Early Modern Ireland: A British Atlantic Colony?

Abstract

The question of whether Ireland should be viewed as a colony within the British Empire has been debated within Irish historiography in recent decades. The term has proven contentious, and alternatives have been suggested. However, there is considerable merit in viewing Ireland in the early modern period as a colony. The period witnessed major British plantation projects, but also increasing levels of violence, expropriation, and cultural and sectarian conflict. The consequences and contested legacies of these events would influence Ireland's historical development as it became integrated into an emerging British Atlantic world, and eventually the British Empire.

Organized Violence in the Elizabethan Monarchical Republic

“…Despite historians' disavowals of teleology, the characteristics they have attributed to the monarchical republic look suspiciously like anticipations of modern liberalism, whereas England's brutal conquest of Ireland has been variously interpreted as an early chapter in the history of British colonialism, and of mass murder as a tool of political domination. The Elizabethan histories of England and Ireland therefore appear to anticipate the ways in which modern western states have maintained participatory constitutional institutions in domestic governance, while unleashing violence and human rights abuses in colonial and neo‐colonial wars.…”