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- [00:01]
William Dalrymple
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- [00:20]
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- [00:50]
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- [01:29]
Anita Anand
Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Anand.
- [01:33]
William Dalrymple
And me, William Dalrymple, looking very smug today.
- [01:36]
Anita Anand
Possibly because my entire computer system melted down in the most catastrophic abstract and I said nothing. What do you mean you said nothing?
- [01:43]
William Dalrymple
Said nothing at all.
- [01:44]
Anita Anand
You said nothing. I could hear you chortling away in the background and you rang me to rub my nose in it.
- [01:49]
William Dalrymple
I just thought you might need some tech assistance. Always willing to help.
- [01:52]
Anita Anand
Can I just say, you know, you're in the end of days when Willie Dalrymple rings you up to give you tech support. You know, basically our time here is almost over, people. This is one of the many Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Anyway, we're here now and listening to all this prattle, the most patient woman on God's green earth. It is Professor Jane Almayer, author of Making Ireland Imperialism and the Early Modern World. We heard from her in Jaipur and you might remember we talked about plantations, not plants, people. Corporate imperialism in Ireland. Using the city of Derry, Londonderry city in Northern Ireland, as a prism through which to understand how colonial practices and policies played out and how they were a laboratory for what many people would use as a template for colonisation.
- [02:45]
William Dalrymple
And what I think is really interesting is how little of this is known in Britain. The Irish know this history very, very well. I went through 10 years of education in the British curriculum and I never came across any of the stuff.
- [02:58]
Anita Anand
Mm. Well, Jane Welco. Welcome, welcome. And you are going to hold our hands and take us through one of the most contentious periods of Irish history, and that is Cromwellian conquest. Oliver Cromwell, who many people will see if they ever go to Westminster. His statue stands proudly outside the Houses of Parliament. Famously a man who wanted to be displayed, warts and all, in his portrait. He was having his portrait done and thought it was too pretty. And he said, you put it in. I want people to see me as a. I am. So let's start with the mid 17th century and let's have a portrait of the man himself. Tell me who he was, what's his origin story, and what was he like?
- [03:41]
Professor Jane Almayer
Hi, Anita. Hi, William. Great to be back. Remember, William, the English never remember and the Irish never forget. It's one of those wonderful stories. Anyway, Anita Cromwell. So in England, of course, as you've said, he's revered. It's his great parliamentary hero. And in Ireland, he's excoriated as God's executioner.
- [04:01]
William Dalrymple
And in Scotland.
- [04:01]
Professor Jane Almayer
And Scotland, too, and the devil beyond the sea. I mean, he's the most vilified man possible. But Cromwell's a fascinating character and obviously he was a military genius. He was born in 1599 just outside Cambridge, and really lived much of his early life as an ordinary country gentleman. And he's in his 40s when he becomes an MP.
- [04:22]
William Dalrymple
I hadn't realized, again, quite how posh he was. I'd presume that he was sort of urban middle class, and he wasn't. He was landed gentry.
- [04:30]
Professor Jane Almayer
He was landed gentry. But he's in his 40s before he sort of finds God and becomes a politician and goes on to be probably the most celebrated or one of the most celebrated military figures in British history. What I find so interesting about him are his religious beliefs. He believes he has a direct line to God.
- [04:51]
William Dalrymple
He actually reads as almost sort of messianic. If you read his letters and his speeches. He is the hand of God and the kind of the real reaper of wrath for God and very much appoints himself to that role. It doesn't read well to a modern eye.
- [05:05]
Professor Jane Almayer
It definitely doesn't. But of course, he comes to Ireland and commits some of the worst atrocities in Irish history at Drogheda and Wexford, and we'll come back to those. But he is vilified in Ireland as God's executioner, as this satanic figure, this devil beyond the sea. And in the Irish Folklore Archive records social memory. And all of these sort of testimonies were taken in the 1930s and Cromwell is mentioned. He's only second to Daniel O'Connell in terms of how he's remembered in social memory. And to this day there's a generation who will hiss when they hear Cromwell's name. I mean, he really is vilified, especially amongst Irish Catholics, for what he did in Ireland. But of course, he was just one of many Englishmen who did, you know, dreadful things in Ireland.
- [05:54]
Anita Anand
And just to give us a context of the world that he was born in, we're talking about the accession of Charles I. What does Britain look like? What does England more particularly look like and how does it fit in the context of Europe?
- [06:07]
Professor Jane Almayer
Well, he's born in 1599, so the end of Elizabeth's reign. He comes to maturity during the reign of King James VI and first and then later Charles I, his son. I think England at this point is a bit of a non entity on the world stage. It's a country that really is beginning to, if you want to establish itself, it's a period of westward expansionism. But Ireland is where a lot of its attention is focused. And that pacification and conquest of Ireland has happened under Elizabeth. And now Ireland becomes, if you want, part of this westward enterprise as England not just moves into the Atlantic world, but of course, with the East India Company into Asia and the other corporate bodies into Asia as well.
