Is History Poorly Taught In School (Up To Junior Cert.)?

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Rightly or wrongly I’ve always considered that the Reformation itself did not have much effect on Ireland. A few of the 'leading' families lost out, others simply adapted to the new religion. Life went on for the mass of the population. I agree there were wars, but these would have happened regardless of the Reformation, caused by power struggles rather than religious crusades . . .

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Were that trite remark the basis of a history class on the Famine, history indeed would have been badly taught.
The Famine would not have been solved by closing the ports to exports. During that period Ireland switched from being one of Britain's bread-baskets to being a net importer of food-grains. Go do some research!

This book examines one of the bloodiest epochs in Irish history. Part one covers the 16th century, revealing how efforts by the Tudor monarchy to curb the powers of the autonomous Irish lords degenerated into a bitter cultural and sectarian conflict characterized by summary killings and massacres. The second part pays particular attention to the 1641 rebellion and the Confederate Wars.

David Edwards, who lectures in University College Cork, is the author of The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642 (FCP, 2003). Clodagh Tait lectures in history at the University of Essex. She is the author of Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550–1650 (Hampshire, 2002). Padraig Lenihan lectures in the Department of Government and Society, University of Limerick and is the author of Conquest and Resistance: war in seventeenth-century Ireland (Netherlands, 2000) and Confederate Catholics at war, 1641–49 (Cork, 2000).

'Age of Atrocity: violence and political conflict in early modern Ireland reveals the true nature and extent of violence and atrocity in the 16th and 17th centuries as a conquering England gains territorial supremacy', William J. Smyth, Irish Times Books of the Year (2007).

'Age of Atrocity’s title says it all. The period from 1534 to 1691 – early modern Ireland – was, indeed, an era of atrocities, war crimes and brutality that today might qualify as genocide. The hunger for land, the means used to obtain it and the hatred of Roman Catholicism were eerie precursors of the atrocities committed by the new American settlers and the US cavalry in their abominable progress across the continent and their annihilation of the original Americans … a gripping volume', J. Ardle McArdle, Books Ireland (February 2008).

'Much has been written in recent years about 'negotiated settlement' in early modern Anglo-Irish relations and the role played therein by English reform programs; this excellent collection addresses the understudied bloody conquest elements of that society ... This collection challenges and provokes. One of its most useful features is an excellent historiographical introduction that includes a veritable laundry list of pressing research questions. Given its detailing of such a variety of savagery, it is not always an easy or pleasant read. But it is an important, even required one', Brendan Kane, Renaissance Quarterly.

'This fascinating and enjoyable volume consists of a collection of thirteen valuable essays on the history of violence in early modern Ireland ... This is an exciting and challenging volume that should encourage historians of Ireland and Britain to engage more effectively with their violent pasts. The essays, and in particular the introduction, make a significant contribution to a severely under-developed field and will help readers to understand the violent history of early modern Ireland', Rhys Morgan, Welsh History Review (June 2009).

‘The collection offers some thirteen contributions all of which are in themselves of considerable interest and value … these essays add considerably to our knowledge and our understanding of the place of political violence in Irish history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries … this is a pioneering effort in Irish history, which is laden with potential not only for further research but also for a fundamental reinterpretation of early modern Ireland … this promises to be the source of much exciting work to come', Ciaran Brady, Irish Economic and Social History (2009).

'This book covers a long time-span … it is a fascinating book with impeccable insights and scholarship, read it; use it; learn from it', Martyn Bennett, Scottish Historical Review (2010).

‘For various reasons, the violence and atrocity which were commonplace in the Irish wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been played down. This book is an attempt to set the record straight and to set the atrocities in their broader social and cultural context … It may be harsh reading but these atrocities are not something to be swept under the carpet’, J. Ardle McArdle, Books Ireland (December 2008).

‘In the troubled history of Ireland, the early modern period stands out as one of the bloodiest. Five major wars occurred in Ireland between 1534 and 1691 ... the fourteen chapters in this book re-examine this period with reference to acts of violence, and, specifically, to atrocities executed against unarmed civilians or captured soldiers’, Patrick Little, English Historical Review (June 2009).

