Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630-1830 (review)

It is sometimes useful to be reminded of how successfully oppressive empires could work. David Dickson supplies this lesson in his massive new regional study, clearly the fruit of many years' diligent labor. The Munster "colony," with its origins in the second half of the sixteenth century, was both the most English and the least trammelled of the Early Modern British projects in Ireland. Sited primarily around the ports and river valleys of southern Ireland, it bore a striking resemblance to the transatlantic settlement of Virginia, which it only slightly preceded. Like the Virginia plantation, the Munster colony was to some degree an extension of the English West-Country from which well-heeled adventurers like Sir Walter Raleigh came. Unlike Virginia, it was carved out of an area long inhabited by Christian Europeans, whether of Gaelic or Anglo-Norman ancestry.

Dickson makes Cork—its city, harbor, and hinterland—the focus of his study, with much of the weight lying, chronologically, in the long eighteenth century. Because the subject is "South Munster," this is something less than a full provincial study, but the wealth and coherence of the material presented seems to justify this qualification. The first half of the book examines the creation of the colony and its remarkable economic development up to roughly 1770. Lying athwart the sea lanes of the first British Empire, South Munster quickly became a flourishing outpost of trade and agricultural production. Indeed, part of the volume's excellence is its evocation and depiction of a triumphant, burgeoning economy. If that success arose in part from the expropriation and exploitation of the native population, no less was that the case in Virginia where, in addition, African slave labor was instrumental; yet, paradoxically, the rise of the Virginia plantocracy is still celebrated in mainstream American historiography, while that of its Munster counterpart is viewed with a jaundiced eye in post-independence Ireland.

The second half of the volume treats at equal length the much shorter sixty year period up to 1830: the years of the American and French wars, of Grattan's Parliament, the United Irishmen, rural disturbances, and the Act of Union. These are the years of the Munster colony's maturity and the beginnings of its decline. Dickson's treatment is neither a eulogy nor an indictment; it is a record of a colony that would eventually collapse. He accomplishes this with a thoroughness that may exhaust some readers. For example, a fascinating section on "arteries [of commerce]" seems to leave no individual turnpike without its history. Readers will welcome the discussion of the development of inland transportation, but may find so much information about individual roads, bridges, and locks—however integral it may be to the history of the area—burdensome. On the other hand, this volume will be a valuable reference work for decades to come.

Old World Colony is a clear-eyed, dispassionate, and well-written account of how the South Munster "colony" came into existence, flourished, and created wealth and social status for its beneficiaries. The volume is richly supplemented with over a hundred useful illustrations, maps, and statistical tables. If it does not dwell on the many Irish who were neglected or damaged by this process, and who were eventually to seek their independence and a new order of things, that is a story that now, happily, is being told sufficiently elsewhere.