- [06:54]
William Dalrymple
I've just been watching Wolf hall on the telly and he is related to Thomas Cromwell, isn't he? Through his mother, isn't that right?
- [07:01]
Professor Jane Almayer
Yeah, there's some distant relationship. Yes. No, you're absolutely right, yes.
- [07:05]
Anita Anand
His great, great grandmother, if you want to put a pin in it, was the sister of Thomas Cromwell of Wolf hall fame. So, you know, he's got this sort of direct lineage to history also. Can I just tell you, I mean, Huntingdon, where he was born and the formative part of the world for him. It's a really beautiful. Even now, you know, full of fields. It was John Major's old constituency and they're very, very proud of this sort of Cromwellian roots that they had. And just very recently they had an exhibition about Cromwell's head.
- [07:34]
William Dalrymple
And his body was briefly at the end of my road in London in Church Street.
- [07:38]
Anita Anand
Yes, that's right. Right. So look, Ireland we haven't spoken about, so we've got an idea of what England looked like. But what about Ireland? How is Ireland faring as young Oliver Cromwell is growing up?
- [07:50]
Professor Jane Almayer
Well, in Ireland during this period it's been militarily conquered and it's all about how Ireland is Now made English. So there are attempts to make the majority a Catholic population Protestant, but also then to civilize ire. When I say civilized, I haven't inverted quotes because that really means how can Ireland be anglicised? How can the English language be introduced, the English legal system, how Ireland can be commercialized? And we talked about that when we talked about Derry. But English is the language of the courts of commerce and it becomes increasingly the lingua franca. And it's very much associated with the Irish being civilized, again in inverted commas. But during this period there are a number of minor rebellions. But one reason why Ireland has been pass because of the destruction on the foot, not just of the Nine Years War, but then the Flight of the Earls. And what you find is that there's the exercise of martial law during this period. And so imperialism is all about the exercise of power and violence. And a bed of pikes underpins English rule in Ireland, including the first half of the 17th century.
- [08:57]
Anita Anand
And we should remind people, if you haven't heard the previous episodes with Jane, do go back. I mean, there's solid, solid gold stuff in there. But the Flight of the Earls was basically the entire opposition that could have stood up to the English and to colonialism takes off and heads for the continent. And so Ireland is sort of bereft of leadership at that time of any kind of meaningful resistance.
- [09:18]
Professor Jane Almayer
Absolutely, Anita. And not only that, because you see, if you want the leadership, fly to the continent. Obviously they're hoping to come back, but that then paves the way for the plantation of Ulster. And the consequences of that we'll be talking about today.
- [09:32]
Anita Anand
We said he sort of came from quite a gentrified background. He also gets power at a reasonably early age because you see Oliver Cromwell become an MP for Huntingdon, his hometown, at the age of 29. Is there any evidence early on in his parliamentary career or in his speeches that he has a bigotry towards Catholics or indeed an antipathy towards Ireland?
- [09:52]
Professor Jane Almayer
The simple answer is no. He is anti Catholic, but he actually also then is somebody who believes in what we would call religious toleration, in other words, toleration of other Protestant sects. Basically, he himself is what we would call today a Puritan. In other words, a hard line Protestant, more like maybe Presbyterians. They believe you want to get away with the trappings associated with Catholicism in Ireland. The majority population is Catholic, 80% at least.
- [10:23]
Anita Anand
So if he's not set in stone at the beginning of his career, it is probably the Irish Rebellion of 1641. That wakes something up in him. So, first of all, I mean, just tell us what happens in 1641 and why it's important.
- [10:37]
Professor Jane Almayer
So, basically, in October 1641, a major rebellion breaks out in Ireland whereby the Irish Catholic insurgents seize major strategic places around the island. They fail to take Dublin because a.
- [10:52]
William Dalrymple
Drunk reveals the plot. Owen O'Connelly gets drunk and tells everybody what's about to happen.
- [10:58]
Professor Jane Almayer
Sadly, yes, the stereotype comes in there. However, very quickly, the Irish insurgents are able to control huge swathes of the country. Now, that military force that's shown is accompanied by extreme violence. So we see the wholesale massacre of Protestant colonists, and this then triggers equally vicious attacks by government forces against the Catholics, we would call it today, ethnic cleansing verging on genocide. The sort of violence that is unleashed, obviously triggered by the Catholic rebellion, but met with force far greater.
- [11:39]
Anita Anand
Do we have any idea of numbers? I mean, you know, when you're talking about sort of ethnic cleansing and genocide, those are hefty terms. What are the numbers involved?
