the spiral of ever-increasing participation in protests throughout the past six years, mainly drawing on in-depth interviews with activists and adherents of the Romanian alternative scene. This data was further supplemented by inferences derived from participative observation and content analysis. Three main protest waves were analyzed and critically put in context: the Rosia Montana (2013), Colectiv (2015), and OUG 13 (2017) protests. Our main findings are that recreative activism has its roots in the concomitance of cultural consumption and noninstitutionalized political participation, as well as in a certain disenchantment of protest participants with post-communist politics. Further, recreative activism is characteristic for nonconventional political involvement, which requires less commitment than classic activism and is less influenced by ideologies.

"Bekennen gegen den Atomstaat." Die evangelischen Kirchen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und die Konflikte um die Atomenergie 1970–1990 by Michael Schüring

Reviewed by: "Bekennen gegen den Atomstaat." Die evangelischen Kirchen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und die Konflikte um die Atomenergie 1970–1990 by Michael Schüring Heath Spencer "Bekennen gegen den Atomstaat." Die evangelischen Kirchen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und die Konflikte um die Atomenergie 1970–1990. By Michael Schüring. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2015. Pp. 317. Cloth €29.90. ISBN 978-3835316959. While Christian churches no longer have as much public power as in the past, they are still a significant element in the political landscape of contemporary European societies. However, church leaders and churchgoers are faced with difficult choices when it comes to collective political engagement. A position of neutrality carries the risk of marginalization or complicity, whereas overt political engagement can be divisive and often alienates members who are out of step with the political trajectory of the institution. Michael Schüring's research explores how Protestants faced such questions in the midst of heated conflicts over nuclear energy in the Federal Republic of Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. On the national level Protestant leaders initially adopted a position of formal neutrality, hoping that the church could facilitate dialogue as well as ongoing study and reflection. Though an activist minority demanded a more confrontational and prophetic stance, the church leadership did not modify its position until 1986, when the Chernobyl disaster brought about a widespread reorientation of public opinion. However, even before this shift occurred, "the conflict over nuclear energy in Germany was culturally and religiously coded," and there were numerous points of connection between the church's traditions and the "discursive strategies of the opponents of nuclear power" (8). Although the church was not central to the antinuclear movement, two decades of engagement led to the emergence of a new protest culture within the church itself. Protestant theologians in the antinuclear movement drew on a common fund of Biblical symbols, narratives, and motifs but either had to bend them toward an environmentalist agenda or draw on resources outside of their own tradition (for example, an apocryphal speech attributed to Chief Seattle). Other theologians, along with the church hierarchy, were skeptical of this "ecoBiblicism" as well as various doomsday scenarios that seemed to forecast destruction without the possibility of redemption. At the parish level, a minority of pastors and parishioners joined in [End Page 699] dramatic acts of protest and disobedience, including major demonstrations at Brokdorf (1976), Grohnde an der Weser (1977), Saint Peter's Church in Hamburg (1979), and Gorleben (1980). Some pastors wore their vestments and led services "in the field," to the dismay of a church leadership that wanted to avoid the appearance of taking sides. Many conservative members feared that their church had been coopted by leftists, anarchists, and Marxists. Schüring notes that many antinuclear activists made references to the complicity of the churches during the Nazi era and hoped to avoid taking on a similar burden of guilt in their own moment of crisis. A rich array of symbols enhanced this tendency to equate nuclear energy with the crimes of the Third Reich, including the barbed wire that enclosed construction sites for nuclear power plants, the use of (tear) gas to disperse protesters, references to nuclear waste disposal sites as Endlager, and clever word play—for example, the phrase "Volk ohne Strom" brought to mind "Volk ohne Raum" and implied that one justification was as dubious as the other (103). Of course, such comparisons raised the stakes and made political compromise seem inappropriate. Although protests and demonstrations drew the most attention, equally important was the educational work carried out by the church's environmental commission under the leadership of Pastor Kurt Oeser, as well as Protestant academies like the Forschungsstätte der Evangelischen Studiengemeinschaft. Over time, the work of these institutions led to a growing consensus that the church had a responsibility to raise awareness of environmental issues, including the risks associated with nuclear energy, through preaching, parish work, and faith formation. Schüring's analysis of Protestant mentalities and their application to the nuclear energy debate is impressive, and his focus on three key areas (theology, politics, and culture) yields important results. However, the evidence within each chapter is poorly...

