- The Oxford Handbook of The English Revolution
- List of Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Civil War and Revolution in England, Scotland, and Ireland
- Post-Reformation Politics, or on Not Looking for the Long-Term Causes of the English Civil War
- The Rise of the Covenanters, 1637–1644
- The Collapse of Royal Power in England, 1637–1642
- The Irish Rising
- War and Politics in England and Wales, 1642–1646
- Scottish Politics, 1644–1651
- The Centre Cannot Hold: Ireland 1643–1649
- The Regicide
- Security and Reform in England’s Other Nations, 1649–1658
- English Politics in the 1650s
- The Restoration in Britain and Ireland
- Oliver Cromwell
- Parliaments and Constitutions
- The Armies
- The Revolution in Print
- State and Society in the English Revolution
- Urban Citizens and England’s Civil Wars
- Crowds and Popular Politics in the English Revolution
- ‘Gender Trouble’: Women’s Agency and Gender Relations in the English Revolution
- State, Politics, and Society in Scotland, 1637–1660
- State, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 1641–1662
- The Persistence of Royalism
- Varieties of Parliamentarianism
- Political Thought
- Religious Thought
- ‘May You Live in Interesting Times’: The Literature of Civil War, Revolution, and Restoration
- The Art and Architecture of War, Revolution, and Restoration
- The Long-Term Consequences of the English Revolution: Economic and Social Development
- The Long-Term Consequences of the English Revolution: State Formation, Political Culture, and Ideology
- Cultural Legacies: The English Revolution in Nineteenth-Century British and French Literature and Art
- The English Revolution in British and Irish Context
- Kingdom Divided: The British and Continental European Conflicts Compared
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter provides a reassessment of the war in Ireland during the mid-1640s in the light of recent scholarship, focusing on key issues such as religion, ethnicity, and class. Sandwiched between the massacres of both Catholics and Protestants at the outbreak of the rebellion in 1641 and the horrors of the Cromwellian conquest from 1649, Confederate Ireland is seemingly characterized by nothing more than internecine squabbling and indiscriminate bloodshed. The reality, however, is far more complex and the period witnessed the growing emergence of a sophisticated and inclusive Irish Catholic national identity, albeit a contested one. The English civil war, however, merely delayed the reconquest by seven years, as ultimately Irish Catholics, bitterly divided and chronically under-resourced in the military sphere, had no answer to Oliver Cromwell and the New Model Army.
Keywords: Ireland, Confederate, war, religion, ethnicity, class, national, identity, massacre, Cromwell
Micheál Ó Siochrú, Associate Professor of History at Trinity College Dublin, is the author of numerous books and articles on seventeenth-century Ireland, including God’s Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the conquest of Ireland (London, 2009). He is currently working on a new edition of Oliver Cromwell’s letters and papers for Oxford University Press.
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- The Oxford Handbook of The English Revolution
- List of Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Civil War and Revolution in England, Scotland, and Ireland
- Post-Reformation Politics, or on Not Looking for the Long-Term Causes of the English Civil War
- The Rise of the Covenanters, 1637–1644
- The Collapse of Royal Power in England, 1637–1642
- The Irish Rising
- War and Politics in England and Wales, 1642–1646
- Scottish Politics, 1644–1651
- The Centre Cannot Hold: Ireland 1643–1649
- The Regicide
- Security and Reform in England’s Other Nations, 1649–1658
- English Politics in the 1650s
- The Restoration in Britain and Ireland
- Oliver Cromwell
- Parliaments and Constitutions
- The Armies
- The Revolution in Print
- State and Society in the English Revolution
- Urban Citizens and England’s Civil Wars
- Crowds and Popular Politics in the English Revolution
- ‘Gender Trouble’: Women’s Agency and Gender Relations in the English Revolution
- State, Politics, and Society in Scotland, 1637–1660
- State, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 1641–1662
- The Persistence of Royalism
- Varieties of Parliamentarianism
- Political Thought
- Religious Thought
- ‘May You Live in Interesting Times’: The Literature of Civil War, Revolution, and Restoration
- The Art and Architecture of War, Revolution, and Restoration
- The Long-Term Consequences of the English Revolution: Economic and Social Development
- The Long-Term Consequences of the English Revolution: State Formation, Political Culture, and Ideology
- Cultural Legacies: The English Revolution in Nineteenth-Century British and French Literature and Art
- The English Revolution in British and Irish Context
- Kingdom Divided: The British and Continental European Conflicts Compared
- Index
