Many historians have detailed the long history of colonisation by the Irish in the Americas and later in India. In this blog, I summarise some of the key themes of the process of the colonisation of Ireland. If we are to understand colonisation in the Americas we must understand Britain’s first colony, that is, Ireland. Ireland has been unique in British history. Ireland has always been deeply foreign to the British despite her geographical closeness to the mainland of Britain.

Feudalism and the Christian church had been deeply integrated with one another in the 15th and 16th centuries, providing the governance and framework for social, political, economic and religious aspects of life for all Europeans. This was the system that made sense of people’s lives, providing rules that covered everything from marriage to people’s rights to land, even on how to understand the universe. This system also covered political power: the divine rights of monarchs, and the duties of nobles towards their people.