R

RACIAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT
Racial and cultural conflict in medieval Ireland is most
famously described in a document written to the Pope,
John XXII, in 1317 known as the Remonstrance of the
Irish Princes. Composed as a justification of the Bruce
invasion, it describes the fallout that resulted from
English attempts to “extirpate” the native population:
“Whence... relentless hatred and incessant wars have
arisen between us and them [the Irish and the English],
from which have resulted mutual slaughter, continual
plundering, endless rapine, detestable and too frequent
deceits and perfidies.”
English policy never included anything approaching
a “final solution” to the Irish problem during the Mid-
dle Ages, yet the description in the Remonstranceof
a turbulent relationship between the two nations was
not a fiction. Racial and cultural conflict was real and
sprang from multifarious factors: economic disadvan-
tage, legal disability, cultural suppression, violence,
and fear of expropriation. At its simplest, it stemmed
from an invasion that put two different cultures in
competition for the same resources.
The Anglo-Norman invasion of the late 1160s was
in fact not the first cultural clash Ireland had experi-
enced. The first Viking incursion came in 795 C.E., with
permanent settlements appearing in the mid-ninth cen-
tury. The English invasion was a more thorough affair
and was also more thoroughly documented, but there
were definite similarities. In both cases, the invaders
met a Gaelic race that was not politically centralized
but that had a profound awareness of national identity.
One result of this was that both sets of invaders were
immediately identified as something different. A dis-
tinction emerged between the Góidil(the native inhab-
itants) and the Gaill (the foreign invaders), and
although both Viking and English underwent Gaeli-
cization over time, the terminology endured. Already
byapproximately1100, the propaganda work Cogad

Gáedel re Gallaib(the war of the Irish with the for-

eigners)

written for the aspirant to the high kingship

of Ireland, Muirchertach Ua Briain (d. 1119)

repre-

sented an historical tradition that celebrated the con-

flict between native and foreigner, irrespective of how

important the Vikings had become to the Irish polity.

This distinction, which was transferred seamlessly

from Viking to Englishman, is now a commonplace of

Irish history, but it remains important because per-

ceived differences were the building blocks of racial

and cultural conflict.

The perception of difference was equally strong on

the part of the invader. Both the Viking and English

invasions had sprung from economic imperatives: the

problems of overpopulation and lack of land were to be

solved by conquest and the opportunity to gain plunder,

power, and political preeminence. Overlying the base

motive for conquest was an ideology that saw the

invaded as inferior and the invasion as justified. The

most famous exponent of this view is Giraldus Cam-

brensis (1146–1223), the first “foreigner” to describe in

detail Ireland and the Irish. His description was not

flattering. He saw the Irish as a barbarous people, eco-

nomically backward, morally and sexually debased,

lazy, and wicked. They may have been Christian in

name, but in reality they were a pagan and “fifthy peo-

ple, wallowing in vice.” For centuries these racial con-

demnations have been pounced upon with either delight

or disgust, and historians have long labored to show how

misguided Giraldus was. The various marriages

between the early settlers and native Irish prove that the

situation was indeed more complex than one of total

racial segregation. Undoubtedly, however, the contrast

between the mainstream “Frankish” culture of the

Anglo-Normans and that of Gaelic Ireland provoked in

many of the invaders a reaction similar to Giraldus’s.

For all the cultural differences, the language of racial

conflict could be remarkably similar. Both communities,