TCD Historian’s New Book Examines Ireland’s Aristocracy in the 17th Century

May 11, 2012

Making Ireland English: The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century by Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History and Vice-Provost for Global Relations, Jane Ohlmeyer, which was recently launched in Trinity’s Long Room, is the first comprehensive study of the remaking of Ireland's aristocracy during the seventeenth century.

The book is a study of the Irish peerage and its role in the establishment of English control over Ireland. Prof Ohlmeyer's research in the archives of the era yields a major new understanding of early Irish and British elite, and offers fresh perspectives on the experiences of the Irish, English, and Scottish lords in wider British and continental contexts.

Making Ireland English examines the resident aristocracy as a collective of 91 families, not simply 311 individuals, and demonstrates how a reconstituted peerage of mixed faith and ethnicity assimilated the established Catholic aristocracy. Tracking the impact of colonisation, civil war, and other significant factors on the fortunes of the peerage in Ireland, Prof Ohlmeyer arrives at a fresh assessment of the key accomplishment of the new Irish elite: making Ireland English.

Prof Ohlmeyer is an expert on the New British and Atlantic Histories and has published extensively on early modern Irish and British history. She is also the author of Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms and Ireland from Independence to Occupation.