Ordinary Violence? I reland as Emergency in the T udor State

Abstract

Abstract This essay urges comparative study of violence in early modern Ireland and England. Ireland was colonized by the English in this period, and thus violence there is primarily studied through the lens of colonialism and in comparison with overseas colonial settings. Additionally, as argued below, scholars should be attentive to links with violence found in the other Tudor and Stuart realms, here focusing on England. To that end, the essay starts out by looking briefly at differences in the characterization and conceptualization of England's Irish and American colonial projects, the point being to make a case for seeing Ireland's centrality to the Tudor and Stuart states. From there, it offers a series of observations on similarities and points of contact between violence and its meanings in these two realms governed (at least in theory) by the same monarchy. In doing so, it claims that while the ‘extraordinary’, i.e. colonial, nature of violence in early modern Ireland is crucial for understanding the period, equally crucial is an understanding of the ‘ordinary’ aspects of that violence – defined as aspects of a more general state of terrific, quotidian violence experienced commonly within the realms. Analysis of both these colonial and the domestic contexts is necessary for assessing early modern Irish−English relations and their place in larger historical inquiries concerned with state/empire formation, modern imperialism and human rights.

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