‘If footnotes are the infantry of an argument then this important collection of essays, featuring a formidable array of contributors, with a thousand scholarly foot soldiers in support, is well served … It is also a beautifully produced book, and Four Courts are to be congratulated on the excellent production standards for a volume whose bloody contents are presented in such an attractive skin', Willy Maley, Eolas (2009).

The Nine Years War was one of the most traumatic and bloody conflicts in the history of Ireland. Encroachment on the liberties of the Irish lords by the English crown caused Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, to build an unprecedented confederation of Irish lords leading a new Irish military armed with pike and shot. This book is an important reassessment of the military dimensions of the Nine Years War, as situated in the wider context of European political and military history.

Backed by Philip II of Spain, Tyrone and his allies outclassed the forces of the English Crown, achieving a string of stunning victories and bringing the power of Elizabeth I in Ireland to the brink of collapse. The opening shots were fired in Ulster, but from 1593 to 1599 war engulfed all of Ireland. The conflict consumed the lives and reputations of Elizabeth’s court favourites as they struggled to cope with the new Irish way of war. Sophisticated strategy and modern tactics made the Irish war appear unwinable to many in England, but Lord Mountjoy’s arrival as deputy in 1600 changed everything. Mountjoy reformed the demoralized English army and rolled back the advances achieved by Tyrone. Mountjoy’s success was crowned by his shattering defeat of Tyrone and his Spanish allies at Kinsale in 1601, which ultimately led to the earl’s submission in 1603, though not before famine, misery and atrocity took their toll on the people of Ireland.

This book rewrites the narrative and interpretation of the Nine Years War. It uses military evidence to show that not only was Irish society progressive, it was also quicker to adopt military and technological change than its English enemies.

James O’Neill is an archaeologist and an alumnus of the QUB History department. He completed a two year post-doctorate fellowship in the School of History, University College Cork, before returning to Belfast where he now works as a heritage consultant, specializing in battlefield/conflict archaeology.

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

You’re being very defensive there eddy. I’m not being condescending, I’m querying your assertions. I love listening to other views, it’s how I learn. But I’m entitled to ask for sources which is both acceptable and the norm here.

History is written by the victor, and much of it is designed to fulfil a political need, create or bolster a national identity, whatever. Most is based on propaganda be it written by Irish Catholic clerics, British MPs or Russian revolutionaries. The job of a historian is to dig deeper, to question everything and not to accept ‘dogma’ that has been served up by self-serving politicians. I believe that you are incorrect because:

The worst of the Penal Laws had been repealed more than 60 years before the Great Famine. Additionally, the bulk of those laws never at most times affected the ‘peasantry’ and most others of the population, because they were largely ignored. It requires more than a considerable stretch of the imagination to blame them for the Famine. (I’m not being pejorative on ‘peasant’, I’m using the term to classify the rural landless/cottier /labourer class)

For example, on education - Lord Broghill, who had been one of Cromwell’s leading officers, wrote from Munster to Charles II after his Restoration:- “I have several complaints this week from divers parts of this province, of the great insolency the popish clergy are suddenly grown unto. They have lately set up several schools, which the Jesuits publickly teach in. Though I know they are the best school masters in the world, yet it is to be doubted they teach their scholars more than their books, and imbue them with ill principles.

For example religion - the Act of Uniformity (1560) compelled attendance at the State (Protestant) church, it never was enforced in Ireland during the following 250 years; nor was there any effort made to collect the one shilling fine imposed for each non-presence.

While the numbers were small, Catholics could and did purchase land pre Famine, and several had for long retained their land. Lord Kenmare is an example. Browne, of Castlebrowne (?), held his ancestral home and land in Co. Kildare until the early 1814, when he sold it to the Jesuits to become what is now Clongowes. (Fifteen years before Catholic Emancipation BTW.) Daniel O’Connell’s family had a leasehold of such long duration on a large chunk of Iveragh that it arguably constituted a freehold.

