The 1641 rebellion is one of the seminal events in early modern Irish
and British history. Its divisive legacy, based primarily on the sharply
contested allegation that the rebellion began with a general massacre of
Protestant settlers, is still evident in Ireland today. Thousands of
witness testimonies (the 1641 Depositions) housed in Trinity College
Dublin became central to one of the most protracted and bitter of Irish
historical controversies. This controversy has never been satisfactorily
resolved as successive generations invented and re-invented the past in
response to contemporary political developments. Propagandists,
politicians and historians all exploited the surviving evidence at
different times to justify their implacable hostility towards Irish
nationalism and the Catholic religion. The 1641 'massacres', therefore,
like King William's victory at the Boyne (1690) and the Battle of the
Somme (1916) played a key role in creating and sustaining a collective
Protestant/British identity in Ulster, in much the same way that the
subsequent Cromwellian conquest in the 1650s helped forge a new Irish
Catholic national identity.
The original and wide-ranging themes chosen for this volume, along with
the high standard of the contributions from leading international
scholars, will ensure that this edited collection becomes required
reading for all those interested in the 1641 Rebellion, as well as the
history of early modern Ireland and Europe. It will also appeal to those
engaged in early colonial studies in the Atlantic world and beyond, as
the volume adopts a genuinely comparative approach throughout, examining
developments in a broad global context.
