Why riot? Against whom? For what? Riotous Assemblies is an account of Irish riots, urban and rural, across the island from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. Ireland has seen many acts of violent protest. From the urban riots against new taxes in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the streets of Ireland have long been a forum for popular insurrection. Covering nearly 450 years of protest, this is the story of an anarchic Ireland, including the tithe riots of the 1830s, riots in Limerick throughout the nineteenth century and the reaction of the forces of the state to twenty-first century protestors.