Consolidating Conquest

either they or we must be ruined concluded Archbishop William King of Protestant Catholic relations in Ireland. And this, argues Pdraig Lenihan, was the default state of relations between the two communities throughout the 17th century.

This groundbreaking and controversial new study tells the story of two nations in Ireland; an Irish Catholic nation and a Protestant nation, emerging from a blood-stained century.  This survey confronts the violence and enmity inherent in the consolidation of conquest. This was the age of:

         the Ulster plantation

         Cromwells conquest and post-war settlement.

         the battles of the Boyne and Aughrim, the sieges of Derry and Limerick.

         the economic and parliamentary foundations of Protestant ascendancy.

Lenihan contends that the overriding grand narrative of this period was one of conflict and dispossession as the native elitewas progressively displacedby a new colonial ruling class. This struggle was not confined to war but also had cultural, religious, economic and social reverberations. At times the darkness was relieved throughout the period by episodes of peaceful cooperation. Consolidating Conquest places events in Ireland in the context of three Stuart kingdoms, religious rivalry within and between those kingdoms, and the shifting balance of power as monarchy and commonwealth, Whitehall and Westminster, fought for ultimate power.

If the project of creating a common Irish national identity, embracing Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter was for the most part a failure, and divisions between native and newcomer  froze into permanence, then the explanation must be sought in the catastrophic seventeenth-century. Consolidating Conquest shows how this failure has left a legacy of contending histories which offer material for latter day triumphalism and victimhood. For any student wishing to understand Irelands troubled past and complex present, this book is essential reading.

Pdraig Lenihan lectures in history at the University of Limerick. His recent publications include, Conquest and Resistance: War in 17th Century Ireland (2001) and 1690 the Battle of the Boyne (2003).