“El tiempo nos alcanzó”: huellas de la Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca en el contexto de la alternancia

Este artículo examina las distintas rutas y formas de lucha que adoptaron sectores representativos de la APPO después de las movilizaciones de 2006, particularmente ante el contexto de la alternancia política en la gubernatura en 2010. Para ello, revisaremos brevemente la influencia que tuvo la appo en las reformas políticas implementadas por el nuevo gobierno, así como en las relaciones políticas entre sectores populares movilizados y las autoridades en este nuevo escenario. Además, analizaremos la incidencia que tuvieron las motivaciones y experiencias de organización compartidas de 2006, así como el contexto post-2010, en la agenda y formas de acción política de diferentes sectores populares movilizados. De esta manera, podremos ubicar cambios y continuidades en la cultura política de la protesta, y su importancia para la transformación y democratización de las relaciones políticas en el estado.

Puckish protesting in the Umbrella Movement

The civility of Hong Kong protesters during the 2014 Umbrella Movement was often remarked on. Rather less known were the more playful and witty dimensions to the protests. Humour has always been a familiar and febrile strand in Hong Kong protest culture: puns are immensely popular, as are parodies and moments of surreal comic juxtapositions and appropriations that then take a life of its own. This article will examine two examples of madcap levity in the Umbrella Movement, including the use of the ‘Happy Birthday’ song to counter vocal on-site critics and a later and more significant shift to the Shopping Revolution, with its play on the Mandarin phrase, 購物 gòu wù (to go shopping). Humour’s specific potency here comes from an irreverent revoicing that wrests control away from dominant discourses. By redirecting attention and power away from establishment voices, marginalized and local points of view are empowered. Given recent political developments, however, humour has receded more into the shadows; the structure of feeling has altered considerably.

Hibernian Sans-Culottes? Dublin’s Artisans and Radical Politics 1790-1798

In Ireland during the 1790s, middle-class radicals and republicans were denigrated by conservatives as Irish ‘Jacobins’. Simultaneously, Irish urban workers (tradesmen, journeymen and apprentices) came to be seen as a potentially dangerous force which resembled – not the bourgeois Jacobins – but the Parisian Sans-culottes. Despite very significant differences between Dublin and Paris, the workers in each city shared certain features, such as a strong egalitarian ethos and a highly literate culture of remonstrance and protest. While Dublin, unlike Paris, was not the site of a successful revolution, it too contained a vibrant radical underworld in which urban workers voiced their political aspirations. This article examines some of the factors that contributed to Dublin’s network of artisan clubs, such as municipal politics, a lively print trade, the ethos of the city guilds, and the interactions between Irish Parliamentarians and the urban ‘mob’. It then examines how Dublin’s artisan radical clubs interacted with, and were eventually incorporated into, the middle-class United Irish Societies. It finally suggests that Dublin’s artisans represent an intriguing case of how revolutionary doctrines were received in Ireland at the popular level.

Radikale postkolonialisme en die Suid-Afrikaanse universiteitswese

In hierdie artikel word onlangse studenteprotes gekontekstualiseer teen die agtergrond van politieke tendense in die Suid-Afrikaanse staat en samelewing. Die verstryking van die postapartheidstydperk word oorweeg, tesame met die gelyktydige ontluiking van 'n radikale en postkoloniale sosiopolitiese tydsgees. Laasgenoemde word as vertrekpunt gebruik vir 'n evaluasie van studenteprotes en die eise wat aan hoër onderwys en universiteite in Suid-Afrika gestel word. Gevolglik word die universiteit se funksie en verhouding teenoor staat en samelewing oorweeg en word daar gedemonstreer hoe hierdie verhoudings moontlik sal verander in 'n postkoloniale milieu. Die plek en rol van Afrikaans by universiteite word ook spesifiek bespreek.

The Making of an African Working Class: Politics, Law, and Cultural Protest in the Manual Workers’ Union of Botswana by Pnina Werbner. London: Pluto, 2014. 320 pp.

The Making of an African Working Class: Politics, Law, and Cultural Protest in the Manual Workers’ Union of Botswana by Pnina Werbner. London: Pluto, 2014. 320 pp.

