The Cambridge History of Ireland: Volume 2, 1550-1730

Description

This volume offers fresh perspectives on the political, military, religious, social, cultural, intellectual, economic, and environmental history of early modern Ireland and situates these discussions in global and comparative contexts. The opening chapters focus on 'Politics' and 'Religion and War' and offer a chronological narrative, informed by the re-interpretation of new archives. The remaining chapters are more thematic, with chapters on 'Society', 'Culture', and 'Economy and Environment', and often respond to wider methodologies and historiographical debates. Interdisciplinary cross-pollination - between, on the one hand, history and, on the other, disciplines like anthropology, archaeology, geography, computer science, literature and gender and environmental studies - informs many of the chapters. The volume offers a range of new departures by a generation of scholars who explain in a refreshing and accessible manner how and why people acted as they did in the transformative and tumultuous years between 1550 and 1730.

Jane Ohlmeyer is Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History at Trinity College, Dublin and the Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity's research institute for advanced study in the Arts and Humanities. Since September 2015 she has also served as Chair of the Irish Research Council. She has also taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Yale University, Connecticut, and the University of Aberdeen and has held several visiting international appointments. A passionate teacher and an internationally established scholar of early modern Irish history, Professor Ohlmeyer is the author/editor of eleven books, including Making Ireland English: The Aristocracy in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (2012). She is currently working on a study of Colonial Ireland, Colonial India and preparing an edition of Clarendon's Shorte View of Ireland. She is a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Thomas Bartlett was born in Belfast, and is a graduate of Queen's University Belfast. He has held positions at the National University of Ireland, Galway, then as Professor of Modern Irish history at University College Dublin, and most recently as Professor of Irish history at the University of Aberdeen, until his retirement in 2014. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and his previous publications include Ireland: A History (Cambridge, 2010).

'The new approaches and topics set out here will certainly ... [attract] a new generation of historians while revitalizing the field and those already working in it, ensuring the continued growth of interest in early modern Ireland. Each of the essays, too numerous to consider individually here, set out larger developments and themes in clear and accessible language suitable for undergraduates and those new to the subject ... while offering novel and nuanced interpretations sure to reinvigorate advanced scholars.' Valerie McGowan-Doyle, Renaissance Quarterly