‘He was a nasty piece of work’ Historian and author spoke to about her new book - ‘Making Empire - Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World’ - with particular focus on the devastating actions of Scottish soldier Frederick Hamilton, the controversia
“HE was a bad ’un,” remarks historian Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, when asked about the man who to this day is considered a tyrant by Sligo and Manorhamilton folk alike.
Professor Ohlmeyer, whose new book – ‘Making Empire – Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World’ – is now out, is referring to Sir Frederick Hamilton.
Hamilton built a town in the townland of Clonmullen – which we know today as Manorhamilton – and was regarded by his tenants as an unpopular overlord.
He left his mark on Sligo as well when in 1642, he sacked the town and burnt part of it which included Sligo Abbey itself.
“He was a Scot who was very much part of that Ulster Plantation,” continues Ohlmeyer. “But he’s a Catholic and that’s what’s interesting because people think of the Plantation as just being Protestants coming to Ireland.
“But many of those Scots were Catholics – including Hamilton and his family and the McDonnells of Antrim – and they are very active in the Plantation.
“The King at the time, James VI and I, was very engaged in this and the Manor Hamilton would have been that area in Leitrim which his tenants would have planted and colonised.
“They also had this notion to ‘civilise’. In other words, they were bringing ‘civility’ to an area which they perceived as being ‘uncivilised’ or ‘barbarous’.
“By ‘civility’ they mean the Protestant religion, a commercial economic order based on money and markets rather than a barter economy and a settled way of doing agriculture.
“However, they also mean the English language, English law, English dress and English customs. Hamilton was very much of that mould.
“The book has a chapter on Anglicisation and somebody like Hamilton would have been an agent of that – especially in the west of Ireland.
“Not only did he viciously sack the Abbey and the town of Sligo, he also had a spy who would point out to him who the Catholics were in the community.
“He would then – allegedly – murder those Catholics. He particularly targeted women and children as well as nuns and priests.
“So this wasn’t just him doing it in the heat of the moment or in battle, this man was – allegedly – behaving in a very sectarian way and wanted to kill local Catholics.
“It’s always very hard to know what the motivation is but payback for the events of the 1641 Rebellion could be a factor. It’s hard to know as no one writes these things down at the time but what you find are that a lot of the responses are revenge for 1641 – not just with Hamilton but with the likes of Oliver Cromwell as well with the atrocities that he and his forces committed at Drogheda and Wexford.
“Hamilton fits into that revenge (bracket) but I think he was just a nasty piece of work.
Professor Ohlmeyer explores how Ireland was not only England’s first colony, but how many Irish themselves would later play a role in helping to maintain other parts of the empire – such as India – which the English would later colonise.
She said: “You need to view Ireland as a classic colony – which I argue in the book. The war that proceeded the Plantation – The Nine Years War – showed that the tactics used by the English would be the equivalent of genocide in the modern world.
“Those tactics were known as ‘fire and sword’ – nobody was spared. There was a vast destruction of women, children and livestock. Any sort of resources that the indigenous population needed to live was destroyed too – they (the English) wanted to starve them out. This is brutal warfare. Sligo suffered during this period as well.
“Later on, in India, of the ‘white’ troops, twothirds of the British army in India are from Ireland – including men from the west of Ireland.
“For many, it was just the King’s shilling that would have literally been their incentive to serve in the army. Some would have been ideologically committed to the British Empire as well.
“You have eight provinces in India and seven of those are governed by men from Ireland. They would have been Protestant as Catholics would not have been allowed to become Viceroys in India.
“What you find very quickly is that the ideology of empire – which I argue in the book – was formulated in Ireland. It’s taken from anti-Irishness to everything that’s not ‘white-ish’. That’s not an elegant way of putting it, but that ethnocentricity very quickly becomes what we understand today as racism.
“It’s really fine-tuned in Ireland – especially in the 17th century with somebody called Edmund Spencer who was a Renaissance poet who was operating in the late 16th century but is published in the 17th century with his work becoming a foundational text for ethnocentricity or cultural superiority of the English over the Irish who are seen as a lesser race, barbarous, uncivil and inhuman.
“A lot of what the British learned in Ireland, they take with them to India, the Caribbean and later on into Africa.”
It was not only the army and the civil service that Ireland’s citizens would enter as the British Empire’s tentacles reached out across the globe.
“In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Irish are very significant – not just in terms of soldiers in the army and in administration, but also in terms of missionaries,” adds Ohlmeyer.
“So we would have the Christian Brothers and the Loreto Order who are very active in India from the late-19th century. They are also active in Africa as well.
“Wherever the British Empire went, the Irish went too and, of course, the British Empire was the largest one in the world at the turn of the 20th century.
“But the Irish were also very pan-Imperial with merchants and traders piggybacking onto French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian empires. They also go as indentured servants as well as slave traders and slave owners.
“Not to forget our friend Cromwell in the 1650s who oversaw large transportations of Irish people to the Caribbean.”