- [11:46]
Professor Jane Almayer
Let's be very clear. That word ethnic cleansing and genocide are never used in the context of the 17th century. What we're seeing, they're later terms. What we're seeing are thousands and thousands of people losing their life. We don't have precise figures, and people have tried over the years, and all it does is, if you want fuel, propaganda mills.
- [12:05]
William Dalrymple
But we should recognize that despite the fact that atrocities are played up by the English and become the excuse for counter atrocities, that they do exist. I mean, I've got estimates in front of me here that in some areas, from 17 to 43% of Protestant settlers are killed, maybe 4,000 people. Does that sound right to you?
- [12:26]
Professor Jane Almayer
That does. It's funny, I'm involved in a big project at the moment where we're actually trying to give some estimates of people who lost their lives. We don't actually know, but we've got an amazing archive called the 1641 depositions, which are are like eyewitness testimonies of what happened in 1641. Now, they're documents of conquest in that they're collected to justify the subsequent expropriation of Irish land. But they nonetheless give us these incredible insights into what life was like in colonial Ireland, because people list all of their losses, and having listed their losses, they go on then to say what their own experiences of the war were and what then allegedly happened. So we've got eyewitness testimony, then we've got hearsay testimony, and we're able to now systematically go through all of These depositions, there's about 8,000 of them. And estimate, we hope with some degree of accuracy the numbers of deaths. But just for your information, going back to Willi's figure, people have suggested that over the course of the 1640s, about a third of the population of Ireland died, either in the original massacres or in the subsequent war. Many of them would have been on the foot of the actual military incursions, but many thousands died because of the famine, the plague that followed the armies and these slash and burn techniques that were used.
- [13:52]
William Dalrymple
You also have attacks on the Irish in England, don't you? There are counter atrocities of Irish emigrants living in London and around the country.
- [14:00]
Professor Jane Almayer
Yeah, well, what happens is, of course the English propagandists use the outbreak of war in Ireland to feed this anti Catholic, anti popery is how you'll see it in the records, hysteria. And that is used very effectively by the parliamentarians. And this is what Cromwell would have been seeing in whipping up this hysteria against Irish Catholics. So then we're seeing sectarian attacks in Wales and England, particularly on the foot of other military incursions, Naseby or some of the big battles.
- [14:34]
Anita Anand
Right. And also, I mean, this coalesces when the parliamentarians are grabbing all these headlines and using them and you've got this frenzy of anti Catholicism attention turns to Charles I, because there is the perception, certainly among many English parliamentarians that he has too many Catholic sympathies. I mean, first of all, why do they say that about Charles and is it true?
- [14:55]
Professor Jane Almayer
He's a committed Anglican. However, his wife, Henrietta Maria is a French princess and she over time would have allied very closely with the Irish Confederates, as the Irish in insurgents are later known. So Charles himself though, is a committed Anglican. I think it's unfair to describe him as a Catholic, but he has many friends as well, and he's not sympathetic to the Irish cause to begin with, but over time he turns to Ireland for support. And that of course then fuels the anti Catholic hysteria around him.
- [15:26]
William Dalrymple
And just to get the dates established, 1641 is the Irish Rebellion. 1642, the English Civil War begins. And it's really at the end of the Civil war that Cromwell turns his attention to revenge on the Irish.
- [15:40]
Professor Jane Almayer
And the reason he does that, William, is because Ireland is always a strategic threat to England. It's the back door to England. And he knows that Charles will look to Ireland and particularly the Viceroy or the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Ormond, one of the great butlers who is in charge of the Royalist.
- [15:59]
William Dalrymple
Cause there Butler being the family name rather than. He wasn't carrying wine around restaurants.
- [16:04]
Professor Jane Almayer
No, I guess once upon a time he might have in terms of the royal court, but no, he's an Anglo Norman settler who's been there for centuries. James Butler, Duke of Ormond, he really runs the show in Ireland for much of the 17th century. And Cromwell realizes that he has to take out that royalist army if he's ever going to secure the peace in England.
- [16:25]
Anita Anand
Well, so this is the leap. You know, parliamentarians are often men who have very long luncheon, they soft bodies. But the image that we have of Cromwell is a man who dons armour, sits on a horse and leads the charge. So at what point does he turn from parliamentarian to soldier?
- [16:42]
Professor Jane Almayer
Remember in the 1630s there are no parliaments. And that's one of the big gripes against the king is that he doesn't call parliament. So I don't think Cromwell's a particularly effective politician. However, he's a very effective military commander. And this really happens after 1642 and entirely self taught.
- [16:59]
William Dalrymple
He hasn't got a military training.
