Empire: World History - 232. Colonising Ireland: The First Plantations (Ep 2)

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

In 1607, after launching a failed rebellion in Ulster against the English, Hugh O’Neill and other Irish nobles are forced to flee Ireland, and their lands are confiscated. In response to the revolt, an insidious narrative about Irish people emerges in Tudor England, describing them as ‘caterpillars’ and ‘barbarians’ who needed ‘civilising’. In the wake of the development of the Ulster Plantation, a group of London merchants establish The Honourable Irish Society to colonise County Derry, renaming it County Londonderry in an ode to their origins. How did the city’s 17th century history shape its role in The Troubles? And what’s the difference between plantations in Ireland and plantations in the Caribbean? Listen as William and Anita are joined once again by Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, author of Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World, to discuss English imperialism in Ireland in the early 1600s. _____________  Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, and a weekly newsletter! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk  Blue Sky: @empirepoduk  X: @empirepoduk goalhanger.com Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnan. And me, William Turunple. And we continue our Ireland series today in the company of the fabulous Professor Jane Allmeyer. And we're sort of considering something last week, which I'm not sure we've really got to the bottom of. No, so it's this whole business of how did the Tudors succeed in exercising control over Ireland in a way that the Anglo-Normans has actually rather failed than doing.

Great question, William. What happens is they basically take Dublin and have their administrative military headquarters in Dublin and then they have these raids from Dublin. Then they established garrisons in strategic areas. But it really is military force. And in addition to the army, they have these local warlords who are basically operating on behalf of the Crown, as well as the use of martial law. So from my drives around Ireland, I'm very familiar with those lovely Anglo-Irish castles that you see now sitting often in sort of gorgeous bucolic green meadows, often at strategic crossing places where bridges cross the big rivers and so on. Those are garrisoned in Tudor times by English troops. What's actually happening? So the English troops will use the, if you want Anglo-Norman, some of these castles are vast, the one at Carrick-Fergus, for example.

Enormous, absolutely. But they'll also then build their own fortifications where the troops will be garrisoned. So, for example, Nuri, Bagnall builds his own tower house where the troops will be stationed. So what we see is a lot of military architecture popping up, especially in these areas where they want to exercise control. It does really remind me of the Romans, though. You know, when the Romans came and sort of dropped little garrison places and they could move troops very quickly from place to place, were they connected and interconnected like that? There's really no really effective road system, Anita. So the most effective way of getting around Ireland is either the river networks or taking ships, because the roads are just so appalling.

But you do have these fortified castles and other communities strategically placed around the country. And then really Dublin remains the military headquarters, the administrative headquarters, and use that as your base and go out on raiding parties. Is there a military and technological edge that the Tudors have that the Gaelic lords don't? Well, obviously they've got access to guns and gunpowder. That's exactly what I mean. Are they much more artillery-minded? Not necessarily, William, because increasingly we find Gaelic lords learning the business of war on the continent. So you get large numbers of Irish mercenaries in the service of Spain

and these guys are actually at the cutting edge of warfare. And then what happens is that new style fortifications come relatively late to Ireland, these star-shaped bastions. And by this stage, the reign of Elizabeth I, the Catholic Protestant divide, which continues to this day in Northern Ireland, possibly finally exhausting itself, begins to really assert itself. You have one group of people who are very clearly Catholic who are looking to the continent, going over to the Spanish armies, and another group who are sailing over from England and sitting in garrisons,

taxing and taking land. Yes. So the population of Ireland at this point is probably about a million people. We don't actually know. And probably about 200,000 are English and Welsh colonists. So it's quite a significant number. And how long of those English and Welsh colonists mean? Are they the descendants of the guys that turned up in Norman times?

Or are they new arrivals? These are ones who are coming from really the mid-16th century on. And taking land and settling it and throwing out the peasants who've been there before. Exactly. So what we see is mass expropriations. So for example, in the 17th century, something like 8 million Irish acres are confiscated. That is a third of the entire country. What does confiscation look like?

I mean, you know, you can say I confiscate land for you. But what do you do to the family that's farmed this for generations and that thinks it is their land? How do you take it from it? Well, under these surrender and regrant agreements that we talked about, what happens is if you go into rebellion, then the king comes in and says, hang on, you've been bad. I'm going to take your land and usually executes the Lord. So you're not coming back? And then say, we're going to confiscate your estates. We see this in Munster and then later in Ulster.

