Early Modern Ireland

Women’s Life Writing and Early Modern Ireland provides an original perspective on both new and familiar texts in this first critical collection to focus on seventeenth-century women’s life writing in a specifically Irish context. By shifting the focus away from England—even though many of these writers would have identified themselves as English—and making Ireland and Irishness the focus of their essays, the contributors resituate women’s narratives in a powerful and revealing landscape. This volume addresses a range of genres, from letters to book marginalia, and a number of different women, from now-canonical life writers such as Mary Rich and Ann Fanshawe to far less familiar figures such as Eliza Blennerhassett and the correspondents and supplicants of William King, archbishop of Dublin. The writings of the Boyle sisters and the Duchess of Ormonde—women from the two most important families in seventeenth-century Ireland—also receive a thorough analysis. These innovative and nuanced scholarly considerations of the powerful influence of Ireland on these writers’ construction of self, provide fresh, illuminating insights into both their writing and their broader cultural context.

Early Modern Ireland: New Sources, Methods, and Perspectives offers fresh approaches and case studies that push the field of early modern Ireland, and of British and European history more generally, into unexplored directions. The centuries between 1500 and 1700 were pivotal in Ireland’s history, yet so much about this period has remained neglected until relatively recently, and a great deal has yet to be explored. Containing seventeen original and individually commissioned essays by an international and interdisciplinary group of leading and emerging scholars, this book covers a wide range of topics, including social, cultural, and political history as well as folklore, medicine, archaeology, and digital humanities, all of which are enhanced by a selection of maps, graphs, tables, and images. Urging a reevaluation of the terms and assumptions which have been used to describe Ireland’s past, and a consideration of the new directions in which the study of early modern Ireland could be taken, Early Modern Ireland: New Sources, Methods, and Perspectives is a groundbreaking collection for students and scholars studying early modern Irish history.

Examines the divided loyalties of the descendants of Ireland's Anglo-Norman conquerors during the wars against the Irish confederate rebels. WINNER of the NUI Publication Prize in Irish History 2019 Descendants of Ireland's Anglo-Norman conquerors, the Old English had upheld the authority of the English crown in Ireland for four centuries. Yet the sixteenth century witnessed the demotion of this Irish-born and predominantly Catholic community from places of trust and authority in the Irish administration in favour of English Protestant newcomers. Political alienation and growing religious tensions strained crown-community relations and caused many Old Englishmen to reconsider their future in Ireland. The Nine Years' War (1594-1603) presented them with an ideal opportunity to reassess their relationshipwith the crown when the Irish Confederates, led by Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, sought their support. This book explores the role of the Old English during the Nine Years' War. It discusses the impact of divided loyalties, examines how they responded to political, social, religious, and military pressures, and assesses how the war shaped their sense of identity. The book demonstrates that despite the anxieties of English officials, the Old English remained loyal. More than that, they played a key role in defeating the Irish Confederacy through military and financial support. It argues that their sense of tradition and duty to uphold English rule in Ireland was central to their identity and that appeals to embrace a new Irish Catholic identity, in partnership with the Gaelic Irish, was doomed to failure. RUTH CANNING is Lecturer in Early Modern History at Liverpool Hope University.

This book contains substantial new historical research on medicine in early modern Ireland. Its twelve chapters address a variety of subjects and situate them in appropriate contexts. The main focus is on medical practitioners and their place in Irish society. The book makes a major contribution to scholarship on early modern medicine.

Reissued with a comprehensive and updated bibliographical supplement, this history of Ireland brings together essays by scholars on Irish history from the earliest times to the present. This is the third of a ten-volume series.

The Elizabethan conquest of Ireland sparked off two linguistic events of enduring importance: it initiated the language shift from Irish to English, which constitutes the great drama of Irish cultural history, and it marked the beginnings of English linguistic expansion. The Elizabethan colonisers in Ireland included some of the leading poets and translators of the day. In Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland, Patricia Palmer uses their writings, as well as material from the State Papers, to explore the part that language played in shaping colonial ideology and English national identity. Palmer shows how manoeuvres of linguistic expansion rehearsed in Ireland shaped Englishmen's encounters with the languages of the New World, and frames that analysis within a comparison between English linguistic colonisation and Spanish practice in the New World. This is an ambitious, comparative study, which will interest literary and political historians.

This book offers a perspective on Irish History from the late sixteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. Many of the chapters address, from national, regional and individual perspectives, the key events, institutions and processes that transformed the history of early modern Ireland. Others probe the nature of Anglo-Irish relations, Ireland's ambiguous constitutional position during these years and the problems inherent in running a multiple monarchy. Where appropriate, the volume adopts a wider comparative approach and casts fresh light on a range of historiographical debates, including the 'New British Histories', the nature of the 'General Crisis' and the question of Irish exceptionalism. Collectively, these essays challenge and complicate traditional paradigms of conquest and colonization. By examining the inconclusive and contradictory manner in which English and Scottish colonists established themselves in the island, it casts further light on all of its inhabitants during the early modern period.

The theme of 'community' has proved a focus of considerable interest in recent historiography, but has been neglected in its application to Ireland. Here the question of 'community' is pursued in terms of the political, cultural, social and religious condition of Ireland, and in its European context. Contents -- Tadhg hAnnrachin (UCD) on the ideal of representative communities; Colm Lennon (NUIM) on fraternity and community in early modern Ireland; John McCafferty (UCD) on early modern interpretations of the Island of Saints and Scholars; Tim Harris (Brown U) on politics, religion and community in later Stuart Ireland; Patrick Little (History of Parliament, London) on The New English in Europe 1625-1660; Clodagh Tait (U Essex) on Catholic bequests and recusancy in Ireland; Aoife Duignan (UCD) on Shifting allegiances: the Protestant community in Connacht, 1643-5; Darren McGettigan on the political community of the lordship of Tir Chonaill and reaction to the Nine Years War; Robert Armstrong (TCD) on nationality and spirituality in Presbyterian Ulster, 1650-1700

In this book leading Irish historians examine the origins of sectarian division in early modern Ireland.

An accessible and innovative look at Irish history by some of today's most exciting historians of Ireland This book brings together some of today's most exciting scholars of Irish history to chart the pivotal events in the history of modern Ireland while providing fresh perspectives on topics ranging from colonialism and nationalism to political violence, famine, emigration, and feminism. The Princeton History of Modern Ireland takes readers from the Tudor conquest in the sixteenth century to the contemporary boom and bust of the Celtic Tiger, exploring key political developments as well as major social and cultural movements. Contributors describe how the experiences of empire and diaspora have determined Ireland’s position in the wider world and analyze them alongside domestic changes ranging from the Irish language to the economy. They trace the literary and intellectual history of Ireland from Jonathan Swift to Seamus Heaney and look at important shifts in ideology and belief, delving into subjects such as religion, gender, and Fenianism. Presenting the latest cutting-edge scholarship by a new generation of historians of Ireland, The Princeton History of Modern Ireland features narrative chapters on Irish history followed by thematic chapters on key topics. The book highlights the global reach of the Irish experience as well as commonalities shared across Europe, and brings vividly to life an Irish past shaped by conquest, plantation, assimilation, revolution, and partition.