Nicholas Canny (Oxford University Press, £55) ISBN 0198200919 In 1976 Nicholas Canny set the agenda for a generation of scholars of early modern Ireland with The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: a pattern established, 1565-76. He now presents us with a major study of the colonisation of Ireland in the turbulent years that followed. It is … Read more
These two collections of essays expand on works such as Micheline Kerney-Walsh’s An exile of Ireland, Hugh O’Neill, Prince of Ulster, emphasising that there was much more to Irish continental migration than dispossessed aristocracy and unemployed soldiery looking to new horizons. Both books also hint at a great deal of research waiting to be done … Read more
For the last fifteen years ‘confessionalisation’ has been one of the most prominent concepts in German scholarship on early modern Europe. In the wake of the methodological approaches of Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang Reinhard concerning the role of religion in social change and state formation scholars have explored the impact of confessionalisation both on German … Read more
RTÉ has made a documentary, The Battle of Kinsale, as its contribution of this year’s 400th commemoration of that event. History Ireland solicited the views of the programme makers. Peter Mulryan, producer/director Of course I’d heard of the battle of Kinsale, but exactly what happened at Kinsale was a mystery to me. Seventeenth-century Irish history … Read more
There have been many Irish expatriates, fighting the ‘good fight’, defending the oppressed in various parts of the world. So it is not surprising that one of them was a special hero, a new Robin Hood, who would be transformed into a legendary figure by modern writers and film makers. His name was William Lamport, … Read more