Forgetful remembrance: social forgetting and vernacular historiography of a rebellion in Ulster

'Forgetful Remembrance' examines what happens when communities endeavour to forget embarrassing events in their past. The question of how a society attempts to obscure problematic historical episodes is addressed through a detailed case study grounded in the north-eastern counties of the Irish province of Ulster, where loyalist and unionist Protestants - in particular Presbyterians - tried to repress for more than two centuries discomforting recollections of participation, alongside Catholics, in a republican rebellion in 1798. By exploring a rich variety of sources, Beiner makes it possible to closely follow the dynamics of social forgetting.