Most legal obstacles on Catholic land ownership were either repealed or not enforced by the mid 1700’s Look at the repeal Acts of 1774 and 1778, and the last remaining barriers had fallen with the 1782 Act. The Relief Act of 1793 granted Irish Catholics the franchise and admission to most civil offices. OK, to become a judge took a bit longer, but how many did that affect? What impact did that have on the Famine era?

After the Cromwellian Settlement most ordinary Irishmen left alive remained as tenants but were renting from or working for an English landlord instead of an Irish one. Simply put, after that war they lived “under the radar”. Most did not have to relocate to “Hell or to Connaught” as the new planters needed workmen/tenants and it was primarily the Old Irish nobility with their servant retinue who were forced to leave for Connaught. Not even all of them went and several had their property returned at the Restoration (although usually diminished in size) There are lots of examples in Prendergast’s book. Even as late as 1690 after his victory at the Battle of Boyne, William III granted a pardon to Jacobite soldiers although he excluded the senior officers from its provisions. Similar to other European countries, the vast majority of Irish country-dwellers of that era never owned land , they were simple tenant farmers.

The 31 year lease is another example of an irrelevance – read the various reports in the Devon Commission and see the multiple mentions of tenants not wanting leases of any description, preferring to have a relationship with the landlord. Many had leases for ‘lives’. Furthermore, a lease can be renewed on the same/similar terms and there are ample examples of this happening, and both landlords and agents frequently wrote on retaining ‘good farming families’ and their worth to the overall value of an estate.

If you look at landholdings and trace back who the tenants were before the Lands Acts, and look at the names in Griffiths and even the names in various surveys you will see that the same families very often lived in the same places.

But earlier you were saying that Catholics could not own land, so how could the bequeath land?

The simple fact of the matter is that landlord after landlord and agent after agent tried their utmost to prevent sub-division. Some 'middlemen' - not often head-landlords - turned a blind eye but most landlords were against subdivision and went to the extent of threatening eviction should a parent subdivide without permission. They are excoriated in history, with tales of ‘Tenants often were forbidden to marry’ – not so, they had to ask to sub-divide, and if that was not permitted no marriage could take place.

To enter the professions one has to have an education. That was not an agenda item for the peasant class.

Again you seem to be defeating your own argument as it appears you do not understand inheritance laws and the differences concerning land tenure. Nor do you appear to understand the law of gavelkind or its history. Gavelkind was an Old Irish tradition, enshrined in Brehon Law and one fought for by the Irish nobility when the Normans tried to extinguish it. However, the self-same Normans saw its uses reintroduced it and it regained widespread acceptance much to the disgust of successive British monarchs until it finally was outlawed by Elizabeth I, nailed by Cromwell but then reintroduced by the Popery Act of 1703. The class it affected was the big landlord, not the one that survived on potatoes more than a century later. It also saw a surge of conversions to the Established Church in the following couple of decades.

That has nothing to do with gavelkind or ‘inheritance’. Putting it clinically, It has to do with uneducated people breeding and surviving too long on a healthy diet that was about to be destroyed. Ireland’s death rate was too low, (much lower than in Europe) so more people survived/had healthier children/lived longer. That put huge pressures on land resources because sons married, carved off a plot from the father’s holding and started families.

I’ve previously written on this forum that by the outbreak of the Famine, Ireland economically was a basket case, one with a totally unsustainable population of 8 million in 1841 most of which were in the bottom cohort of society and dependent on the monoculture of a single root variety.

We know all about that, it was discussed before –I and several others have written on a monoculture within a monoculture in several threads on the Famine.. I also referred to a very interesting book that has a chapter on the Famine. Its author was among the first to (widely) publish possible connections between the blight and the huge influx of guano fertiliser from Latin America.

robp wrote: »

I don't see how anyone could expect events 60 years before to have no effect. 60 years is a very short time for economic disadvantage to even out. Slavery ended in the US 160 years ago but the economic disadvantage of African Americans today is impossible to avoid. It is very hard to know what would have happened if penal laws and associated laws were never enacted but there is a case to be made that they had an impact.