The Original Sin: English Discourses of Race and Plantation in Ireland, 1590-1625 (thesis)

Abstract

Ireland experienced numerous forms of land redistribution throughout its history due to intermittent invasions. Viking and Norman groups each conquered sections of the island from the 800s to 1200s CE, and the Tudor monarchs of England solidified de jure authority when Henry VIII was proclaimed King of Ireland in 1542 CE. However, none of these groups totally supplanted native Irish control. Plantation was the principal policy begun during the Tudor monarchs and greatly expanded by the subsequent Stuart monarchs to gain control over the land and people of Ireland. In all its iterations, plantation was essentially the confiscation of native Irish land for the settlement of British colonists. Historians such as Nicholas Canny and Jane Ohlmeyer emphasize the role of plantation in Ireland as Britain's first colonial expansion into a larger Atlantic world.(1) As such, British plantation policies and practices in Ireland provide an opportunity to explore the origins of how colonial experiences interacted with discourses of race. This thesis argues that the racialized discourse of British elites in the Tudor-Stuart transition period of 1590-1625 CE indicates that ideas of a native Irish racial other were original to British elite experiences of plantation. English elite literature written in the 1590s branded a Gaelic-Catholic racial identity for the native Irish that would be used to justify plantation as a colonial policy. Similar themes of a racialized discourse appear in the administrative materials and institutional interactions of the period, which assumed plantation was necessary to incorporate the native Irish into a homogenous British polity. Additionally, the personal correspondence and policy petitions of British elites utilized the same racialized discourse to presuppose the necessity of plantation to make the native Irish economically profitable within a larger British polity. This thesis builds upon the work of previous historians that have emphasized Ireland's role as the first colonial experience for the eventually globe-spanning British empire. [From Introduction]