Map-Making, Landscapes and Memory: A Geography of Colonial and Early Modern Ireland c.1530–1750

"This is one of my favourite books. Smyth is a historical geographer and I love the way that he uses maps and cartography to help tell the story of colonial Ireland. As we all know, maps are very important tools of empire. If you’re going to expropriate, you have to know what it is that you’re taking away and reallocating. Some of the most innovative work on early modern and colonial Ireland has been done by historical geographers who work in a very interdisciplinary way. Smyth is a geographer who works with anthropologists and historians. The book was published in 2006, but he’d been working on that book the whole way through the 1990s, and he was way ahead of his time. “Ireland is probably one of the most extensively mapped countries in the early modern world” The other thing that is so important about this book is the way it brings in the whole discussion of memory and how we remember the early modern period, and how events that occurred in the 17th century have become part of the DNA of people living in Ireland. Whether it’s 1641 and the atrocities that allegedly occurred during that period that are remembered by the Loyalist community, or Cromwell in 1649, or if it’s the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, or the Siege of Derry, the events that occurred in this period are part of social memory. It’s only very recently that they’re passing from that—there’s a visceral reaction to it—and they’re becoming part of history, in a way. Smyth’s book was a pioneer in encouraging us to think about the importance of memory and the value of folklore. There’s been subsequent work done by Guy Beiner and Sarah Covington, but Smith’s book was pioneering and that’s why I wanted it there. Yes. Ireland is probably one of the most extensively mapped countries in the early modern world. We know so much about colonial Ireland from the maps. You have very extensive maps of estates. The Raven Maps are the most beautifully illustrated maps, dating from the 1620s, of estates in Counties Antrim and Down. The most important maps are by a man called Sir William Petty, who used chains to map Ireland . This technology is very basic in our eyes but was hugely sophisticated at the time. The levels of accuracy with which Petty was able to map Ireland is quite extraordinary. His maps became the basis of maps right through to the Ordnance Survey in the 19th century. This obsession with mapping and charting and counting is such a feature of empire. The British then replicated that in the Atlantic world and in India and Asia. It’s a feature not only of the English or British Empire; it’s also a feature of the European empires. We see the French doing exactly the same. Many of the early mapmakers would have been killed by the indigenous Irish, so mapmaking was a risky business, certainly in the earlier period. By the mid-17th century, Ireland had been militarily conquered by the Cromwellians, so their task was slightly easier. I’m trying to tell the story of imperialism through the lens of early modern Ireland. I focus on the operation of imperialism in colonial Ireland itself. I’m also interested in the extent to which the Irish—Catholic and Protestant indigenous Irish, as well as Anglo-Irish—become agents of empire not only in the English Empire, but in the empires of France, Spain, Portugal, and the other European powers. We find that the Irish pop up all over the early modern world. They’re very effective frontiersmen and imperialists themselves. I’m interested in how Ireland serves as a laboratory for empire. I’ve already touched on that, and I explore that fully in the book. Another thing I try to do in the book is to think about what empire has meant for identities in Ireland. In other words, how does it shape our senses of Irishness, of Englishness, of Britishness, and how does it complicate the story of the coloniser? What does that interaction in Ireland tell us about Britishness? It’s very interesting that in the 1641 Depositions, for example, we have people who use the word ‘British’ to describe themselves. It had been a big project of James VI and I to encourage this notion of Britishness. That’s something that continues very strongly, for example, in Northern Ireland today. What’s even more interesting to me is how many Irish people–both Catholics and Protestants, and especially members of the elite—see themselves as English. Where does all of this then leave Irishness? In a nutshell, I’m interested in how empire impacts on identity formation. I’m also interested in how engagement with empires shaped the landscapes of Ireland, and how it influenced what we ate. This is an era in which we’re seeing so many commodities influencing diet—sugar, especially. The other one is tobacco. As far as I can see, the whole country becomes addicted to tobacco smoking. And then, fashions. This is the era of the calico craze, where we’re seeing that everybody wants to wear the latest Indian textiles. How does that play out in an Irish context? The final thing I’m interested in exploring is the relationship with memory. Picking up on some of the things that William Smyth and others have done, how engagement with empire has influenced popular memory or social memory in an Irish context, and how we choose to remember some things (e.g., 1641, Cromwell, the Battle of the Boyne, the Siege of Derry) that are very active in social memory but, equally, how amnesia sets in for other things. For example, very few people in Ireland have any sense of the importance of Ireland and India. As I’ve mentioned, two thirds of the British Army in India were made up of Irish Catholic squaddies. That memory has been blocked out. What’s going on here with what we remember and what we forget?"