Religion as Culture

Today’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which came to power in 1949, continues to recognize religion and Christianity as part of the dominant Western culture, and as the means to establish relationships and promote religion and culture. When faced with a moral or ethical dilemma the CCP looks to a Confucian past for traditions just as the Canadian state draws on the Protestant and Catholic cultures of its so-called founding peoples. The Chinese state has additionally attempted to manage religious engagement by propping up select Buddhist temples and working through grassroots personal webs of connection to household religious altars, enshrined deities, and communal practices. In China and in Canada, states claim neutrality but in both cases and for different reasons religion is treated as culture. The paper’s ethno-historical approach draws on over 15 years of fieldwork and historical research throughout the Chinese cultural sphere (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and Canada). Looking across histories and nations it traces state governance in China and Canada, webs of connections, and personal interactions that have shaped religious identities and the resurgence of Chinese temple life and select religious cults.

The Making of an African Working Class: Politics, Law, and Cultural Protest in the Manual Workers’ Union of Botswana. Pnina Werbner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. 320 pp.

The Making of an African Working Class: Politics, Law, and Cultural Protest in the Manual Workers’ Union of Botswana. Pnina Werbner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. 320 pp.

Charting the moral life courses: A theory of moral development in U.S. evangelical and mainline Protestant cultures

Drawing from qualitative analyses of interviews, ethnographic data, and a review of interdisciplinary literature, this manuscript puts forth a theory of moral life course narratives among U.S. evangelical and mainline Protestants. This theory delineates the relationship between religious worldviews and conceptions of moral behaviors, and the manner in which these worldviews and attendant moral conceptions change across the life course for community members. Grounded theory analyses of 32 participants’ divinity-based moral discourses were interpreted in conjunction with their worldviews, as well as church, home, and school contexts. Analyses indicated that evangelical children highlighted their moral transgressions because they regarded themselves as still quite close to a sinful birth. Evangelical adults, who had been saved and were moving toward God, temporally and spiritually distanced themselves from the morally wrong deeds of their youth. Meanwhile, mainline children and adolescents rarely reasoned about their moral experiences in terms of divinity. This finding is understood in light of their church’s emphasis on developing an individualized relationship with God over time. The study and resultant theory elaborate cultural constructions and transmissions of moral life course narratives that, in turn, provide a framework for understanding when, why, and how divinity enters into moral meaning making for cultural community members. We conclude by advocating for theoretical, methodological, and analytical approaches that expose the cultural nature of developmentally dynamic moral selves.

Культурные основания протеста: переосмысляя монографию А.В. Скиперских

Культурные основания протеста: переосмысляя монографию А.В. Скиперских

“Godforsaken hole called … called …”: place, nation, and spatial crisis in Beckett’s fiction and drama

This essay explores how the figuring of place throughout the fiction and drama of Samuel Beckett registers and critiques narratives of place in Irish nationalist discourse. The Irish place-names of Beckett’s texts are read in relation to a toponymic re-territorialisation in post-independence Ireland, a process which enervated place identities synonymous with a Protestant culture and history. In this way, the essay argues that the celebrated “placelessness” of Beckett’s work and the collapse of spatial agency experienced by his protagonists is informed by the construction of nation-space in the country of the author’s early life. The preponderance of scatological place-names in the Beckett oeuvre is approached in these terms and read as a mode of resistance to the self-sacrifice to nation demanded in emplacement.

“That's not Grassfed!” Identity Formation, Maintenance, and Co‐Optation in Oklahoma's Grassfed Livestock Movement

Using interview data from thirty‐one grassfed ranchers across Oklahoma, we adapt a culturally focused social movement framework to explore a regional grassfed livestock movement. Drawing on social movement and agrifood literature, we examine how grassfed actors forge a cohesive grassfed collective identity and how collective identity processes inspire engagement in forms of individualized, cultural protest. We address how collective identity politicizes movement actors, moving them to prioritize cultural issues of the grassfed movement and development of a grassfed activist identity, sometimes above other tangible, economic rewards. We also consider how grassfed ranchers are restricting the boundaries of movement membership in response to increased interest in alternative agricultural practices by new producers and by agrifood elites, and how they use market‐oriented tactics to enforce those boundaries. In doing so we draw parallels to conventionalization processes in the organic sector. By emphasizing the identity work of grassfed producer‐activists, we provide new perspectives on an emerging agricultural movement gaining traction in the US and abroad.