And then that land is reallocated to settle our colonists. Now, what happens to the people who are living there, if you want the Gaelic inhabitants, is many of them are supposed to be, if you want driven off their land. But the truth is they stay. Why? Because you need people to, you know, cut wood and hue water. So, I mean, it's very practical. They need the labour of the existing... But are they like indentured labour?

I mean, they're sort of working for a place to live or do they get paid? I mean, you know, what is the situation for? Nobody's really getting paid. Remember, there's no money in Ireland. It's very much a redistributive economy. And that's something that is being changed as part of this colonial process. There's this push for commercialisation, urbanisation, and the replacement of an economy that's effectively a barter one with one that is around money. What I'm not entirely

clear about is, is it English lords sitting in in the castle with Irish peasants, or is it new colonist peasantry moving in and farming the fields themselves? Well, it's actually a little bit of both, because what we get are, you know, ordinary English people coming over, upstarts, men on the make, who are coming from, you know, relatively humble origins in England, and then doing very well, land grabbing and then all of a sudden they rise up the social hierarchy. Sorry, this sounds to me just like your description of the East India Company. The person who's the second or third son in England, it goes off and joins the East India Company or goes over to India to try and make their money and ends up sort of becoming enormously rich in land owning. Why is it different?

The difference is that the second son who goes over to India, joins the East India company, becomes an official, shuttles around India and then goes and retires back in England. while these guys arrive, take land, farm it and stay. Right. And then pass that land onto their children. So that is absolutely, you know, it's a replacement of the population. But we have some individuals, somebody called the Earl of Cork, who comes over as a penniless sort of land grabber.

By 1642 when he dies, he's the richest man not just in Ireland, but in the three kingdoms, the three Stuart kingdoms. I mean, vast fortunes are being made by these colonists. And actually, many of them then become extremely important because they sort of team up with investors in London and they become adventurers sort of on a global scale. So previously on the last episode we did with you, we were talking about Hugh O'Neill. We were talking about how he's utter pain in the bottom for the British and almost bankrupted the exchequer with his uprisings and rebellion. And William mentioned Edmund Spencer. I don't think we did it really justice.

So can you give us a pen portrait of Edmund Spencer and why he, his name is now really quite. quite inextricably linked with Hugh O'Neill, and what did he say about him? Well, it's not that Spencer talks about O'Neill per se. What happens is that Spencer writes a really important tract called A View of the State of Ireland. He writes it at the height of the Nine Years' War after O'Neill's men have basically burned down his Holman. So he's not very fond of Hugh O'Neillian. Definitely not, nor his followers. But in that, he basically calls for the extirpation of the Gaelic Irish.

Nobody uses the word ethnic cleansing or genocide in the early modern period, but that's effectively what Spencer is calling for. What we're like what? Tell us exactly what he said. First, fire and sword. In other words, use fire and sword. Use martial law. That's a given. But he's also saying in Ireland, what we need is the English colonists to come in.

We need to get rid of these treacherous Irish and in their place bring in English colonists who will civilise again. Good English civilised men, yeah. But introduced Protestantism, but also commercialise Ireland. So on the one hand, you've got to get rid of the Indigenous population. On the other, then, you've got to bring in these colonists who are going to civilise Ireland. He had an influential voice, and we've talked about the fact he penned the Fairy Queen, but who was he? Who was he? Why does it matter that he writes this quite poisonous piece of ethnic cleansing? Well, he's one of these men on the make.

He's from quite humble background in England. Why is it important? it's because his view, which actually isn't published until the 1630s, but it becomes a foundational text. In other words, it influences policies about Ireland, and this sort of very hardline, ethnocentricity, cultural superiority, becomes absolutely embedded in the English view of Ireland. He describes Ireland as a diseased portion of the state.

it must first be cured and reformed before it could be in a position to appreciate the good sound laws and blessings of the nation and very particularly he pushes for the banning of the Irish language being taught so that the speech being Irish the heart must need be Irish

for out of abundance of the heart the tongue speaketh so he's banning languages he's far and sword he's not a very I had no idea when I was reading the Fairy Queen No I mean this character No you separate the politics from you know the very queen is just a mile away. Well, it's racism, as we would understand it today. Absolutely. But what's so important about Spencer, he doesn't just influence the people around him. He then becomes a foundational text

right through until the 19th century. So as imperialists go out to empire, including in India, they will have been sort of fed a view of the state of Ireland. And they quote Spencer, as in this is the way for this. The way Comrensus has been in the earlier period. It's a foundational text. And what's interesting is the manuscript circulates very widely. But it's like everything. When it's printed, William, all of a sudden you're reaching vast numbers of people. And of course, it's in English so people can read it. And because it's Spencer, this great poet, people read it.

