If the Irish Ran the World: Montserrat, 1630-1730

by Donald Harman Akenson

Montserrat, although part of England's empire, was settled largely by the Irish and provides an opportunity to view the interaction of Irish emigrants with English imperialism in a situation where the Irish were not a small minority among white settlers. Within this context Akenson explores whether Irish imperialism on Montserrat differed from English imperialism in other colonies. Akenson reveals that the Irish proved to be as effective and as unfeeling colonists as the English and the Scottish, despite the long history of oppression in Ireland. He debunks the myth of the "nice" slave holder and the view that indentured labour prevailed in the West Indies in the seventeenth century. He also shows that the long-held habit of ignoring ethnic strife within the white ruling classes in the West Indies is misconceived. If the Irish Ran the World provides interesting insights into whether ethnicity was central to the making of the colonial world and the usefulness of studies of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English imperialism in the Americas. It will be the basis of the Joanne Goodman Lectures at the University of Western Ontario in 1997.

Genres: History

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

[From book The United States and Ireland (1973):]

Donald Harman Akenson teaches history at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He was born in Minneapolis, took his degrees at Yale and Harvard, and taught and held administrative positions at both of those universities. He is the author of The Irish Education Experiment (1970); The Church of Ireland (1971); and Education and Enmity: The Control of Schooling in Northern Ireland (1973).

Reviews

[Old-Barbarossa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting look at a very specific part of Irish/Caribbean Hx.
Good discussion of the indentured servant or slave issue.
The idea of the Irish being any more benign if they had their own "empire" is shown to be pish and overly simplistic.
They were just as brutal as everyone else that viewed other humans as property.
Read in parallel with To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland for a good overview of the period and subject.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book as I had no idea about the link between Ireland and Montserrat, plus the impact of the shifts in power in Europe and how it impacted the island.