Religion and Greater Ireland: Christianity and Irish Global Networks 1750–1950 ed. by Colin Barr, Hillary M. Carey

Reviewed by: Religion and Greater Ireland: Christianity and Irish Global Networks 1750–1950 ed. by Colin Barr, Hillary M. Carey Oliver P. Rafferty S.J. Religion and Greater Ireland: Christianity and Irish Global Networks 1750–1950. Edited by Colin Barr and Hillary M. Carey. [McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion, Series 2, vol. 73.] (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2015. Pp. xiv, 456. $39.95 paperback. ISBN 978-0-7735-4570-0.) This is a fascinating study of Irish religious experience as this found expression in America and the British Empire in a 200-year period. The idea of “Greater Ireland” is not simply a synonym for the Irish diaspora. The Irish in “Greater Ireland” continued to be linked by emotional, cultural, and symbolic ties to the old country. Unlike other studies of the global Irish, the sixteen essays in this work emphasize the centrality of religion in Irish Catholic and Protestant culture, at home and abroad. The editors freely admit that this is not a comprehensive study of the topic; some geographical areas are neglected such as the West Indies, Argentina, Western Australia, and Britain, where the complexities are such as to merit individual volumes. Nor is there a chapter on Irish Jews, but John Stenhouse does indicate cooperation between Irish Catholics and Protestants with some leading Jews over social issues in New Zealand in the late-nineteenth century. There is a sense in which many of the characteristics of the Irish in the diaspora are a mirror image of the Irish at home. Sectarian differences were a plague with the expansion of the Orange Order in Canada and Australia that served to keep religious rivalries alive. Diane Hall, however, illustrates the centrality of Orange Lodges in identity formation in Australia. She also warns against the dangers of subsuming Irish Protestant experience under the predominantly English character of mainstream Australian Protestantism. Similarly, Michael Gladwin shows the importance of Irish ministers for the development of Anglicanism in Australia despite what is often regarded as the “quintessentially English” nature of the church there. Irish religious experience could never quite escape the tension produced by Irish political realities. Thus Myrtle Hill, in her chapter on Irish women in Protestant female missions between 1870 and 1914, points out that the Female Association for Promoting Christianity was founded in Belfast at a time when the issue of Home Rule was beginning to come to the fore. Such political tensions also raised questions of imperial loyalty, which, in turn, served to sharpen sectarian animosities. Were the Catholics loyal to the Empire? Whatever the experience at home, the irony is that, by and large, Catholics served imperial interests. In Canada, [End Page 847] according to Mark McGowan, they were consistently imperialistic, but this was facilitated by the fact that the Constitution Act of 1791 gave them religious and political freedoms not available in Ireland. Carolyn Lambert demonstrates that, so far as Newfoundland was concerned, Irish Catholics were marked by both patriotism for Ireland and loyalty to the British Empire. Upon his death in 1914, Archbishop Michael Francis Howley of St. John’s was described as a “true son of Empire” (p. 129). This is despite the fact that he was distinctly muted in his approval of the British side in the Boer War of 1899–1902, quite unlike his wholly Irish Episcopal colleagues at the Cape, who supported Britain against the Boers (Colin Barr, p. 267). Barry Crosbie reminds us that the peoples of the United Kingdom viewed the Empire differently and had varying interactions with indigenous peoples. This gave rise to trouble for Irish priests and bishops over issues of caste in India. But this may have been part of the process of negotiations with local realities that Mia Cowan identifies in her study of Catholic participation in the public school system in Chicago in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. But there were other problems for the Irish in “Greater Ireland.” Squabbles at home over “New Light” and “Old Light” theology within Presbyterianism were exported to colonial America in the eighteenth century. Irish Catholics competed with French Catholics in British North America for dominance of the Church, and ultimately the...

Kindgemäss und literarisch wertvoll. Untersuchungen zur Theorie des „guten Jugendbuchs“ – Anna Krüger, Richard Bamberger, Karl Ernst Maier by Sonja Müller