And I should just say that with it comes what looks like a woodcutter Spencer, who is this sort of figure like Dick Dastardly? Dick Dastardly with a ruff rather than with Muttley. And he's got this very little pointy-goaty beard, this little pointy nose. His hair is in a sort of almost like a Mexican. Like a witcher's peak fox kind of face. He's a fox. He's a fox.

He's a fox. He's a fox. He's a fox. Yeah. Interesting though, he has a son Peregrin who then marries a Catholic. Oh my God. How did he deal with that? Well, he dies.

I think his encounter with Hugh O'Neill really finished him off. So he goes back to London to basically, you know, berate about what O'Neill has done. But then his son marries a Catholic. And where you see his grandson, is petitioning the Cromwellians for his grandfather's estates back. And they hear his plea. And they noted the record, they say he was the son of the poet Spencer. So it's really interesting to see that happen.

Does he get the land back? I think he does, actually. So when we were dealing with the uprising in the last episode, we talked about how the Spanish landed, but landed in the wrong place. And then there's the siege of can sail. The Spanish army fails. And the English get the upper hand. And then what happens is the Irish are in disarray, but they really, it's guerrilla warfare until at 1603, they finally surrender.

It's an extraordinary decade. Exactly the same time as this. The first English voyages are going to Indonesia. There's the foundation of the colony in Virginia, the Isle of Roanoke. That colony fails. And this is going very badly. So the English are expanding in all directions, but making a bit of a bulls up all of it. And of course, Elizabeth is dead.

but he doesn't know that. And there's a new king on the throne. It's James the sixth of Scotland. How do you know that Hugh O'Neill, who's like the bane of England's life and is fighting and putting everything into fighting the English, she doesn't know there's a new monarch? Because there's no internet. There's no mobile phones.

It takes weeks for news to come from London to Ireland. So what has happened is he thinks he signed a piece with Elizabeth. But in practice, she's dead already. The treaty means nothing because the person who signed with? Well, it does mean something because he's made it with the crown. And then what happens is James the sick comes in. And to begin with, he says, okay, O'Neill, we'll work together. But actually, from that point on, the military conquest of Ireland really has been completed by 1603.

And we start to see serious encroachment onto these estates in Ulster. And so in 1607, O'Neill says, okay, we have this flight of the Earls where he leaves Ireland from Donegal, Rathmullen, and actually then goes to Spain looking for help. and then actually ends up in Rome because the Spaniards aren't willing to help them. So is this a bit like the kind of, you know, the English leaving the Americas, there's a mass movement out of the defeated rebels? You're dealing with the cream of the Gaelic aristocracy, goes with O'Neill. Hundreds of their followers go with them, who then actually enlist in the armies of Spain. Is this the wild geese?

It's the wild geese. And obviously the wild geese we associate then with the French in the later period, but it's the beginning of that serious military migration. It's actually begun earlier, but it really increases in. And the Spanish, take them all in. Oh, happy days. Give them muskets. Yeah.

Well, I mean, you know tin soldiers, you wind them up and send them back and you frustrate your enemy. But it's also quite useful for the English because whoever flies is the one who's disloyal. So you've got like a whole map of treachery for them and they must be whooping it up. We know everybody now by name, by face, who's bugged off to Spain and they are the enemy. We know who they are. And we can round up their friends. Right. We know exactly where this circle of treason is.

And two things happen. One is O'Neill dies in exile in Rome. And by this point, he's broken, he's blind, he's an alcoholic. And then what happens is the king then uses this opportunity to confiscate not just O'Neill's estates, but the estates of all of the earls because he goes with Red Hew O'Donnell and others. So all of a sudden, you have most of Ulster that's confiscated. And once it's expropriated, then it can be, if you want, filled with your own. colonists and resettled. And can I just remind people what you said in the first episode?