- [17:00]
Professor Jane Almayer
No, no. And again, it's just quite extraordinary. But it's really Cromwell who sets up the first, if you want professional army in England, it's called the New Model army. And this new model army, say by 1646 has become a formidable force. And they're very much professionally trained, but they're also infused with this sense of being godly troops, especially any of the troops around Cromwell, he uses Protestantism to fire them up. And so it's an army, a very formidable army that he brings to Ireland. And it's a veteran army. These guys now have been seasoned in English warfare and he deploys them along with a large war chest to Ireland in 1649.
- [17:44]
William Dalrymple
So again, just for clarity, 1641, the rebellion, 1642, the civil war breaks out. January 1649, Charles I gets executed. And it's at that point that Cromwell gathers the army and takes them across the sea to Ireland. So tell us what happens. They land where?
- [18:03]
Professor Jane Almayer
So it's in August 1649, Cromwell's army. And we're talking about 55,000 men and a vast war chest land very close to Dublin. So they immediately secure Dublin and then they want to take out the cream of Ormond's army, the Duke of Ormond's army, which is stationed at a place called Drogheda, which is north of Dublin on the edge of the Pale, this area that would have been traditionally controlled by the English. So he immediately Marches north. And Drogheda is besieged. It's besieged between the 3rd and 11th September, 1649. When it refuses to surrender, the troops obviously discharge the city. And we see a bloodletting just that has never been seen before in Ireland. Something like 3,000 Royalist troops are killed in hot and cold blood. All of the Catholic clergy and any Catholic religious are murdered, along with an unknown number of civilians, probably around 500. And much of this is done in cold blood. In other words, it's a premeditated massacre that's occurring here.
- [19:12]
William Dalrymple
I'd love to read his speech, which gives a measure of his sort of slightly messianic quality. This is him in Dublin just before he goes to Drogheda. And he talks about his purpose as the great work against the barbarous and bloodthirsty Irish and all their adherents and confederates for the propagating of the gospel of Christ, the establishment of truth and peace, and the restoring that bleeding nation to its former tranquility and happiness. He very much sees himself as God's own sword, doesn't he?
- [19:48]
Anita Anand
But, you know, it also reminds me of Delhi and what happens in Delhi as well. You know, this kind of bloodletting. And there's. There's a little.
- [19:55]
William Dalrymple
1857, you're talking.
- [19:56]
Anita Anand
Yeah, yeah, 1857. A lot later. But, you know, you've got sort of an account by a man called Morrell, who describes Cromwell riding in on his horse and in his armour. And seeing piles of bodies of his men. And the blood is up. And he says, and this is a direct quote, it was the sight of fallen comrades that was the occasion of Cromwell issuing the order for no quarter. In Cromwell's words, in the heat of action, I forbade them, meaning his soldiers, to spare any that were in arms in the town. And that night they put to the sword about 2,000 men. That does not include the women. And who also get caught up in this bloodlet.
- [20:31]
William Dalrymple
Here's another quote again, showing his sort of extraordinary sense of it being the sword of God. He wrote to a friend that truly our work is neither from our brains nor from our courage and strength, but we follow the Lord who goeth before and gather what he scattereth. That so all may appear to be from him. So when he's doing this effusion of blood, he's seeing it as God's work.
- [20:59]
Professor Jane Almayer
Yeah, they did. And including Cromwell himself. And it's really interesting to see how he justifies what he's done at Drogheda. He says it's A righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches who've imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood. So it's a direct reference back to 1641. Again, God is telling him to do it and it's in punishment we're punishing them for the rebellion of 1641. But Cromwell then goes on to justify the massacre on the grounds that it would terrorize other royalists and Irish confederates into surrender. So I think there's also, he's, you know, he wants to make an example, if you want, of strada.
- [21:36]
Anita Anand
But it's not Christian behavior, shall we put it that way? We've talked about the massacres of the innocence.
- [21:40]
William Dalrymple
That's one interpretation. But it's very much seen by him to be Christian behaviour.
- [21:44]
Anita Anand
However, there are acts of enormous betrayal which nobody can justify as Christian behaviour. For example, you know, there is a man, a governor, who is, is promised that he will live and leave with 200 men if they surrender. And so they do. And so what happens instead is that they are disarmed, they're taken to a windmill and they're killed about an hour after they surrender. The said governor himself, they take his wooden leg and beat him to death with it because they believe it's filled with gold. Now that is both venal, that is deceptive, that is not. I mean, nobody can argue that. But do people know that that kind of thing is happening at the time? Or is this something that we discover later?
- [22:22]
Professor Jane Almayer
Well, people in Ireland know and obviously that's very much part of popular memory. And the other thing to remember is of those who die, lose their lives in Drogheda, the vast majority of them are actually Protestants. In other words, it's not actually Catholics that he's killing. It's the cream of Ormond's army. And that includes Irish Protestants who have been serving the Royalist cause.
