‘The greatness of the Roman Empire began with a mass of crimes’: reflecting on conquest and usurpation in seventeenth century Irish historical writing

The seventeenth century was a turbulent period in the history of Ireland. As a result of the early modern English conquest, the Irish political and social landscape underwent dramatic changes. Due to the Reformation, colonial plantations, dispossession, and civil wars (1579-1603; 1641-1653), the Catholic Irish sought refuge in Continental Europe. In their writings they reflected on the past and present of Ireland through the lens of conquest. Apart from discussing the oppressive ways of English empire-building in Ireland, they raised the issue of acquisition of power and property by force or inheritance with regard to the question of loyalty of Irish Catholics to Stuart monarchs. They were also concerned with the matter of conquest pertaining to the status of Old English Catholics in Ireland whose identity and claims to property were firmly connected to the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman invasion. Finally, Irish Catholics tried to refute British authors who denigrated Irish Gaelic history because of the absence of hereditary succession. All these questions were addressed in the historical narratives of Irish Catholic exiles: Historiae Catholicae Iberniae Compendium (A Compendium of the Catholic History of Ireland, 1621), and Zoilomastix (The Scourge of Zoilos, 1625-26), composed by Gaelic noble Philip O’Sullivan Beare (1590-1660); Cambrensis Eversus (Cambrensis Refuted, 1662), written by the Old English priest John Lynch (1599-1677), and the Irish-language Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (Foundation of Knowledge on Ireland, 1634-5), penned by the Old English priest Geoffrey Keating (1580-1644). The presentation will contextualise O’Sullivan Beare’s, Keating’s and Lynch’s ideas on conquest and usurpation from the perspective of Gaelic, European, Classical political thought and literature. It will reveal how Irish Catholic authors normalised violence in the history of Ireland and used imperial discourse to criticise English conquest and to propose alternative ways of empire-building.