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    The language and symbolism of conquest in Ireland, c. 1790-1850


    Hill, Jacqueline (2008) The language and symbolism of conquest in Ireland, c. 1790-1850. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 18. pp. 165-186. ISSN 0080-4401

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    Abstract

    The question of whether Ireland had been conquered by England has received some attention from historians of eighteenth-century Ireland, mainly because it preoccupied William Molyneux, author of the influential The Case of Ireland . . . Stated (1698). Molyneux defended Irish parliamentary rights by denying the reality of a medieval conquest of Ireland by English monarchs, but he did allow for what could be called ‘aristocratic conquest’. The seventeenth century, too, had left a legacy of conquest, and this paper examines evidence of consciousness among Irish Protestants of descent from ancestral conquerors. It considers how and why this consciousness took a more pronounced sectarian turn during the 1790s. Williamite anniversaries, increasingly associated with the Orange Order, became identified in the Catholic mind as symbolic reminders of conquest. Thanks to the protracted struggle for ‘Catholic emancipation’, this issue continued to feature in political debate about Ireland well into the nineteenth century, while the passing of the Act of Union (1800) revitalised the older debate about whether England could be said to have conquered Ireland. Liberal Protestants and Catholics contended that England had invariably intervened to prevent any possibility of reconciliation between conquerors and conquered.Thus the language of conquest remained highly adaptable.

    Item Type: Article
    Keywords: conquest in Ireland; 1790-1850;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > History
    Item ID: 4687
    Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080440108000698
    Depositing User: Jacqueline Hill
    Date Deposited: 08 Jan 2014 15:57
    Journal or Publication Title: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
    Publisher: Cambridge University Press
    Refereed: Yes
    URI:
    Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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