Displacement and relocation in early modern Ireland: Studies of transplantation settlement in Connacht and Clare

Eve Campbell

The policy of transplantation initiated during the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell envisaged the relocation of all Catholic land owners to (and within) Connacht and Clare in order to make way for the colonisation of their estates by Protestant planters and to settle debts with an unpaid army. The scheme drawn up for the wholesale transplantation of Irish Catholic landowners to lands west of the Shannon did not quite translate into reality. The scheme was met with resistance from landowners loathe to abandon their native lands and settle the native lands of others. Some preferred to stay at home and risk the consequences, staving off the authorities with appeals or bribes, others fled the country or joined the ranks of the ’tories’, but some families did grudgingly make the trek west, settled their allotted lands and attempted to carve out a life for themselves.

The physical expression of this movement of people, both at a very local level and from one county to another, and the impression that it made on the cultural landscape, are the concerns of this project. Using a number of indepth case studies the project aims to explore the way in which particular families who were transplanted to and within Connacht and Clare dealt with the social and economic consequences of their displacement from sometimes anciently held family seats and their relocation to new lands.  It also aims  to investigate how the material culture generated by these families reflects the manner in which they negotiated the changes wrought by the shifting political, social and economic frameworks of early modern Ireland.

This research is funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences

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