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Protestants, planters and apartheid in early modern Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Nicholas Canny
Nicholas Canny*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University College, Galway
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Extract

Two recent books, one on protestantism, the other on plantation, have much in common. Both are by young authors who as undergraduates at Trinity College, Dublin, identified aspects of the history of early modern Ireland that were in urgent need of investigation and who then proceeded with the necessary research in British universities; in one case under the supervision of Dr Brendan Bradshaw and in the other under the tutelage of Dr Toby Barnard. The enthusiasm and combativeness of their undergraduate years still linger on in these pages but there is even clearer evidence of the skills, interests and approaches to historical study that have been cultivated by their graduate mentors. Furthermore, each book derives its authority from the systematic examination of a mass of source material that has previously been neglected, and each author advances his conclusions in a vigorous fashion and relates them to developments in Britain and on the Continent as well as to what was happening in Ireland. The fact that authors of such ability and accomplishment have been forced to make careers for themselves outside the university world is a sad reflection upon Irish national priorities and raises serious questions about recruitment and tenure practices in universities and other third-level institutions that have a concern for the study of Irish history.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 98 , November 1986 , pp. 105 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1986

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References

1 The protestant reformation in Ireland, 1590–1641. By Ford, Alan . Pp 316. Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang. 1985. Swiss F 59.00 (Studien zur interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums, Band 34).Google Scholar

2 The Munster plantation: English migration to southern Ireland, 1583–1641. By MacCarthy-Morrogh, Michael. pp xi, 318 Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1986. £27.50.Google Scholar

3 Bradshaw, Brendan, ‘Sword, word and strategy in the reformation in Ireland’ in Historical Journal, 21 (1978), pp 475–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 The word apartheid is never used by Alan Ford but is employed in Bradshaw, ‘Sword, word and strategy’, p. 502.

5 Some points that are made here have been previously advanced in Canny, Nicholas, ‘Why the reformation failed in Ireland: une question mal posée’ in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 30 (1979), pp 1–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar The case that was then put needs to be restated in the light of further research (including that of Dr Ford) and because a counter to my position was advanced in Bottigheimer, Karl, ‘The failure of the reformation in Ireland: une question bien posée’ in ibid., 36 (1985), pp 196–207 Google Scholar

6 The most notable of those who expressed such concern were Francisco de Vitoria, Bartolomé de Las Casas and José de Acosta, on whose writings see Pagden, Anthon, The fall of natural man. the American Indian and the origins of comparative ethnology (Cambridge, 1982).Google Scholar

7 For a detailed discussion of this subject, see Gibson, Charles, The Aztecs under Spanish rule: a history of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico (Stanford, Calif., 1964)Google Scholar; Farriss, Nancy M., Maya society : the collective enterprise of survival (Princeton, 1984)Google Scholar; Sweet, David G. and Nash, Gary B (eds), Struggle and survival in colonial America (Berkeley, Calif., 1981).Google Scholar

8 The principal religious shift of the seventeenth century was that achieved by the Austrian Habsburgs in Bohemia. The effective elimination of Catholicism from the Spanish Netherlands during the later sixteenth century is another case in point, as is the attempted eradication of protestantism from seventeenth-century France.

9 This argument is further elaborated upon in Canny, Nicholas, ‘Identity formation in Ireland: the emergence of the Anglo-Irish’ in Canny, Nicholas and Pagden, Anthony (eds), Colonial identity in the Atlantic world, 1500–1800 (Princeton, 1987), pp 159–213.Google Scholar The quotation comes from p. 184. When it is stated that it was hoped to squeeze out recalcitrant catholics through penal legislation what was intended was the application to Ireland of the penal laws against catholics that were in operation in England. The favoured method for applying these laws to Ireland was that described in Pawlisch, Hans, Sir John Davies and the conquest of Ireland: a study in legal imperialism (Cambridge, 1983), pp 103–21.Google Scholar

10 For the theory and methods of reform in the Austrian territories, see Evans, R.J., The making of the Habsburg monarchy, 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1979).Google Scholar

11 For a consideration of John Eliot and others who strove to convert American Indians through instruction, see Axtell, James, The European and the Indian: essays in the ethnohistory of colonial North America (Oxford, 1981).Google Scholar And for a joint treatment of Eliot and Bedell, see Salmon, Vivian, ‘Missionary linguistics in seventeenth-century Ireland and a North American analogy’ in Historiographia Linguistica, 12 (1985), pp 321–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am grateful to Dáibhí Ó Cróinín for drawing my attention to this paper.

l2 See Canny, ‘Identity formation in Ireland.’

13 The source of the quotation is cited in Canny, ‘Identity formation in Ireland’, p. 181. For an example of one who would keep the Irish at arms length, but who still believed they would be drawn towards the progressive culture of the settlers, see Canny, Nicholas, The upstart earl: a study of the social and mental world of Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork, 1566–1643 (Cambridge, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Ranger, TO., ‘The career of Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork in Ireland, 1566–1643’ unpublished D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1959).Google Scholar See also Gillespie, Raymond, Colonial Ulster: the settlement of east Ulster, 1600–41 (Cork, 1985),Google Scholar which demonstrates that settlement in Antrim and Down was also place-specific and which traces the origins of the settlers in these two counties. Also relevant is Robinson, Philip, The plantation of Ulster, 1600–1670 (Dublin, 1986).Google Scholar

15 For more recent appraisals of Irish settlement in a colonial context, see Canny, Nicholas, ‘Migration and opportunity: Britain, Ireland and the New World’ in Irish Economic and Social History, 12 (1985), pp 7–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, ‘The Irish background to Penn’s experiment’ in Dunn, Richard S. and Dunn, Mary Maples (eds), The world of William Penn (Philadelphia, 1986), pp 139–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a study of migration from Britain to America and its relationship to internal migration in the seventeenth century, see Horn, James, ‘Servant emigration to the Chesapeake in the seventeenth century’ in Tate, Thad W and Ammerman, David L. (eds), The Chesapeake in the seventeenth century: essays m Anglo-American history (Chapel Hill, 1979).Google Scholar And for British migration in the eighteenth century and its place-specific character, see Bailyn, Bernard, Voyagers to the west: a passage in the peopling of America on the eve of revolution (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

16 For detailed studies of mortgage transaction outside Munster, see Ó Bric, Breandán, ‘Galway townsmen as owners of land in Connacht, 1585–164’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University College, Galway, 1974)Google Scholar and O’Dowd, Mary, ‘Landownership in the Sligo area, 1585–164’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University College, Dublin, 1982).Google Scholar