Ireland and the Origins of the British Atlantic Empire

I. Tudor policy toward Ireland

A. The religious divide

HVIII divorced Catherine of Aragon in 1527

Church of England

no Irish reformation [map]

Henry VIII

 

B. Tudor state formation

Tudor revolution in govt

composite monarchy

Ireland: Gaelic, Catholic, politically decentralized

Kildare Rebellion (1534-35)

Irish policy:

surrender and regrant

Act of 1537 - "a conformitie, concordance, and familiarity in language, tongue,
in manners, order and apparel"

head of Irish church (1537)

King of Ireland (1541)

the New English

Elizabeth I

C. Colonization [map 1] [map 2 ]

new policy: plantation

anglicization

phases:

1) first plantations (Mary)

Counties Laois ("LEE-sch") and Offaly ("Off-a-LEE")

2) the plantation of Munster (Elizabeth)

Humphrey Gilbert (1537-1583)

Desmond Rebellion (1579-1583): Gerald FitzGerald

Walter Raleigh (1552-1618)

30,000 settlers by 1660

3) the plantation of Ulster (Elizabeth/James I)

O'Neill Rebellion: Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone (1550-1616)

the Flight of the Earls (1607)

six of nine Ulster counties planted

Derry > Londonderry

the Ulster plantation > Northern Ireland [map]    

O'Neill surrenders

II. Anglo-Spanish relations

A. The issue of dynastic alliance

Henry VIII's divorce

Elizabeth and King Philip II

John Hawkins

B. English interference with Spanish trade

the slave trade

John Hawkins (1532-1595)

Francis Drake

English privateers (1570s-1590s)

Francis Drake (1540-1596)

capture of Spanish silver train (1573)

circumnavigation and plundering

sack of St. Augustine (1586)

C. War

The Armada (1588)

English counterattack (1589), aid to Dutch rebels, attack on Cadiz (1596)

III. The Irish laboratory and the first Atlantic colonies [map (Senex, 1719)]

A. Personnel

Drake

early efforts at plantations in Ulster

slave trade

Gilbert and Newfoundland (1578 and 1583)

Raleigh

Guiana (1584)

Roanoke (1585, 1587)

Walter Raleigh

Richard Hakluyt (c.1552-1616)

 

B. Methods and goals

lack of state financial support

private enterprise (joint stock companies)

settlement and agriculture

subjugation of native populations

 

C. Attitudes toward indigenous people

Fynes Moryson (1615): "more barbarous and more brutish in the costomes and demeanures then in any
other parte of the world that is knowne"

Sir John Davies (1612), A Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued (1612):
behaved "little better than Canniballes, who doe hunt one another, and hee that hath most strength
and swiftness doth eate and deovoures all his fellowes"