Related Papers
Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination: Anglophone Writing from 1600 to 1900
2017 •
Silke Stroh
Can Scotland be considered an English colony? Is its experience and literature comparable to that of overseas postcolonial countries? Or are such comparisons no more than patriotic victimology to mask Scottish complicity in the British Empire and justify nationalism? These questions have been heatedly debated in recent years, especially in the run-up to the 2014 referendum on independence, and remain topical amid continuing campaigns for more autonomy and calls for a post-Brexit “indyref2.” However, postcolonialism cannot be reduced to politics: cultural concerns are equally important. Focusing on the first centuries of the British Unions, Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination also offers a general introduction to the emerging field of postcolonial Scottish studies, assessing both its potential and limitations in order to promote further interdisciplinary dialogue. Accessible to readers from various backgrounds, the book combines overviews of theoretical, social, and cultural contexts with detailed case studies of literary and nonliterary texts. The main focus is on internal divisions between the anglophone Lowlands and traditionally Gaelic Highlands. Central to the ‘internal colonialism’ debate, these divisions also play a crucial role in Scottish–English relations. This study shows how the image of Scotland’s Gaelic margins changed under the influence of two simultaneous developments: the emergence of the modern nation state and the rise of overseas colonialism. Both sparked intense debates over ethnic hierarchies, progress and development, cultural intermixture, exploitation and resistance. Examples are drawn from novels, travel writing, poetry, political and administrative documents, writings by missionaries and educators, historiography, journalism, and anthropology.
'An Irish Context to a Scottish Disaster: James IV, the O’Donnells of Tyrconnell and the Road to Flodden’ in K. Simms and J. Mannion (eds.), Politics, Kinship and Culture in Gaelic Ireland, c.1100-c.1690: Essays for the Irish Chiefs’ and Clans’ Prize in History (Dublin, 2018), pp. 10-16.
Simon Egan
This collection of studies on the history of Gaelic Ireland is the product of four years of an essay competition, sponsored jointly by the Standing Council of Irish Chiefs and Chieftains (Buanchomhairle Thaoisigh Éireann) and Clans of Ireland (Finte na hÉireann). The works represent the winning entries and superior quality essays from 2013 to 2016, and cover the period ranging from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries. The study themes range from political and social history to kinship and culture, relating to a selection of Gaelic Irish, Anglo-Norman and Scottish population groups who shared the island. Over the course of the fifteenth century, the O'Donnells of Tyrconnell developed close ties with the Stewart monarchy in Scotland. This paper explores the relationship between both families and examines how the Stewarts often looked to the O'Donnells as a means of destabilising English power in Ireland. The years leading down to the fateful battle of Flodden form a particularly interesting case study.
‘Performing there feats of arms ... which would form a splendid romance were it all recounted’: Chivalry and the Depiction of the Scottish Invasion of Ireland, 1315–18
Iain MacInnes
Thomas Gray, whose words are quoted above, was a soldier on the Anglo-Scottish frontier and a seasoned veteran of numerous engagements with the Scots. As such he could comment with confidence on Scottish military ability. If he perceived in the Scottish invasion of Ireland the makings of a good chivalric romance, he was not however the one to write it. Indeed, English sources more generally provided unsurprisingly negative coverage of Bruce devastation and destruction in famine-ravaged Ireland. Irish sources were at times more scathing of Scottish actions, but even they spent little time discussing about Scottish activities. While the death of Edward Bruce at Faughart in 1318 was celebrated, their invective against the erstwhile king of Ireland appears at odds with the lack of detail given to accounts of Scottish campaigning. Reading through the Irish annals, moreover, gives the impression that the Scots were simply an additional element in an already complex series of Gaelic and Anglo-Irish rebellions, campaigns and raids. If this was the case, and Bruce’s greatest crime was to light the touch paper for renewed Irish unrest, then is it possible that the overriding view of the Scottish campaigns and the damage committed during their course is over-exaggerated? Was Gray in fact right to suggest that the Scottish campaigns in Ireland were a chivalric tour de force and the stuff of literary romance? Scottish chronicle accounts would certainly suggest so, and it is John Barbour’s Bruce that provides the most compelling chivalric representation of the invasion. It is, then, the purpose of this paper to reconsider the actions of Bruce forces in Ireland and, in particular, the representation of these acts in contemporary sources. It will re-evaluate the extent to which chivalry played a role in Scottish behaviour, and the depiction of these campaigns overall.