- [22:45]
William Dalrymple
Charles I, he feels no sense of conscience at all at the murder of these captives. He's, he says, I believe we put to the sword the whole number of the defendants. I do not think 30 of the whole number escaped with their lives. Those that did are in safe custody for the Barbados. In other words, they're going to be shipped off to become plantation slaves in the West Indies.
- [23:06]
Professor Jane Almayer
And you know, before we go to Barbados, it might be worth noting he does what he does in Drawda and then he does the same again in Wexford. So it's not a one off. On the contrary, he goes to Wexford and another 2,000 people are killed again, many civilians. And it's just an absolute massacre. And the reason he goes to Wexford is because Wexford is where the navy is stationed.
- [23:29]
Anita Anand
So, I mean, let's talk a little bit more about the expulsions and what happens to those who are then shipped off out of Ireland, never to see their home again.
- [23:38]
Professor Jane Almayer
What happens is after these big military victories at Drogheda, at Wexford, Cromwell then goes on basically to clear the other Irish towns. It does take a long time. He leaves Ireland and leaves his son in law, Henry Ireton, to finish the business. Business. But what he also institutes is the transportation of thousands of Irish, mostly Catholics, to Barbados and then after 1655 to Jamaica. But this is effectively a death sentence for the thousands. Initially it's men, and then with time, it's women and children as young as five who are also shipped to the Caribbean to work on the sugar plantations there. Remember, at this point, Britain has a number of.
- [24:26]
Anita Anand
Well, with a third of the Irish population now either killed, shipped off or suffering in some terrible way, what is to become of Ireland? Join us after the break.
- [24:40]
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- [25:11]
William Dalrymple
Welcome back, Jane. We were just looking at the collapse of the Royalist army, the incredible death toll and the mass emigration, forced emigration that takes place after this. Just give us an idea. What sort of estimates would you give to the death over the whole period of the 1640s, who is suffering? Which bit of the population is being wiped out by these wars?
- [25:36]
Professor Jane Almayer
Death numbers are always guesstimates, William, but we reckon about 300,000 people and it's obviously men, women and children, because they're not just dying as a result of the insurrection or military action. Thousands of people are dying from famine, from plague. There's a particularly brutal bout of plague in 1650, which is of course then spread by these armies. And as always, it's the most vulnerable that bear the brunt of war. I'm doing a big project on women and we can see women literally carrying the war on their backs. So the Irish population is now much diminished and the Catholic population is reduced to its knees by the Cromwellian Conquest, which actually is only completed in 1652.
- [26:21]
Anita Anand
And again, I just wonder what the English made of all of this, because certainly when news of, again, 1857 and the massacres that took place after the Mutiny come back. There is a mixed reaction. There are some people saying, this is going too far, this is just awful. Some people saying, bravo, well done. You need to teach them a lesson. I have seen etchings from this time, so pictures were coming back of the kind of desperation of absolutely emaciated ribs sticking out. Children and their desperate, hollow eyed mothers. They knew, they knew what was happening.
- [26:51]
Professor Jane Almayer
Anita, you might be talking about some of the famine etchings, but there are woodcuts that are done in an amazing pamphlet called the Tears of Ireland from 1642, which basically show some of the atrocities committed allegedly by Catholics against Protestants.
- [27:07]
William Dalrymple
Against Protestants, exactly.
- [27:08]
Professor Jane Almayer
Yeah. So these are propaganda images.
- [27:11]
Anita Anand
So that's all they got. Okay.
- [27:13]
Professor Jane Almayer
We know from there are so many descriptions and this is where the 1641 deposition archive is just incredibly important is that both sides suffer dreadfully, dreadfully. And especially non combatants, the women, the children. So those later images are appropriate here because the level of suffering would have just been absolutely ghastly.
- [27:34]
Anita Anand
Right, okay.
- [27:35]
William Dalrymple
Just to take forward Anita's analogy with what was happening in 1857. 1857, you have got a Times war correspondent in Delhi and reports are going back to London of what's happening and people are fulminating. Dickens famously says, delete Delhi. But do you have any sense that, that people in England are aware of the suffering in Ireland at this time, or is it just the atrocities done to the Protestants which are publicized?
- [28:01]
Professor Jane Almayer
I think there is an awareness, but I think there's a sense that, well, they're Catholics. And again, let's go back to Edmund Spencer, this othering we've seen of Irish Catholics. Actually this is a good thing because what it does is create more opportunity for English adventurers to seize Irish lands and to civilize again in inverted commas, the barbarous wild Irish who are basically second class citizens. They're subhuman. So in a way, Cromwell has done England a big favour here.
- [28:31]
William Dalrymple
It is again extraordinary that I've studied Spencer in literature classes. At no point did we learn that Spencer was this sort of adventurer trying to drive Catholics out of their homes and create a Protestant Eden in their absence.
