The Roots of English Colonialism in Ireland
Critical Perspectives on Empire Series

This book is a major study of the cultural foundations of the Tudor plantations in Ireland and of early English imperialism more generally. John Patrick Montaño traces the roots of colonialism in the key relationship of cultivation and civility in Tudor England and shows the central role this played in Tudor strategies for settling, civilising and colonising Ireland. The book ranges from the role of cartography, surveying and material culture - houses, fences, fields, roads and bridges - in manifesting the new order to the place of diet, leisure, language and hairstyles in establishing cultural differences as a site of conflict between the Irish and the imperialising state and as a justification for the civilising process. It shows that the ideologies and strategies of colonisation which would later be applied in the New World were already apparent in the practices, material culture and hardening attitude towards barbarous customs of the Tudor regime.

Introduction: nature is a language; 1. Planting a landscape: cultivation and reform in Ireland; 2. Planning a landscape I: cultivation as reformation; 3. Planning a landscape II: cultivation through plantation; 4. Inscribing a landscape: maps, surveys and records; 5. Material signs: ordering the built; 6. A civil offer: the failure to adopt English customs; 7. Bad manners, nasty habits: the elimination of Irish customs; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

John Patrick Montaño is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Delaware.