Ulster for us is the loyalist part of Northern Ireland. But it became so because it was the most wild and resistant part of Ireland before. And it's ability to flee. Yeah. But it's only when, you know, the guys peg it out of the country, it's left open for this to happen. And what are the scale of the casualties? And now are we talking a sort of genocidal wipeout of the original indigenous population, or is it just a few Toffs heading off to Spain? Well, where the real deaths have occurred is during the Nine Years War itself, because England uses sort of fire and sword campaigns, and, you know, something like a third of the population of Ulster is massacred. A third of the population of us? What are the kind of numbers? We don't actually know William, but you're talking about,

I would say, tens of thousands of people lose their lives. And it's not just the fighting men, it's the women. Very much women and children. What you see are the English target civilians, particularly women and children. And what happens? It means rape, killing... Oh, yeah, absolutely. All sorts of atrocities are committed. And they also use famine as a tactic.

And obviously, we see this happening time and again in an Irish context. That because you're destroying crops, you're reducing people then and letting them starve to death. And there are a number of accounts of alleged cannibalism where basically, you know, people are eating each other because at times are so hard. Did the people of England know that this was happening in their name? Because I'm just wondering, because when some of the greatest atrocities happened in India, for example,

when the English or the British heard about it, there was an upsurge of sympathy. There was a revulsion, you know, not in our name. Did that happen at all during this period? Not that I'm aware of. What you see is this sense of celebration at long last. You know, that traitor O'Neill and his sort of locust-like, and this is the sort of language they're looking at it. You know, they're vermin, their insects, they're caterpillars. I mean, they're very, very, very dismissive. And it's a great victory, or it's actually portrayed as this great victory for England.

Let's take a break now. Join us after the break where we find out what happens now that there is a vacuum in Arster and everything is up in the air. Welcome back. So in the last half of the episode, we saw the final defeat of the Gaelic resistance. and the mass evacuation of the old Gallic nobility isn't just one or two of them who leave the whole lot pack up and go off to Spain, leaving the Irish which are left effectively defenseless. And this is a period of great violence. This is a period when people are extremely ruthless. There's no understanding anything like human rights or international law. And the English come back and they begin the plantations.

Jane O'Mah, tell us all about what a plantation is and how it affects itself on the ground. So let's be very clear. Plantations have been happening actually under the Tudors as well. That's when we've seen Munster and other parts planted. The Munster's the south. And they're sort of cork and carry and this sort of area. Exactly. So you've got four provinces in Ireland.

And under the Tudors, we see Munster being planted. But also the other two provinces, Lenster, which is where Dublin is, there are some modest little plantations. Plantations of what? What are they being forced to grow? A plantation is literally where you take people and you plant. So it's nothing to do with crops. Sorry, I should have been clear in it. No, it's about planting people. And those people in turn will plant crops.

It's more like Israeli settlements in the West Bank than plantations in the West Indies. Very much so. Very much so. So we've got Leinster with its plantations. And then in Colette, which is the province in the West. There are attempts, but there's not so much plantation going on there. With the flight of the earls, now Ulster is open to plantation. So there are nine counties in Ulster.

And we see most of Ulster being confiscated with the flight of the Earls. And there's two types of plantation going on in Ulster. You have informal plantations going on in County Antrim and County Down. So County Antrim and County Down are the ones that were Belfast is today. Exactly. that we know from the news. That you know from the news. County Antrim, I just want to say this,

is actually being planted by Scots, the McDonald's of Antrim, who have to be Catholic. Because they're not far away. Because they're not far away. They've been there for a long time. They could just sail over the sea. They come over from Stranran.

But do they give them financial inducement? Do they say, come on over, Scots? Well, actually, they've been there for a while. And what happens is they're loyal to the king. And the king like Sir Randall MacDonald, who is the first Earl of Antrim. And it says, listen, County Antoine is a particularly problematic area from the Crowns respect

because it's so far. It's that northwest part, Giants Causeway. And he says, listen, you take care of that. Where the ferry lands from Stranra after day. Exactly, yeah. And then what you have in County Down are the Montgomery family. Who are still there? Who are still there.