Reviewed by: Kindgemäss und literarisch wertvoll. Untersuchungen zur Theorie des „guten Jugendbuchs“ – Anna Krüger, Richard Bamberger, Karl Ernst Maier by Sonja Müller Michael Schmitt Translated by Nikola von Merveldt Kindgemäss und literarisch wertvoll. Untersuchungen zur Theorie des „guten Jugendbuchs“ – Anna Krüger, Richard Bamberger, Karl Ernst Maier (Suitable for children and of literary value: Studies on the theory of the “good children’s book”). Sonja Müller. Series: Kinder- und Jugendkultur, -literatur und -medien; 88. Frankfurt am Main u.a., Peter Lang Edition, 2014. 326pages. ISBN: 978-3-631-64501-7 In her doctoral thesis “Suitable for children and of literary value,” defended in 2012, Sonja Müller examines a brief and little studied phase in the development of children’s literature theory in the young German federal republic. In the 1950s and 60s, theories on the “good children’s book” were built on the visions of the postwar period for international understanding, as exemplified by the International Youth Library in Munich; they became established with the creation of institutions promoting quality children’s literature, such as the Arbeitskreis für Jugendschrifttum (Working committee for youth literature) or the Deutsche Jugendbuchpreis (German children’s literature award), and they paved the way for more intensive scholarly research in children’s literature—as in Frankfurt, where Klaus Doderer founded the Institut für Jugendbuchforschung (Institute for the Study of Children’s Literature) in 1963. In the [End Page 64] study “Histories of children’s literature” (2013) by Andrea Weinmann, this theory is hardly mentioned and is dismissed as irrelevant. Following the paradigm shift of the 1970s, theories of the “good children’s book” appear dated, even though their prime time coincided with the rise of a new kind of children’s literature, practiced by James Krüss or Otfried Preußler, which advocated the autonomous child. Müller’s study chronicles the histories both of the institutions and of the theoretical debates; she sketches the prehistory beginning in 1896 with Heinrich Wolgast’s call for aesthetically valuable children’s literature, followed by theories of reading-age, all the way to the “filth-and-trash” debates of the 1950s. Her focus is on three scholars who discuss children’s literature in different ways—looking at its aesthetic qualities, the suitability of its forms and media for children, and last but not least, its pedagogical benefit. The first of these chapters, which explore both the theories and the practice of contemporary literary criticism, presents Anna Krüger, who meticulously defined the concept of the good children’s book and attributed particular importance to the linguistic and literary qualities. Pedagogical issues are less important in her eyes; instead, she welcomes imagination and creative freedom, invokes Astrid Lindren, and supports the young generation of German-speaking authors. Despite all this, she considers even the best children’s book to be inferior to first-rate adult literature because writing for child addressees imposes limitations, such as not using experimental narrative devices. From the work of Krüger, who was denied a brilliant academic career, Sonja Müller goes on to present the ideas of the influential Austrian literary historian Richard Bamberger and of Karl Ernst Maier, whose literary histories continued to serve as textbooks in the 1980s. Bamberger and Maier share more conservative positions: Bamberger attaching more value to literacy, Maier to pedagogy. The three main chapters are accompanied by several shorter ones which sketch the contributions of other leading figures to the debate on what was to be considered good children’s literature. These figures include Walter Scherf, long-term director of the International Youth Library, and Malte Dahrendorf, who radically revoked his own theory on the good book in the 1970s. Building on the groundwork of her supervisor, Hans Heino Ewers, Müller succeeds in giving a dense account of the spectrum of theoretical concepts, teasing out the various constellations of progressive and conservative ideas underpinning them. The theories of the “good book” for young readers emerged when the prosperity in the young federal republic opened up new realms of experience for children; they declined in the mid-sixties when youth culture encouraged a massive culture of protest which led to...

Taxation riots and the culture of popular protest in Ireland, 1714–1740

Abstract This article explores the connection that existed between government attempts to increase taxation yields in Ireland during the 1720s and 1730s and the rise in the number of violent protests. It challenges the generally-held view that rural popular violence was uncommon in early eighteenth-century Ireland. The first part of the article examines government measures to tackle illicit trade and challenge corrupt revenue officers. The extra revenue gained by these measures was used to pay for 12,000 British soldiers on the Irish establishment and a network of new barracks in Ireland. The article assesses the impact that the tax-raising measures had, not just on the ability of tax collectors to gather revenue but also on the relationships that existed between law enforcers and the public, and more generally rulers and the ruled. A study of reported cases of ‘riot and rescue’, which have been extracted from newspapers and the relatively under-used revenue commissioners’ minute books, explains more fully the causes, composition and character of resistance to taxation. Other aspects of taxation riots and government responses to the disorder are also explored. The restrained nature of the violence between rioters and law enforcers and the popular antipathy to informers points to a moral compass being used during conflict, on both sides. Finally, an examination of the nature of violence also helps to define the limits of the power of authorities and of mobs in early eighteenth-century Ireland.