An introduction to the study of political ideas in early modern Ireland (original) (raw)
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Book review: Leaders of the City: Dublin’s First Citizens, 1500–1950
Irish Economic and Social History, 2017
'remained disinterested in and ignorant of Ireland'. However, there was an important development in the treatises themselves 'in the face of royal indifference'-not only did they become more nuanced, and engaged in factional disputes, but more importantly they began to recommend 'particular reformation' to entice a reluctant king to engage in the 'reduction' of Ireland piecemeal, at the least. The Kildare rebellion forced Henry VIII into 'engagement' with Ireland but not necessarily to reform. Cromwell was keen to receive information about Ireland, but there is 'no evidence that he had read the documents prepared earlier in the reign' (p. 166). It is striking to learn that the letters and papers relating to Ireland that Cromwell amassed, like Wolsey's before him, 'disappeared into the Tower' after his fall (p. 183). In any case, there is 'no sign' that royal policy in Ireland was shaped by the treatises sent from Ireland (p. 170). Nonetheless, the tantalising suggestion is made that St Leger in the 1540s gathered together 'disparate ideas', some of them reflected in such treatises and 'fashioned them into a new political policy for Ireland' (p. 186). To conclude, Maginn and Ellis have done a great job of work in presenting the text of an invaluable compendium from a critical time in Tudor policy formation for Ireland. The importance of this book lies primarily in its consideration of how Tudor policy was formulated. The implication of this work is that we need to reconsider the revisionist paradigm for Tudor Ireland. The sheer ignorance and indifference of the early Tudor monarchs towards Ireland, and the contrasts in conditions in much of the Pale with England (as reflected in the accounts of contemporaries), are not compatible with the notion that an 'English state' encompassed much of Ireland from the later middle ages. The texts in the compendium, and the discussion in this book, show that we need to look again at what conditions in the Pale were actually like and at what an older generation of historians termed 'Gaelicisation'. The Discovery of Tudor Ireland shows that historians of Tudor Ireland have a great deal yet to discover!
English Ireland may not have been set apart entirely from political developments in late-medieval Europe, but neither were its politics without their own distinctive flavour. Two of the most familiar structural features of Irish politics in the centuries after the English invasion are the island’s status as a lordship separate from, but dependent upon, the English Crown; and the division of the island into two peoples. Historians seek to understand and explain dependency and division by describing Ireland as a classic colonial situation. The problem with the colonial paradigm is not that it is wrong, but that, by itself, it explains too much and too little. What is most interesting about Ireland as a specimen of European political ideas in action is that the characteristics of dependency and division sat awkwardly – indeed, sat increasingly awkwardly – in the evolving thought-world of late-medieval Europe. This was the era when the ‘state’ was emerging as something more than an idea and was beginning to coalesce with conceptions of nationhood. As Andrea Ruddick has shown, the kingdom of England was being conceptualized in the late Middle Ages as a defined physical space that supplied the homeland of a distinct people. How, then, was one to define the status of those of the king’s English lieges who resided outside the realm yet claimed the liberties of freeborn Englishmen as their birth right? Since the king could not perform his office in person, how much of his sovereign authority devolved upon his representative in Ireland, who took an oath of office based upon the coronation oath? What were the king’s duties, whether of care or correction, towards the native inhabitants of Ireland whom the settlers had displaced and disenfranchised? And finally – a question prior to all of these – by what right did the monarch of England claim to rule Ireland in the first place?
British views on Irish national character, 1800–1846. an intellectual history1
History of European Ideas, 1998
Despite the long-standing reputation of the Victorians for showing contempt towards the Irish, recent scholarship has drawn a more complex and nuanced picture which acts as a liberating insight for my research. I aim to extend this reassessment back to the hitherto under-documented period between the Act of Union and the Famine, and in the process to argue that concern with national character should be assessed not as pre-political views, attached in various ways to political thought, but as component parts of it. In discussing Irish character, early-and mid-nineteenth century British authors made use of a theme that was central to their political universe, the relationship between a free constitution and the moral adequacy of its citizens. That is why the article is subtitled 'an intellectual history': I am setting out, not to recount the history of Irish character per se, but to shed light on an aspect of the political thought of the day.
Elizabethan Ireland: the graveyard of ambition or land of political opportunity?
This paper examines Edmund Spenser’s role as part of a group of Protestants led by the earl of Leicester who pushed for greater English support for Protestant rebels in France and the Low Countries and opposed the negotiations for a marriage between Elizabeth I and the duc d’Anjou. It will analyse his poem The shepheardes calendar in its context as a piece of propaganda against the match, and show how Spenser’s views were part of wider ‘forward Protestant’ opinion in Elizabethan England. It will also examine the Classical influences on Spenser’s work, with particular focus on his use of traditional pastoral forms to convey a very contemporary political message, a tactic also used by several of his peers.