Plantations by Land and Sea

Contents: Setting the scene - Historical context - Removal and relocation: Alternative Ulster plantations - The English in Ulster: Plantation policies and processes - Of military men, merchants and mariners - Clanship and commerce: Plantation in a North Channel context - James VI and I, Ulster and the South Isles.

Having worked previously at the universities of St Andrews and Strathclyde, Alison Cathcart is currently Associate Professor of Early Modern Scottish History at the University of Stirling. Her previous work on clanship in the central and eastern Scottish Highlands highlighted the interaction between local, regional, and national agency; while the focus is now on the western Highlands and Isles, the region is placed within broader archipelagic contexts. Increasingly she describes herself as a historian of the periphery and is interested in local, and insular, communities who live at the interface of land and sea and their interaction with «central» authorities, while also drawing on economic, environmental, legal, and maritime dimensions to such relationships.

«This is an important and original regional study of the interconnected communities in Scotland and Ireland that spanned North Channel from the late middle ages into the early seventeenth century. In a meticulously researched and engagingly written book, Alison Cathcart brings fresh perspectives to the comings and goings of mercenaries, merchants, mariners, and migrants. In an era when the sea united the communities in the archipelago of islands that comprised the North Channel world, she places welcome emphasis on climate, cultivation, and commerce as she untangles the «civilising» schemes of Elizabeth I and James VI and I. This is a must read for anyone wanting to understand plantations and colonisation in both Ireland and Scotland.» (Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, Chair, Irish Research Council, and Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History (1762) Trinity College Dublin)







«The North Channel linking Ireland and Scotland was one of the key waterways of Western Europe in early modern times. For numerous Highland Gaels, Irish, English, and Lowland Scots it was a route to rapacious profit, exile, death, and much else. Alison Cathcart's luminous study casts new light on those historic connections and firmly establishes herself in the front rank of Scottish and Irish historians of that period.» (Professor Emeritus Sir Tom Devine Kt OBE HonMRIA FRSE FBA)