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Chapter 2 From Curiosity to Commodity: Swift’s Writings of the 1720s

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Consuming Anxieties
This chapter is in the book Consuming Anxieties
Chapter 2From Curiosity to CommoditySwift’s Writings of the 1720sWhen Jonathan Swift made his first anonymous foray into Irish politicsin 1720, he elected to frame his critique in the language of consumerculture. In “A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture” heurges the Irish to refuse the English goods forced upon them by mer-cantile policy and fashion, and to buy locally made items instead; “let afirm Resolution be taken,” he proposes, “by Maleand Female, never toappear in one single Shredthat comes from England.”1Ironically,Swift, despite his generally conservative stance, reveals himself here asone of the first, and most articulate, voices in the history of consumeristcriticism of English colonialism. To understand what led Swift toadopt such strategies, we need to look not only to the history of con-sumerism outlined in the previous chapter, but also to the history ofEngland’s colonial policies in Ireland.During the reign of Elizabeth I, England began to step up itsinvolvement with Irish affairs. In the last third of the sixteenth century,its military presence on the island grew in response to rebellions inMunster and Ulster. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, theO Neil and O Donnell lands in Ulster were appropriated and reorga-nized as “plantations” under direct English control.2Despite a greatdeal of resistance, organized and otherwise, English hegemony interms of language, land use, and religion gradually strengthened for thenext two centuries. This process can be read as one of England’s firstexperiments in colonial rule. Nicholas Canny has shown that the con-quest and colonization of Ireland ran parallel to England’s first intru-sions into North America, and that “the Elizabethan conquest of– 49 –
© 2022 Stanford University Press, Redwood City

Chapter 2From Curiosity to CommoditySwift’s Writings of the 1720sWhen Jonathan Swift made his first anonymous foray into Irish politicsin 1720, he elected to frame his critique in the language of consumerculture. In “A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture” heurges the Irish to refuse the English goods forced upon them by mer-cantile policy and fashion, and to buy locally made items instead; “let afirm Resolution be taken,” he proposes, “by Maleand Female, never toappear in one single Shredthat comes from England.”1Ironically,Swift, despite his generally conservative stance, reveals himself here asone of the first, and most articulate, voices in the history of consumeristcriticism of English colonialism. To understand what led Swift toadopt such strategies, we need to look not only to the history of con-sumerism outlined in the previous chapter, but also to the history ofEngland’s colonial policies in Ireland.During the reign of Elizabeth I, England began to step up itsinvolvement with Irish affairs. In the last third of the sixteenth century,its military presence on the island grew in response to rebellions inMunster and Ulster. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, theO Neil and O Donnell lands in Ulster were appropriated and reorga-nized as “plantations” under direct English control.2Despite a greatdeal of resistance, organized and otherwise, English hegemony interms of language, land use, and religion gradually strengthened for thenext two centuries. This process can be read as one of England’s firstexperiments in colonial rule. Nicholas Canny has shown that the con-quest and colonization of Ireland ran parallel to England’s first intru-sions into North America, and that “the Elizabethan conquest of– 49 –
© 2022 Stanford University Press, Redwood City
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