And they basically have a plantation. And you've got the Hamilton's and the Montgomery's who've come over from Ayrshire. I just want to be really clear because you, I mean, you use this phrase and you know it all the time. you know, they have a plantation. Does that mean that they call people over from Scotland? So, you know what? The head, Big Cheese Montgomery says, we've got land to put you on. Come on over, boys, and you will make money. So that's what I mean by, you know. That's what I mean by plantation. So what they'll do is they're given two or three thousand acres and you have to bring in 10 families per thousand acres. And then those families have to bring others in. So you create

Protestant colonies. Also, also Protestant pyramid schemes as well, really. Yeah. Some are working the land, but of course they need the Irish indigenous population to work the land. But what we're moving from is, if you want a semi-nomadic barter economy, into a settled agricultural ones. And this transition is happening. And there's huge emphasis on urbanisation. So a lot of these colonists who are coming in are also founding towns because towns are so important, not just for strategic control, but also for this commercialization. that's going on. Right. So then you have for the first time in these lands, you have an urban class and a peasant class where everyone was the same at one point and working and moving around,

you suddenly have, you know, the haves and have-nots. Very much so. Very much so. And they can be delineated on religious lines because the ones who have not happened to be the old Catholics who were there before. You do have some Catholic lord like the McDonald's of Antrim. So, you know, it's not necessarily purely on sectarian. No, no, no, no. It's more subtle than that. You know, how is the throne not worried about having somebody who is a Catholic after all of the very strong feelings of the last 50 years having that position? Let's look at the Stuarts. Anne of Denmark converts to Catholicism. Charles I married a Catholic. So actually the issue with Catholicism isn't with the Crown. It's with those underneath the

crown and the Lord Deputy. So as long as you've got the ear of the Crown, actually you're all right. And people like Randall MacDonald have the ear of the Crown. So I've talked about the informal plantation. But in addition to that, you've got the formal plantation of six counties that are confiscated when O'Neill and the Earls flee. And those are the counties that are divided into lots and the majority are given to colonists. They call them undertakers because they literally undertake to plant or colonize their estates. And that means bringing people in, Yeah. Mostly from England, but also from Wales, but now they're coming from Scotland as well.

And that's really important. So you've got that group. But you also then have a group of what we call servitors. These are people who have served the crown loyally during the nine years war, and they're being rewarded with Irish land. And then the third group you have are the deserving Irish. And the deserving Irish are Catholic, mostly Gaelic people who have served the crown and they're being rewarded for their loyalty. Neither the servitors nor the deserving Irish are expected to colonise and civilise the way the undertakers are. So you have this quite hierarchical a society.

And in addition to the colonists, they give land to corporate bodies. And we'll talk about dairy in a minute, or London dairy, but also civilising institutions like Trinity College Dublin, which is my own university. It's given extensive lands in Ulster. So it's really an extraordinarily ambitious blueprint that the king has. for Ulster. And is the idea to sort of drive the Gaelic Irish out into the sea, into the bogs? Yeah, that's the idea. And of course, it doesn't happen in practice because they don't have enough human capital. It's as simple as that. You also see a lot of asset stripping going on by the Protestant colonists. They're not supposed to do that, but they want to make money quick.

So what do they do? They fell the ancient Irish forests. And it's during this period that we see serious ecological damage done to Ireland. So, I mean, William has pointed out the dates, the importance of the days and they really are they so resonant. These things are happening at the same time that the early colonisation of the Americas is happening. And you also have this group. I mean, I know we've chatted informally about this, you and I, that you have sort of suspects involved in both issues seen at both scenes. And this one is the West Country Men. Tell us about the West Country Men. They're fascinating. So what we have here are a group of colonies, particularly Munster Planters. Who are we talking about? Sir Walter Raleigh.

and his half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Ralph Lane, these men are all involved in these early attempts to colonise. And Sir Francis Drake. And they've owned land in Munster and then they take that experience of Munster obviously with them to the new world. And it's not just the experience of plantation in Munster. It's also these ethnocentric ideologies that have been delivered. The majority that we are better than all of you and therefore we could just come here and you can serve us. Exactly. And there are so many direct comparisons Anita made between the Indians in the America with the Irish. Again, categorized, you know, not as intelligent, not as sophisticated. They are there to serve. They're good for serving, all of that kind of thing. And there's nothing that can be done about them to civilise them. They are uncivilized people. They're savage. They're barbarians. Yeah. So Jane, it's at this point that we turn to dairy. and the Honourable Irish Society, which has found another of these corporations,

this corporate Elizabethan colonialism, founded in a sense not directly by the state but by a corporation. Can I just feel, you've said Derry and immediately my BBC hackles go up because I'm not used to using the term and just moving on. For me, a little story, Jane, you'll know who Jerry Anderson is. They're like the Terry Wogan of Ireland, right? Legend of broadcasting. He took me for a little tour. And we went around Belfast and he told me this, what we're walking through now is stroke city. And I said, what do you mean stroke city?

