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Shapes of Ireland: Maps and their makers 1564-1839
Andrews, J.H. Shapes of Maps and Their Makers 1564-1839. Dublin, Geography Publications, 1997. 15.5 cm x 24 cm. IX, 346 pages. Original Hardcover with dustjacket and protective Mylar covering. Very good condition with only minor signs of external wear. Includes for example the following Friends in High Gerard Mercator, 1564 / The Empire of Great John Speed, 1610 / Eight Times Round the William Petty, 1685 / Surveys of a Later Thomas Jefferys, 1759 / A Churchman's Daniel Augustus Beaufort, 1792 / The Shape of Maps to Thomas Larcom, 1839 etc.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
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July 16, 2025
I feel this would be a good book for those interested in the history of map making of Ireland from an English perspective, whereas what I was looking for was old maps of Ireland, of which it did contain some images but not exactly what I wanted.
Some parts that stood out to me were like how in 1603, Charles Blant, Baron Mountjoy was given earldom of Devon and with it land, as a reward from the English monarch because he had conquered Ireland, which the author of the book refers to as a ‘brilliant campaign’ which would have inevitably meant a lot of killing of Irish people.
Another aspect of invasion by the English of Ireland was that an area estimated at nearly 8,400,000 acres that was owned by Catholic proprietors was given partly as a reward to those soldiers who had served in the reconquest and partly to those who the author terms as ‘adventurers’ or alternatively war profiteers who had invested money in Oliver Cromwell’s later cause of invading and reconquering Ireland.
The author notes that ‘one anomaly in the real world of seventeenth century Ireland was that the colonizers could no longer wait for the natives to rebel. Instead they found legal excuses to seize lands that were still more or less peaceful, thus elaborating the sequence of plantation surveys between one war and the next’. These new legalised plantation owners introduced farming for profit on the lands that had been confiscated, as opposed to the traditional way of subsistence farming of the native Irish where they would farm enough to meet the needs of their family.
This new English legalised ownership of land brought with it the anglicisation of placenames and as one ‘eminent Celtic scholar Edward Lhuyd’ in the 1690s ‘commenting on a draft map of Wales’ said; the names of places should be written in ‘true Welsh’ and be ‘no acceptable piece of service to the English buyer’, the author noting that maps were not only used as a means of military tactic in conquest and colonisation, not only in Ireland but elsewhere, but in addition, maps also served as a source of information and advertisement to potential English buyers of the conquered lands that were now under new legalised English ownership.
Some parts that stood out to me were like how in 1603, Charles Blant, Baron Mountjoy was given earldom of Devon and with it land, as a reward from the English monarch because he had conquered Ireland, which the author of the book refers to as a ‘brilliant campaign’ which would have inevitably meant a lot of killing of Irish people.
Another aspect of invasion by the English of Ireland was that an area estimated at nearly 8,400,000 acres that was owned by Catholic proprietors was given partly as a reward to those soldiers who had served in the reconquest and partly to those who the author terms as ‘adventurers’ or alternatively war profiteers who had invested money in Oliver Cromwell’s later cause of invading and reconquering Ireland.
The author notes that ‘one anomaly in the real world of seventeenth century Ireland was that the colonizers could no longer wait for the natives to rebel. Instead they found legal excuses to seize lands that were still more or less peaceful, thus elaborating the sequence of plantation surveys between one war and the next’. These new legalised plantation owners introduced farming for profit on the lands that had been confiscated, as opposed to the traditional way of subsistence farming of the native Irish where they would farm enough to meet the needs of their family.
This new English legalised ownership of land brought with it the anglicisation of placenames and as one ‘eminent Celtic scholar Edward Lhuyd’ in the 1690s ‘commenting on a draft map of Wales’ said; the names of places should be written in ‘true Welsh’ and be ‘no acceptable piece of service to the English buyer’, the author noting that maps were not only used as a means of military tactic in conquest and colonisation, not only in Ireland but elsewhere, but in addition, maps also served as a source of information and advertisement to potential English buyers of the conquered lands that were now under new legalised English ownership.
Displaying 1 of 1 review