The 1641 rebellion is one of the seminal events in early modern Irish and British history. Its divisive legacy, based primarily on the sharply contested allegation that the rebellion began with a general massacre of Protestant settlers, is still evident in Ireland today. Thousands of witness testimonies (the 1641 Depositions) housed in Trinity College Dublin became central to one of the most protracted and bitter of Irish historical controversies. This controversy has never been satisfactorily resolved as successive generations invented and re-invented the past in response to contemporary...

This book is the first major academic study of the Ulster Plantation in over 25 years. The pivotal importance of the Plantation to the shared histories of Ireland and Britain would be difficult to overstate. It helped secure the English conquest of Ireland, and dramatically transformed Ireland's physical, demographic, socio-economic, political, military, religious and cultural landscapes. In effect, the Plantation became the City of London's and England's first successful attempt at empire, providing a template for future colonial expansion in the Americas, the Caribbean and the Indian...