The Elizabethan conquest of Ireland: A pattern established, 1565-76

by Nicholas P Canny

Great Britain -- History -- Elizabeth, 1558-1603.

Genres: History, Ireland

205 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Differengenera · Rating 5 out of 5]

best single volume I'm aware of on the Plantations @ 170 pages. Securing Ireland was important for the English crown in order to stave off the risk of the French or the Spanish using it as a launching pad to attack England, but also because the Irish lords descended from the Normans were unique within Western Europe from the point of view of their freedom relative to the monarchy. Reformers based in the Pale - which from a customs, language, ways of life perspective wasn't *that* distinct from the rest of the island - found this embarrassing and complained to crown officials a lot about how these lords customs and onerous exactions were undermining their trade. They also wrote very exaggerated accounts of how debased their ways of life were, which means racism was invented by Dublin suburbanites.

The first initiative was establishing garrisons, which would not represent drains on the crown because the cost would be levied on settled proprietors. This provoked a reaction from the lords - both Old Norman and Irish (who lived in more or less unmapped terrain with their own legal system) - leading to a set of military political back and forths bookended by punitive expeditions and expropriations, the scale and brutality of which escalated as crown officials became more militantly Protestant.

[G · Rating 1 out of 5]

Utter crap. Nuff said.