Contents; List of Maps; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Prologue: The Hill of the Axes 1504; 2. 'The Land of Banba is but Swordland': Late Medieval Ireland; 3. From Lordship to Kingdom; 4. Expansion and Resistance; 5. The Wars of Ireland; 6. Wild Fruit from Savage Soil: The Crisis of the 1590s; 7. The Third Kingdom; 8. Religion and Nation; 9. Epilogue: New English, New Irish?; Appendix 1. The Population of Medieval and Early Modern Ireland; Maps; Index
Summary
Between the 1460s and the 1630s Ireland was transformed from a medieval into a modern society. A poor society on the periphery of Europe, dominated by the conflicts of competing warlords- Irish and English- it later became a centralised political unit with a single government and code of laws, and a still primitive, but rapidly developing, market economy. These changes, however, had been achieved by brutal wars of conquest, while large scale colonisation projects had created lastingtensions between old inhabitants and recent settlers. At the same time the great religious divide of the Reformat