- [28:47]
Professor Jane Almayer
Well, what Cromwell has done is what Spencer dreamed about. So I think that's how it would have been received by, if you want, Protestant England. Now there's a very different reception in Catholic Europe there. There would have been much greater sympathy for what has happened to Ireland. And during this period, actually Catholic Europe was interfering very directly in the Irish theater of war. And first Spain and later France wanted to become protectors of Ireland. But again, they're doing it for, you know, geopolitical reasons as well as a bond of Catholicism and, you know, as.
- [29:20]
Anita Anand
If they needed more propaganda in 1651. It gets put about that English supply convoys are not safe because they're being attacked by whatever is left of Irish resistance. And the reply, the response is harsh. I mean, the message goes out, if you travel more than two miles outside of military base, you are not safe from these people who want to slit your throats and take what's on your wagons. Is this when the destruction of food happens in response? Is that what happens? And tell us a bit about that.
- [29:51]
Professor Jane Almayer
What you have is, as part of the Cromwellian conquest, you get slash and burn campaigns. This is, you know, vintage tactics in an Irish context, that you deny your enemy food. And you get the Cromwellians, they're in these locked up in sort of strategic castles and garrisons, and they want to starve the local population in as much as they can. That, combined with the plague, is devastating. I think, again, it's very hard to just capture the level of misery that we would have had in Ireland in the early 1650s. And where we see this reflected very powerfully is in the Gaelic or Bardic poetry of this period, which depicts Ireland as completely and utterly destroyed. Hibernia has been laid waste by these boorish upstarts, that is the Cromwellians.
- [30:43]
William Dalrymple
Do we have any epics dedicated to this period? Are there Gaelic epic poems about all this stuff?
- [30:50]
Professor Jane Almayer
Oh, of course there are, William. What they capture, though, is just the destruction of, if you will want, the Gaelic, Irish speaking culture, way of life. And obviously, you know, the people themselves, especially the elite and the political leadership that has been annihilated. Because in addition to those who are shipped to Barbados, to Jamaica, we also have tens of thousands being shipped into the armies of the continental powers, especially Spain and France. And remember, it's in England's interest to rid Ireland of its source swordsman, because effectively, it's a death sentence as well. And so it's the beginning of those wild geese that we associate with the later period.
- [31:36]
Anita Anand
And in this later period, I mean, the emptying out, as you say, you know, you can do it through scorching the earth, you can do it through sending people away or putting them to the sword. There are actual edicts that are put in place, like places like County Wicklow, which, you know, many of us will know. They say, look, these are free fire zones. So free fire zones are placed, and I'll quote, where anyone, anyone Found in the free fire zones, own can be taken, slain, destroyed as enemies. Their cattle and goods shall be taken or spoiled as the goods of enemies. So this is a completely. Let's empty this out. Anyone who's found here is a combatant. That's it, Fly.
- [32:13]
Professor Jane Almayer
The military rule on steroids is what it is. It really is a bed of pikes, Jane.
- [32:18]
William Dalrymple
You also get the 1642 Adventurers act, reallocating land from the defeated Catholics to incoming settlers.
- [32:27]
Professor Jane Almayer
This is hugely important, William. Remember, land equals political power. And because the Irish Rebellion of 1641, we see the mass expropriation of thousands of Irish people who were allegedly involved in the 1641 rebellion, and their lands then being reallocated to English adventurers. Hence the Adventurers Act. That is, these are people who've invested in helping suppress the insurrection, but also soldiers. These soldiers that serve in Ireland need to be paid.
- [33:00]
William Dalrymple
35,000 of them get given land.
- [33:02]
Professor Jane Almayer
Get given. It's a cheap way of paying them. Now, this is massive because over the course of the 1650s alone, something like two and a half million Irish acres are redistributed from Catholic hands into Protestant hands. And when you combine that with the Irish land that has been confiscated as part of the plantations over the course of the entire 17th century, the total figure is about 8 million and 2 1/2 million just from the success 1650s. That 8 million acres represents a third of the land mass of Ireland.
- [33:36]
William Dalrymple
A third?
- [33:37]
Professor Jane Almayer
A third of the land mass of Ireland. I mean, it's huge. And also it's the best quality land, because what happens is that we get many Irish Catholics who have been dispossessed of their lands, and then they are forcibly transplanted to the west of Ireland, west of the Shannon, which obviously has the best views, but the worst land. And. And that's this phrase to Hel or to Connacht, hell being Barbados and Connacht, of course, being the west of Ireland. So, I mean, it's devastating.
- [34:08]
William Dalrymple
Jane, there is a figure here I'd love to run past you. It says that before the uprising, 1641, around 59% of Irish land was in Catholic hands. And at the end of this whole horror, less than 22%. In other words, it's gone from. From 60% to 20%.
