The 'Mere Irish' and the Colonisation of Ulster, 1570 - 1641

by Gerard Farrell

This book examines the native Irish experience of conquest and colonisation in Ulster in the first decades of the seventeenth century. Central to this argument is that the Ulster plantation bears more comparisons to European expansion throughout the Atlantic than (as some historians have argued) the early-modern state’s consolidation of control over its peripheral territories. Farrell also demonstrates that plantation Ulster did not see any significant attempt to transform the Irish culturally or economically in these years, notwithstanding the rhetoric of a ‘civilising mission’.

Challenging recent scholarship on the integrative aspects of plantation society, he argues that this emphasis obscures the antagonism which characterised relations between native and newcomer until the eve of the 1641 rising. This book is of interest not only to students of early-modern Ireland but is also a valuable contribution to the burgeoning field of Atlantic history and indeed colonial studies in general.

Genres: History, Ireland

351 pages, Hardcover

First published October 23, 2017

Reviews

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few highlights in lieu of a proper review, for now. Farrell does a great job of distilling the role of base and superstructure in this decolonial movement context:

"The fate of those who engaged in the colonial economy without starting capital or assets was largely preordained, given that participants in a market economy rarely start out as equals, and that the leverage enjoyed by one contender over another at the outset usually plays a decisive role in determining success or failure."

"Another feature of this regime was the collective punishment of the population for transgressions against colonists."

The short-term interests of those who put the plantation into execution subverted the professed intentions of those who planned and theorised it. From provost marshals who abused their positions of power, to Church of Ireland clergy who disdained preaching to the natives, and undertakers who exploited the vulnerability of native tenants—such groups found it far more congenial to maintain the subordinate position of the native Irish underclass inherited from the Gaelic elite than to create new social structures which might have offered the Irish opportunities for economic advancement through the adoption of English cultural and economic norms.

‘it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness’. It should, however, be noted that Marx himself was not dogmatic on this point, later commenting that such a causal relationship between base and superstructure was merely true of his own times, ‘in which material interests preponderate, but not for the middle ages, in which Catholicism, nor for Athens and Rome, where politics, reigned supreme’.

"the view that the implementation of English law was often nothing more than a continuation of a process of conquest and dispossession by judicial means rather than military ones."

1615. The handful who participated in the conspiracy of that year could hardly be described as a ‘coherent movement’, being neither competent nor numerous enough to seriously threaten the colonial administration. By 1641, a sufficient proportion of the native landowning gentry had lost faith in the possibility of advancement, or even in the maintenance of their position, through co-operation with the plantation project, for them to form the ranks of a native leadership capable of taking over central Ulster with relative speed.

"While some ‘deserving Irish’ may have wanted changes in colonial society, there was no doubt a limit to the social revolution they were prepared to countenance. This is why it is once again important to take cognisance of the class divisions that existed in the ranks of the native Irish in plantation society and to recognise that two risings took place in 1641. One was planned by a small group of conspirators, relatively conservative in their aims, seeking to seize a few strategic forts and towns and negotiate from a position of strength. The other was a more spontaneous outburst of violence by an oppressed colonial underclass that sought the complete overthrow of the existing order. An awareness of the divergent class interests within the ranks of the Irish suggests that the co-existence of both risings was in no way contradictory.

"the majority has to some extent been written out of the history of this period. It was in fact this landless majority which seized the initiative in October 1641 and determined the character of the rising, especially in Ulster."