RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT
for instance, charged the other with treachery. Giraldus
was adamant that the Irish were “constant only in their
fickleness” and should be feared “more for their wile
than their war... their honey than their hemlock,” but
the Irish similarly saw treachery as a key characteristic
of the foreigner. The Annals of Inisfallenin 1233 relate
a story of one Tadc Duibfedha Mac Carthaig, who after
being blinded was given a prod with a knife by one of
his Gaelic captors. The anecdote continues: “He [Tadc]
enquired who that was, and he was told it was Domnall
Gall(i.e., foreign Domnall). ‘That is true, indeed,’ said
he. ‘He did that like a foreigner.’” The Remonstrance
of 1317, referred to above, similarly details the treach-
ery practiced by the English upon the Irish population.
Racial and cultural conflict was, however, more than
just rhetoric. Some newcomers to Ireland
like Stephen
of Lexington, who was sent in 1228 to reform the
Cistercian monasteries of Ireland
strove to avoid the
charge of racial discrimination against the Irish, but
many were less sensitive. Broadly speaking, colonial
policy toward the native Irish came to be one of exclu-
sion. The Irish in general had no access to the colony’s
English-style justice. Attempts were made to exclude
natives from positions in the colony’s cities and towns
and to prohibit the promotion of Irish clergy to church
offices, and the Irish nobility was not represented in
the colony’s parliament. More fundamentally still, the
native population was driven from the most fertile land
and many of them were compelled to survive by raid-
ing and plundering the colonists.
Of course, there were always exceptions to the rule.
The king, for instance, qualified the exclusion of native
Irish clergy by saying that it should not apply to the
Irish who lived faithfully within the territory controlled
by the royal government. Moreover, some of the exclu-
sionist policies should be related to general European
attitudes in the later Middle Ages. The prohibition on
admitting native Irishmen to municipal office was coin-
cidental with similar attempts in cities on the German-
Slav frontier to exclude from guilds those who were
not of German origin. Then there is the fact that much
ofthe hysterical rhetoric of both sides flies in the face
of what was the reality of colonial warfare. In nearly
every engagement between colonist and native, there
was a native fighting on the colonial side (and vice versa
in many instances).
These are important qualifications, but they should
not disguise the fact that national antagonisms were
real. It would be impossible to plot precisely the
growth or decline of racial and cultural conflict, yet
some general trends may be discerned. It seems clear
that England’s attempts to lord it over the whole
British Isles heightened hostility in Ireland. There was
considerable sympathy in Ireland for the Welsh and
Scottish struggles against English dominance from the
mid-thirteenth century, and when Edward Bruce invaded
Ireland in 1315 he was a focus for anti-English senti-
ment. Equally, England’s adventures against France in
the Hundred Years War heightened its insecurity about
all things foreign.
This insecurity became particularly important in the
last century of the Middle Ages when the lordship of
Ireland became increasingly culturally alienated from
England (seeAnglo-Irish relations). It is now generally
accepted that the famous Statutes of Kilkenny of 1366
were not a direct attack on Gaelic culture. They were
an attempt to curb Gaelicization by prohibiting, among
other things, the English community from marrying or
fostering children with the Gaelic Irish or even using
the Irish language. The statutes reveal a deep insecurity
about the fact that, to survive in frontier conditions,
the character of the lordship of Ireland had for the most
part departed from English norms. In the fifteenth cen-
tury, those from the lordship of Ireland, whether Irish
or English, were classified as aliens in England. By
the time of the later Tudors, a reversion to a policy of
reconquest and plantation was deemed necessary to
deal with the Irish problem. The result was a rekindling
of racial and cultural antagonisms, but with the added
spice of religious conflict. One remarkable fact about
sixteenth century commentators on Ireland was how
little their ideas had advanced on the racial pronounce-
ments of Giraldus Cambrensis in the twelfth century.
PETER CROOKSReferences and Further Reading
Bartlett, Robert. Gerald of Wales 1146
−1223.Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1982.
.The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and
Cultural Change, 950
− 1350. London: Penguin, 1994.
Davies, R. R. Domination and Conquest: The Experience of
Ireland, Scotland and Wales 1100
− 1300. Cambridge: Uni-
versity Press, 1990.
. The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the
British Isles, 1093
−1343.Oxford: University Press, 2000.
Gillingham, John. “The English Invasion of Ireland.” In The
English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Iden-
tity and Political Values. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer,
2000.
Giraldus Cambrensis. The History and Topography of Ireland.
London: Penguin, 1982.
.Expugnatio Hibernica: The Conquest of Ireland, edited
with translation by A. B. Scott and F. X. Martin. Dublin:
Royal Irish Academy, 1978.
Ó Corráin, Donnchadh. “Nationality and Kingship in Pre-
Norman Ireland.” In Nationality and the Pursuit of National
Independence, edited by T. W. Moody. Belfast: Appleton
Press, 1978.
Remonstrance of the Irish Princes. InIrish Historical Docu-
ments, 1172
−1922,edited by Edmund Curtis and R. B.
McDowell. London: Menthuen and Co., 1943; Reprinted in
Seán Duffy, Robert the Bruce’s Irish Wars: The Invasions of
Ireland 1306
− 1329. Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2002.