- [34:28]
Professor Jane Almayer
That's roughly right. We think the current figure, again, I've got colleagues who are working on this, is probably about 52% of the land in 1641 was held by Catholics, and that's reduced to 22% after Cromwell gets his hand on this. So It's a very, very significant. And as I say, it's not just about the quantity, it's the quality of the land as well.
- [34:48]
William Dalrymple
So give us an example of someone who is disinherited at this time. What's the sort of story that we have in the records?
- [34:57]
Professor Jane Almayer
The Cromwellians were great record keepers, so we actually have very detailed accounts of the thousands of people who were transplanted. They're called the transplanters certificates, and it will describe, you know, Bridget Murphy, age 22. She was married to, I don't know, a column. They had three children, they owned two cows, and they were transplanted, granted, from their home, say, in Wicklow, to somewhere in County Galway, which is in the west. So all of this is documented and it's a huge archive, again, that I'm working on in the context of a major European Research Council grant on the lived experiences of women. So hopefully this is an area that will really be able to bring to people's attention like never before, because it's these ordinary people that are no longer landowners, they become landholders, and the disruption is phenomenal.
- [35:58]
William Dalrymple
And just to give a picture of this figure, let's say that this woman with two cows is sent from the east coast off to the distant west. Is she given a sort of map reference of where her new land will be? Is she given a bus to get in? No, she just walks and hopes for the best. When she gets there, she has to walk.
- [36:16]
Professor Jane Almayer
Yeah, it's completely unregulated. In the. In that sense, people will have been making their own way. And a lot of people. I mean, the roads in Ireland are treadful in this period. So actually, getting from east to west is extremely difficult, especially in the winter months. So these were long, arduous journeys and many people didn't even make the journey. They would have died on route.
- [36:36]
William Dalrymple
And when they arrive on the way, are they being met by officials who are saying, you've got a croft over there, or are they just sort of turning up and trying to find the bit of bog that they were cultivating?
- [36:46]
Professor Jane Almayer
Yeah, sadly, it's not organized at all. You're just given a patch of land and expected to make do. So all of this has great resonance with what's going on in Gaza today. This transplantation of people, their property, from their homes to somewhere that they have no associations, no links whatsoever. There are so many other, though very interesting parallels, I think the ethnocentrism that we're seeing displayed, but also these examples of extreme violence. So I feel that if you want to see Gaza today and want to understand that part of that is actually looking at what's going on in Ireland in the 16th and especially the 17th century.
- [37:28]
Anita Anand
So, I mean, would that explain partly why Ireland and you know, particularly President Michael D. Higgins, they've been so outspoken about what's going on in Gaza. In fact, you know, they stand quite apart from a lot of countries by going as far as they do to criticise what's going on in Gaza.
- [37:45]
Professor Jane Almayer
I think it does, Anita. I think you have to remember that of all the countries in Western Europe, Ireland is the only one who has experienced this intense colonization and dispossession. Absolutely. And it's profoundly shaped who we are. And of course, we're seeing this coming out in modern day politics.
- [38:05]
Anita Anand
Well, I mean, it's a fascinating place to pause. Join us next time when we're going to be talking about something that actually appears in your iPhone calendar. Just go on, have a look. Right now, the Battle of the Boyne, it comes up, but we're going to talk about the Battle of the Boyne. This is all the run up to what becomes a really important chapter and.
- [38:24]
William Dalrymple
Probably the most crucial battle in Irish history. Would you agree, Jane?
- [38:27]
Professor Jane Almayer
Yeah, it doesn't deserve to be. It should be Auchram, but we'll talk about that.
- [38:30]
Anita Anand
Okay, great. Well, look, to find out more, join us again. And if you can't wait, of course, you know what, you can get this early if you're a member of the Empire Pod. EmpirePoduk.com is where you'll find us. EmpirePoduk.com you get early access to all of these miniseries. You get access to tickets to our live shows which are coming up later this year. So until the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand and.
- [38:55]
William Dalrymple
Goodbye from me, William Duranpool.
- [39:02]
Al Murray
Hi there. I'm Al Murray, co host of we have ways of making you talk, the world's premier Second World War history podcast from Goal Hanger.
- [39:10]
James Holland
And I'm James Holland, best selling World War II historian. And together we tell the best stories from the war. This time we're doing a deep dive into the last major attack by the Nazis on the west, the Battle of the Bulge.
- [39:23]
Al Murray
And what's so fascinating about this story is we've been able to show how quite a lot of the popular history about this battle is kind of the wrong way round, isn't it, Jim? The whole thing is a disaster, disaster from the start. Even Hitler's plans for the attack are insane and divorced from reality.
- [39:36]
James Holland
Well, you're so right. But what we can do is celebrate this as an American success story for the ages. From their generals at the top to the gis on the front line, full of gumption and grit, the bold should be remembered as a great victory for the usa.