D. Edwards and S. Egan (eds), The Scots in Early Stuart Ireland: Union and Separation in Two Kingdoms (Manchester University Press; Manchester, 2016) ISBN: 978-0-7190-9721-8.
Simon Egan
By exploring Irish-Scottish connections during the period 1603–60 this book brings important new perspectives to the study of the Early Stuart state. Acknowledging the pivotal role of the Hiberno-Scottish world, it identifies some of the limits of England’s Anglicising influence in the northern and western ‘British Isles’ and the often slight basis on which the Stuart pursuit of a new ‘British’ consciousness operated. Regarding the Anglo-Scottish relationship, it was chiefly in Ireland that the English and Scots intermingled after 1603, with a variety of consequences, often destabilising for English, Scots and Irish. The importance of the Gaelic sphere in Irish-Scottish connections also receives much greater attention here than in previous accounts. This Gaedhealtacht played a central role in the transmission of religious radicalism, both Catholic and Protestant, in Ireland and Scotland, ultimately leading to political crisis and revolution within the British Isles.
Scottish Historical Review
The World of the Galloglass: Kings, Warlords and Warriors in Ireland and Scotland 1200–1600. Edited by Seán Duffy. Pp. xv, 219. ISBN: 9781851829460. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007. €55.00
2010 •
Iain MacInnes
The 'Mere Irish' and the Colonisation of Ulster, 1570-1641
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 its 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.
'The fatal ingredient of the covenant': the place of the Ulster Scottish community during the 1640s (Reshaping Ireland, 1550–1700 Colonization and its consequences, ed. Brian Mac Cuarta)
Kevin Forkan
Published in Reshaping Ireland, 1550–1700 Colonization and its consequences (Brian Mac Cuarta, editor) http://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/archives/reshaping-ireland/
Irish Geography
Contours of Colonialism: Gaelic Ireland and the Early Colonial Subject
2004 •
John Morrissey
The sixteenth century is critical to our reading of Ireland's subsequent colonial and indeed postcolonial geographies, yet has frequently evaded considered scrutiny for a variety of reasons, including the deficiencies of the evidence. Eschewing assumptions of colonialism as a ‘given’ and informed by postcolonial perspectives in geography and related disciplines, this paper interrogates the initial contours of English colonial endeavours in one region of Ireland from the beginnings of renewed Crown interest in the mid‐sixteenth century. Using the example of the O'Dwyer family of Kilnamanagh in county Tipperary, the paper explores the interconnections as well as the conflicts of the worlds of the colonial ‘newcomers’ and Gaelic ‘natives’, and demonstrates how colonial discourses of civility, reform and the barbarous ‘Other’ were transcended on the ground by a complex set of locally dependent variables. Support is offered for the notion that expediency and survival were the fundamental imperatives of both the New English administration and Gaelic responses, and, by highlighting the absence of any consistent colonial relations, the discussion points to the contradictory and mutually constitutive nature of English and Gaelic worlds, co‐existing by the end of the sixteenth century.
History
The Stuart Restoration and the English in Ireland. By DanielleMcCormack. Irish Historical Monographs. Boydell. 2016. x + 197pp. £65.00
2017 •
padraig lenihan
'A Playground of the Scots? Gaelic Ireland and the Stewart Monarchy in the Late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’ in L. Clark (ed) The Fifteenth century XVI (Boydell and Brewer; Woodbridge, Forthcoming December 2018), 15 page chapter.
Simon Egan
This paper examines Scotland's relationship with Ireland during the later middle ages, focusing in particular on the House of Stewart's relationship with the O'Donnells of Tyrconnell.