And he goes, because you don't say dairy. You say dairy stroke London dairy and therefore the people here call it stroke city because it's just much easier. So do you just say dairy at this point or is it dairy stroke London dairy even back then? I'm going to call it dairy. But is it back then? Do people call it? I mean, no, just to be very clear about this. The Protestants call it London Derry and the cafe.

But even back then, I mean, where does this all start from? I'm just want to know. It is dairy. And then they add the London. Whenever dairy is given by the king to colonise it. So we're talking about back then. It's been strict city even back then. Absolutely. So you call it dairy and I'll call it dairy.

That's fine. But it goes back that far. It's the Honourable Society. Who say London, Derry. They're from London and they call it London Derry. That's fantastic. So anyway, I just wanted to also boast that Jerry Anderson took me around. But is that literally the case?

It's because there. London merchants and so people call it London Derry. Yeah. So it was the 12 guilds and some of the other minor guilds that are given the city. And it's not just the city, it's the entire county of what was called rain that becomes Londonderry. It's the county of London Derry. And they're instructed, okay, guys, over to you. It's up to you to bring, if you want, civilization to this economic backwater and to commercialise it. And that is why I compare Derry to Bombay.

you put the infrastructure in place. The first thing you have to do is you have to fortify it. They build the walls. And we'll come back to the walls. But the other thing you have to do is make it economically prosperous for the city of London and for the king. Now, they initially invest, William, about £20,000, which is a lot of money in the early 17th century.

But actually building the walls, building the cathedral and developing the town, in the end, costs about $60,000. So it's a lot of money for them. To give a comparison with the East Indy company, the largest donor to the East Indy company, invest £1,000. Right. But interestingly, going back to the Charter, its model on that of the East India Company, but also in terms of the membership of the Honourable Society, there's tremendous

overlap between the East India Company and the directors of the Irish Society. I do think it's worth just reflecting for a moment on the walls of dairy, which you walked all those years ago, because it's the only town in Ireland that has its original 17th century walls. They're about a mile in circumference and in the middle you've got this diamond shape layout and a grid within that and that layout. That's very much of the time, isn't it? Because now artillery is a thing, so you have to build special fortifications that will take on the new forms of artillery lower but thicker than the old forms of town walls.

Does it still remain largely Irish speaking, Gaelic speaking, this whole area? Or is it English speaking? What are normal people who aren't as of landowners? Obviously, there is a merchant community in the city of Derry. This is the early 17th century. But you also, it's a garrison town. And then if you want, the Irish Catholics are living in the hinterland in Donny Gould, which it would be to the west, and then to County London Dairy.

And then what they do is they establish these little plantation towns in the hinterland around them. So a little town like Drapers town, obviously founded by... London Drapers. Exactly. The Honourable, yes. The Honourable Society of Drapers. It does. So you see these little communities starting to emerge. And actually, it's really at one level quite successful in that the city does manage to bring in, you know, significant numbers of settlers. However, it doesn't make money. And so the crown is constantly bitching and saying, you know, it's not successful. You're not making enough money. One of the features of the very early English settlements in India is that you get what they called at the time a black town and a white town. And there's often a ditch between the people.

do you have similar sort of thing in Derry? Do you have the Catholics living in one bit? Or are they outside the walls? I was going to say they're outside the walls. They're not in the walls at all. No, no, no. That would be for the Protestants. You'll have the Irish town is always outside the walls.

And in this case, it's the bog side. The bog side is where the Catholics went. And that was literally boggy land that nobody else would want to live in. And what's so interesting is when Derry is on a high promontory, it's very strategically located, overlooking loch-swillie, and you look down then on the bog side. And of course, this is where the Paris set themselves up in 1972 and Bloody Sunday, but we'll come to that and do course. But these walls are so formidable.

So if the Protestants are in the town and the Catholics are out in the bog side, are there also among those in the bog side people that had for generations lived in the town and are now being kicked out? Well, the town really is built in this period. It would have been a settlement. But the walls, they date from the 1610s. So, of course, they were kicked out. And some of them will just...