- [39:51]
Al Murray
And if this sounds good to you, we've got a short taste for you here. Search we have ways wherever you get your podcast podcasts. Thanks. Yeah.
- [40:02]
James Holland
Anyway, so who is Ober Steyn van Fuhrer? Joachim Piper.
- [40:07]
Al Murray
But I see his jaunty hat and I just think skull and crossbones. Well, I see his reputation and I think, you know, you might be a handsome devil, but the emphasis is on the devil bit rather than that.
- [40:17]
James Holland
Anyway, be that is May. He's 29 years old and he's got, he's got a very interesting career.
- [40:23]
Anita Anand
Career, really?
- [40:23]
James Holland
Because he comes from a, you know, a pretty right wing family. Let's face it. He's joined the SS at a pretty early, early stage. He's very. International socialism. He's also been Himmler's adjutant. Yeah, he took a little bit of time off in the summer of 1940 to go and fight with, with the 1st Waffen SS Panzer Division. Yeah, did pretty well. Went back to being Himler's adjutant, then went off and commanded troops in, in the Eastern Front. Rose up to be a pretty young regimental commander. I mean it's not many people that age are an Obersturm Banfuhrer, which is Colonel.
- [40:52]
Al Murray
Yes, I, you see, what must it have been like if you're in, if, if Himmler's adjutant turns up and he's been posted to you as an officer, do you think? Well, he only got that job because of, because of his connections. For Piper, it must have been always. He's always having to prove himself, surely because he's, he has turned up. He's not worked his way through the ranks of the Waffen ss. He's dolloped in. Having come from head office, as it were. It must be a peculiar position to be in. Right. He's got lots to prove.
- [41:18]
Professor Jane Almayer
Prove.
- [41:18]
Al Murray
Right, that's what I'm saying.
- [41:20]
James Holland
Yeah. And he's, he's, he's from a sort of middle class background as well.
- [41:23]
Al Murray
Yeah.
- [41:23]
James Holland
But he's got an older brother who's had mental illness and attempted suicide and never, never really recovers and actually has died in. Of TB eventually in 1942. He's got a younger brother called Horst who's also joined the SS&TOTEN cop Verbanda and died in a. Never really properly explained Accident in Poland in 1941. Right. Piper gains a sort of growing reputation on the Eastern Front for being kind of very inspiring. Fearless, you know, obviously courageous, you know, all the guys love him, all that kind of stuff. But he's also orders the entire. The destruction of entire village of Krasnaya Polyana in a kind of revenge killing by Russian partisans. Yeah. And his unit becomes known as the Blowtorch Battalion because of his penchant for touching Russian villages. So he's got all the gongs. He's got Iron Cross, second Class, first Class, Cross of Gold, Knights Cross. Did very well at Kursk briefly in Northern Italy, actually, then in Ukraine, then in Normandy. He suffers a nervous breakdown. Yeah. And he's relieved of his command on the 2nd of August, and he's hospitalized from September to October. So he's not in command during Operation Lutech. And then he rejoins 1st SS Panzer Regiment as its commander again in October 1944. It's really, really odd. I mean.
- [42:35]
Al Murray
But isn't that interesting, though, because if you're a lancer, if you're an ordinary soldier, you're not allowed to have a nervous breakdown. You don't get hospitalised, you don't get time off. How you could interpret this is. This is a sort of Nazi princeling, isn't he? Is Himmler's adjutant. He's demonstrated the necessary Nazi zeal on the Eastern Front and all this sort of stuff. It comes to Normandy where they. Where they're losing. Why else would he have a nervous breakdown? He's shown all the zeal and application in the Nazi manner up to this point, and they're losing, you know, and. Because he's a knob, you know, because he's well connected, he gets to be hospitalized. If he has a nervous breakdown, he isn't told like an ordinary German soldier. There's no such thing as combat fatigue, mate. Go back to work.
- [43:11]
James Holland
Yes. And it's a nervous breakdown, not combat fatigue.
- [43:14]
Al Murray
Well, yes, of course, but.
- [43:15]
James Holland
But, you know, what's the SS soldier said of him? Piper was the most dynamic man I ever met. He just got things done.
- [43:21]
Al Murray
Yeah.
- [43:22]
James Holland
You get this image I have of him of. Of having this kind of sort of slightly manic energy. Yeah, kind of. He's virulently National Socialist. He's got this great reputation. He's damned if anyone's going to taunt, you know, he's a. He's a driver, you know, all those things.
- [43:36]
Al Murray
He's trying to make the will triumph, isn't he? He's working towards the Fuhrer he's imbued with. He knows what's expected of him. Extreme violence and cruelty and pushing his men on. I mean, he's sort of. He's the Fuhrer Princip writ large, isn't he? As a. As an SS officer. Yeah, which is why cruelty and extreme violence are bundled in to wherever he goes, basically.