Manchester University Press
14 Afterword
Abstract
In the early modern period, extreme violence often accompanied conflict in disparate regions of the world. Ethnic English expansion in Ireland and elsewhere in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries occurred in the same era as the rise of new Southeast Asian dynasties, which achieved major territorial reach in Burma, Siam, Vietnam and Java. Examining the distant cases of ethno-religious violence during the broad historical era of the early modern conflicts in Ireland may illuminate some of the transnational contexts for the political and territorial quests that often lay behind murderous wars. Several points William J. Smyth made were worth pursuing in a search for recurring factors that may indicate a likelihood of violence against settlers. The 1641 depositions may fairly be characterised, without casting any doubt on their accuracy, as an example of a 'single-purpose' archive, rather than the product of general documentation of routine official or other activity.
Abstract
In the early modern period, extreme violence often accompanied conflict in disparate regions of the world. Ethnic English expansion in Ireland and elsewhere in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries occurred in the same era as the rise of new Southeast Asian dynasties, which achieved major territorial reach in Burma, Siam, Vietnam and Java. Examining the distant cases of ethno-religious violence during the broad historical era of the early modern conflicts in Ireland may illuminate some of the transnational contexts for the political and territorial quests that often lay behind murderous wars. Several points William J. Smyth made were worth pursuing in a search for recurring factors that may indicate a likelihood of violence against settlers. The 1641 depositions may fairly be characterised, without casting any doubt on their accuracy, as an example of a 'single-purpose' archive, rather than the product of general documentation of routine official or other activity.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of figures ix
- List of contributors xi
- Series editors’ preface xv
- Acknowledgements xvii
- 1 Introduction – 1641 1
- 2 Early modern violence from memory to history 17
- 3 The ‘1641 massacres’ 37
- 4 1641 in a colonial context 52
- 5 Towards a cultural geography of the 1641 rising/rebellion 71
- 6 Out of the blue 95
- 7 News from Ireland 115
- 8 Performative violence and the politics of violence in the 1641 depositions 134
- 9 Atrocities in the Thirty Years War 153
- 10 Why remember terror? 176
- 11 Language and conflict in the French Wars of Religion 197
- 12 How to make a successful plantation 219
- 13 An Irish Black Legend 236
- 14 Afterword 254
- Index 274
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of figures ix
- List of contributors xi
- Series editors’ preface xv
- Acknowledgements xvii
- 1 Introduction – 1641 1
- 2 Early modern violence from memory to history 17
- 3 The ‘1641 massacres’ 37
- 4 1641 in a colonial context 52
- 5 Towards a cultural geography of the 1641 rising/rebellion 71
- 6 Out of the blue 95
- 7 News from Ireland 115
- 8 Performative violence and the politics of violence in the 1641 depositions 134
- 9 Atrocities in the Thirty Years War 153
- 10 Why remember terror? 176
- 11 Language and conflict in the French Wars of Religion 197
- 12 How to make a successful plantation 219
- 13 An Irish Black Legend 236
- 14 Afterword 254
- Index 274