So again, like Palestinians in a place like Silwan on the edge of Jerusalem who have been kicked out and the settlers are coming in and taking their houses. Exactly. Exactly that same model. Remember, Gaelic Ireland, it was very rural. So you don't have this level of urbanisation that we're seeing. So it's not exactly they're in a town before that. They would have been dispersed in rural communities.

And they practice transhumans. So interesting. What happens when you... expel people and put them in the bulk side and you have big walls and you are literally looking down on them from these high wars. Well, they're not happy. What is the level of resentment? I mean, is there resistance? Of course there's resistance. What kind of thing is happening? Well, resistance will range from outright rebellion and we see a whole series of little rebellions. In the 1600s. Well, we see it throughout the 16th century and then into the 17th century. So take that as a given. And then there is a

major rebellion in 1641 and that actually it gives the Catholics control of Ireland or of much of Ireland for a decade and we'll come to that. But I want to just reflect on resistance because I think resistance and empire go hand in hand. And we see the Irish resisting empire. It might be a commitment to the practice of Catholicism. That's a form of resistance. The Irish language is such an important badge of identity. But we also see the poets and these cultural actions. And these cultural actors who are saying, you know, remember who you are. And they're very effective at trying to mobilize people and remind them of what they stand for. And they say, listen, don't be fooled by these English fashions. Don't be taken in and become a Protestant. You know, remember who you are

and your commitment to Catholicism. And this beautiful sort of silver thread, which you can reach right into Yates's poetry, you know, sort of Ema with a hands all rattled with a die. They're all Irish folklore stories that keep alive, even though there is a real attempt. to kind of squash them down at this point? Absolutely. Is there also sort of just banditry in the countryside? If you're a Protestant on a horse trying to get from London Derry to Dublin, do you need to take an escort at this time?

I mean, you're dealing with a society that's highly militarised. So, of course, there are issues of banditry. But what you find is that the English exercise martial law throughout the early 17th century, so the consequences are extraordinarily grim should you cross that line. Is it gibbets on the edge of town? Yeah. Is it racks? Well, it's usually summary execution.

That's what, you know, you'll see that. And people being hung. But again, as over with two communities living side by side, you're getting into marriage as well? And I think it's important to remember that, that there is assimilation. We talked about Hugh O'Neill and Mabel, Bagnall. She converted to Catholicism. And you'll see this consistently, especially amongst the elite, a lot of intermarriage.

It doesn't always... Is it English men with Irish women? Yes. Men on the Make. So they'll take an Irish wife. An heiress. But especially one with Blue Blood, because they want that ancient pedigree. But they will insist that the children are brought up as Protestants. And at this point, we see some of the big Irish families, the butlers of Ormond, whose seat is in Kilkenny Castle, they convert to Protestantism. So it's usually after a period of wardship. And wardship is when the crown. really operates on behalf of one of these, you know, the heirs, then they marry into a Protestant

family. A little bit later in Scotland, you've got the Scots aristocracy sending their kids to London or English schools to be educated. Have you got the beginning of that going on? You do, William. So what happens again, especially the elite. Well, first you've got Trinity College, Dublin, which is established. But even better than Trinity is to send your sons to Eaton and then to Oxford. Cambridge is deemed to be too Protestant. But of course it's the Church of Ireland, so that means it's an Anglican church. And so you've got a whole bunch of now Irish landowning elite children who are speaking with English accents? Yes, you do. So we saw that with Hugh O'Neill. He was sort of educated in the pale and became anglicised, and that is on steroids whenever they

spend time in England. The other place they go to is the ends of court in London. And many of them actually will have some sort of legal access to the law. And partly they need that to outwit it back in Ireland, but others then, it's anglicisation. Gandhi, Nairu, Jinnah. I mean, again, I mean, we're going to come to this, but I just keep getting sort of really itchy enamel on my teeth. All these lawyers.

All these lawyers. Yeah, very important. Again, the same thing. So, you know, Indians can go and study the law, but there's a certain level and only that level that they can attain in their homeland. But it does arm them to fight when they get back. Anyway, look, we've come to the end of our time with this, Jane.

You come back. I'm so ashamed. I didn't know this at all because it's so similar to the Indian stuff. Yet it's so close to home. 100%. Jane, come back for us. Until the next time we meet, it's goodbye for me, Anita Arnain. Goodbye for me, William Durhampool.