The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America

ALTHOUGH the lordship of Ireland had long been in English /4 hands, effective control over the country had been lost during j tthe late medieval period, with the result that independent and autonomous Irish jurisdictions covered much of the island until the end of the sixteenth century. Attempts to reassert English authority over Ireland produced under Elizabeth I a pattern of conquest, bolstered by attempts at colonization, which was contemporaneous with and parallel to the first effective contacts of Englishmen with North America, to plans for conquest and settlement there, and to the earliest encounters with its Indian inhabitants. The Elizabethan conquest of Ireland should therefore be viewed in the wider context of European expansion. David B. Quinn has stressed the connection between English colonization in Ireland and the New World, and he has established the guidelines for a full investigation.' No historian, however, has dealt with the legal and ethical considerations raised by colonization in Ireland or with