'This book presents a sectarian conflict in a revealingly innovative perspective, in which modern values coalesced with confessional politics. By examining new evidence, with contributions from the converts themselves, Wendling sheds new light on the cultural, psychological and social processes associated with conversion and re-conversion.'
Professor Eugenio Biagini, University of Cambridge

'This book offers a clear and magisterial reappraisal of Irish identities in the pre-Famine and Famine eras. Not only does it revise current historiographical assumptions about the use of Irish during the ‘Second Reformation,’ it also offers ground-breaking insights on the entire socio-religious landscape of Ireland at the time.'
Professor Geraldine Vaughan, University of Lille

'Karina Wendling is a French scholar who writes from the outside, and this gives the book a valuable and timely perspective... This is especially needed in the debate about “colonialism”, and whether Ireland was a simple case of invader and indigenous, ruler and ruled, oppressor and oppressed.
This is a book that is not only insightful and important for those of us struggling to understand the curiosities of Irish Protestantism, but also a genuine pleasure to read.'
Ian d'Alton, Trinity College Dublin

Introduction
1 From charity schools to Irish schools
2 Educating the Irish with a national Bible (1818–28)
3 From the politicisation of education to the Catholicisation of Irish nationalism
4 The Dingle colony of converts: An imperial conquest?
5 Souperism and the Great Irish Famine (1840–7)
6 The radicalisation of Irish mission: An inevitable outcome? (1847–53)
Index