Plantations in Ireland

See also: Plantation (homonymy)

The Plantations were installed at XVIe and XVIIe centuries in Ireland by confiscation of the grounds occupied by the gaelic Clan S and the dynasties hiberno-Normans, mainly with the Munster and in Ulster. These grounds were allotted to Colon S (" planters ") come from Great Britain by the British crown. This process starts under the reign of Henri VIII of England and continuous under the reigns of Marie Ire of England and Elisabeth Ire of England. It accelerated then under the reign of Jacques Ier of England and reached its apogee under the authority of Charles Ier of England and Oliver Cromwell.

The first plantations at the 16th century are created on the basis of model colony small. The posterior plantations are based on confiscations in mass of the grounds of the rebellious landowners and not the establishment of a very great number of colonists coming from England, Scotland and the Wales.

The last official plantations are created during the years 1650, when thousands of soldiers of the Parlementaires troops are installed in Ireland after the conquest of the island by Oliver Cromwell.

Apart from these plantations, a significant immigration continued in Ireland until the medium of the 18th century coming from Great Britain and of continental Europe.

The plantations changed the demography of Ireland by creating great communities having an English identity and Protestant. These communities opposed in fact the interests of the original inhabitants, who had them an identity Gaelic and catholic. The Irish company also changed it with the introduction of new concepts of property right, trade and credit. These changes generated the creation of a leading class anglo-Protestant woman who ensured the perenniality of the British crown in Ireland during the 17th century.

First plantations

The first plantations in Ireland are created during the reconquest of Ireland by Tudor. The government of the Crown in place with Dublin had the will to pacify and anglicize the country not the application of the English laws and the incorporation of the local leading class in the English Aristocratie. Ireland was to become a possession in peace and worthy of confidence. The plantations were to play a central role in this policy.

To this end, the two shapes of plantations were elaborate in first half of the 16th century. First was the “exemplary plantation”, in which small English colonies were to give a model of country communities that Irish was to equalize. Such a colony was established at the end of the years 1560 with Kerrycruihy beside Cork, on a ground rented with the Count de Desmond.

The second form gives the tendency of the future English policy in Ireland. It was of punitive nature, allotting plantations to English colonists on grounds confiscated following the destruction of the rebellion. The first example corresponding to this diagram was the Plantation of King' S County (now Comté of Laois) and of Queen' S County (now Comté of Offaly in 1556. The two clans O' Moore and O' Connor which occupied these territories attacked regularly the Pale, surface under English jurisdiction around Dublin. The Count of Sussex, then Lord Deputy of Ireland, ordered the confiscation of their grounds, the displacement of his inhabitants and the replacement of those by English colonists. However these plantations did not have much success. O' Moore and O' Connor gathered in the hills and the peat bogs started a local war against the colonists who was to last nearly forty years. In 1578 English fixed finally the clan O' Moore by massacring the majority of members of their leading family with Mullaghmast while pretending to invite them to peace talks. Rory Óg Ó Moore, the leader of the rebellion, was hung a little later. This violence made that the authorities had difficulties in attract colonists for their new plantations and those did not end in not being any more but regroupings in the neighborhoods of military fortifications.

Another plantation failed in the east of the Ulster in the years 1570. This area (occupied by MacDonnell and O' Neill de Clandeboye) was to be colonized by the English growers in order to draw up a barrier between Gaels of Ireland and Scotland and thus to stop the arrival of Mercenaire S Scottish in Ireland. The conquest of the east of Ulster was bought by Walter Devereux, 1st Count d' Essex and Sir Thomas Smith. The chief of O' Neill, Turlough Luineach O' Neill, fearing to see an English head of bridge settling in Ulster, assisted from his parents O' Neill de Clandeboye.

MacDonnell of the Comté of Antrim, enmenés by Sorley Boy MacDonnell were also able to call for the aid their parents of the islands and Highlands of Scotland. The plantations degenerated into a series of atrocities made against the local populations before being finally abandoned. Brian MacPhelim O' Neill off Clandeboye, his wife and 200 members of her clan were assassinated at the time of a festival given by Essex in 1574. In 1575, Francis Drake, then in the pay of the Count d' Essex, took part in the naval forwarding which culminated in the massacre of 500 members of the MacDonnell clan at the time of a raid against the island of Rathlin. According to the historian Harry Kelsey, the role of Drake in the massacre is not clearly analyzed.

The following year, Elisabeth Anger of England, sensitized by the massacre of civilians, called with a halt in the plantations

Plantations of Munster

The plantations of Munster in years 1580 were the first plantations of mass in Ireland. They were decided like punishment after the Rébellions of Desmond, when FitzGerald Count de Desmond rebelled against the English influence in the Munster. The dynasty of Desmond was destroyed at the time of the continuations of the Second rebellion of Desmond (1779 - 1783) and their confiscated grounds. That gave opportunity to the English authorities of installing colonists originating in England and Wales and of becoming thus a rampart against future rebellions. In 1584, the Chief supervisor of Ireland Sir Valentine Browne and a Commission of monitoring of Munster, allotted the grounds confiscated to Entrepreneurs English (of the fortunate colonizers which were committed importing farmers of England to work on their new properties). These Contractors were also supposed to build new cities and to defend the new districts against the attacks of the rebels.

This policy is amplified by Elisabeth Ire of England, Jacques Ier of England, and Oliver Cromwell this last obliged the catholics expropriés to be established in the Connaught (where in hell!) except for a prohibited coastal area of one mile.

The phenomenon had started slowly with only small colonies allotted to the noble ones, but thereafter, the English, under the energetic administration of Sir Henry Sidney and of his/her collaborator Humphrey Gilbert, proceeded to major confiscations, mainly in the Munster after the two revolts of James Fitzmaurice of (1569/1573) and (1579/1583) and the elimination of the FitzGerald of Desmond. During years 1590, Walter Raleigh did not manage to preserve the grounds requisitioned, but after the " Escape of the counts " O' Neill and O'Donnell in 1607, a colonization with large scales ends up leading in Ulster.

This policy is at the origin of the current location of the Ulster in Northern Ireland.

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