Preservation of the British rule on the seas (after World War II – the Western (AngloSaxon) dominance of the seas).

Colonization of Ireland

For centuries British monarchs had unsuccessfully been trying to subdue Ireland. The English colonization of Ireland was carried out by military expansion, accompanied by razing towns and settlements, buildings and means of production, confiscation of Irish land property, executions and expulsion of the Irish to the West Indies as plantation slaves, forced pauperization, ghettoization of the indigenous people in the areas of Connaught and Claire. All these actions caused the degradation of agricultural Ireland [Samoylo 1954].

In 1603, in the reign of Elizabeth I, the Ulster Irish surrendered to Lord Mountjoy and nine counties in northern Ireland would become available for colonization. In James I's reign, under the administration of Mountjoy's successor, Arthur Chichester, a determined effort had been made for the general introduction of a purely English system of government, justice, and property. Every vestige of the old Celtic constitution of the country was rejected as "barbarous." [Green 1896: Vol.V]

Ever since the first mass famine, which occurred in the 16th century, induced famines in Ireland became systematic. They were the result of the tactics of eviction of the indigenous population from their lands, which took the form of specific warfare: the English destroyed

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the crops, stole the cattle, took the property, burnt buildings, physically exterminated those who had not fled into the forests and mountains.

The English poet of the Elizabethan time, Edmund Spenser, who had participated in crushing the revolt in Ireland and was granted lands seized from the rebels, wrote in his treatise A View of the Present State of Ireland (1596): "...notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought they should have been able to stand long, yet ere one year and a half they were brought to such wretchedness as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them. They looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find them<...>in short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man and beast.” Though Spenser did advocate the English policy in Ireland, he described the situation there truthfully22.

In a 1600 letter Arthur Chichester stated "a million swords will not do them so much harm as one winter's famine". While these tactics were not initially devised by Chichester, he carried them out ruthlessly, gaining a hate-figure status among the Irish. The famine had lasted for two decades and caused the revolt of northern clans, who rebelled against the English rule in Ireland.

The revolt, called the Nine Years' War (1594 to 1603), was led by the chieftains Hugh O'Neill and Red Hugh O'Donnell. At the height of the conflict (1600–1601) more than 18,000 soldiers were fighting in the English army in Ireland. By contrast, the English army assisting the Dutch during the Eighty Years' War was never more than 12,000 strong at any one time. Chichester's tactics included a “scorched earth” policy. He encircled O'Neill's forces with garrisons, starving the Earl's troops. The rebellion was crushed. The English “scorched earth” tactics were especially harsh on the civilian population, who died in great numbers both from direct targeting and from famine [Lennon 1994]. However, the Nine Years' War alarmed the English, who could not afford to continue the war any longer. The tactics of induced famines were abandoned for a while, and the subsequent Plantation of Ulster (which was basically the same colonization and eviction of the indigenous people) was carried out less cruelly. However, the early seventeenth century earmarked the military and political defeat of Gaelic Ireland.

But Oliver Cromwell's occupation of Ireland in 1649 was even more harsh. Eight years before, in 1641, there was the Irish Rebellion – the national Irish rebellion, involving broad masses of population. Initially there was a coup, initiated by the Irish gentry, which developed into a conflict between oppressed native Irish Catholics on one side, and English and Scottish Protestant settlers on the other. This conflict is known as the Irish Confederate Wars. Ireland got under the control of the Irish Confederate Catholics, who in 1649 signed an alliance with the English Royalist party, which had been defeated in the English Civil War (1642–1651). Cromwell reconquered Ireland on behalf of Parliament and suppressed the Irish in retaliation for their support of the Royalists and the Catholics, as well as for their intimidation.

As an aftermath of Cromwell's Irish campaign, even those Irish, who fought with the English, were deprived of land and banished to the barren deserted region of Connaught in the west of the island — as provided by the Act for the Settlement of Ireland of 1652. They were doomed to starvation. By May 1, 1654 if any of deported Irish had been caught outside Connaught, they were subject to death penalty. The Irish called that act "Hell or Connaught." 50,000 Irish, including women and children, were sold as indentured servants to the West

22 That Spenser could seriously advocate that the English deliberately starve the Irish population makes the bitter irony of Jonathan Swift's satirical essay A Modest Proposal (1729) even more devastating. Swift suggests that impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. This satirical hyperbole mocks the heartless attitudes towards the poor and the British policy in Ireland in general.

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Indies (especially Barbados, where their descendants are known as Redlegs) [O'Callaghan, 2000].

The impact of his campaign on the Irish population was unquestionably severe, although there is no consensus as to the magnitude of the loss of life. Estimates of the drop in the Irish population resulting from the parliamentarian campaign vary from 15-25% (P. Lenihan) to half (R.N. Salaman, http://www.historyireland.com///volumes/volume16/issue6/letters/ ? id=114206) and even five-sixths (J.P. Prendergast). According to A.L. Morton, in 1641 Ireland was home to more than 1.5 million Irish, while in 1652 there were only 850 thousand people, 150 thousand of them being English and Scottish colonists. The Irish people had lost up to 5056% of its population since Cromwell landed in Ireland in 1649 [Morton 1950]. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed.), in eleven years, 616,000 inhabitants of Irish descent had perished.

Economically, the colonization by the English was a disaster for Ireland. Once colonization took firm root, the English quickly depleted Irish resources. Already in the times of Queen Elizabeth I Ireland was subjected to spoliation 23. It became a source of cheap food and raw materials for Britain, which it has to remain to this day. From J.R. Green's A History of the English People we learn, that the colonialists received enormous profits in Ireland, due to the overexploitation of natural resources and the use of cheap labor and runaway convicts. Those profits exceeded three times anything that could be obtained from the same estate in England. In order to make quick profits, oak groves were cut down with the utmost haste; forests burnt to obtain coal required for smelting iron. While its processing and transportation cost £ 10, the ready product was sold in London for £ 17. The last smelter at Kerry was extinguished only after all the forests were destroyed.

The legislation, imposed on the Irish, openly protected the English producers. At first animal husbandry began to develop there, by 1600 up to 500 thousand head of cattle had been exported to England annually. When it became clear that the export entailed falling prices for agricultural products and reduction of rent, a special act was passed in 1666, which prohibited the export of Irish cattle, meat and dairy products. This act inflicted a cruel blow on the Irish animal husbandry. When an attempt was made to pass from meat production and dairy cattlebreeding to sheep herding, another act followed, which prohibited the export of wool abroad and allowed the import of raw wool in England only. Subsequently, the Irish textile industry was destroyed because it was a dangerous rival to the British [Morton 1950: 222].

Colonization continued into the next century: in 1691 in London, a number of laws were passed divesting the Catholics and Protestants, who did not belong to the Church of England, of religious freedoms, the right to education, the right to vote and the right to public service. As a result of colonization the ethnic picture of the Irish population has changed: the population of Englishmen and Scots began to form the Protestant managerial elite. The Protestant ruling class was established in Ireland. In 1775 the Irish Catholics owned only 5% of the land. Their children were forbidden from Catholic education, there was a limited number of Irish in trade, only the field of agriculture was left for them, dominated by

23 John R. Green in his famous History of the English People writes: “In 1610 the pacific and conservative policy < …> was abandoned for a vast policy of spoliation. Two-thirds of the north of Ireland was declared to have been confiscated to the Crown by the part that its possessors had taken in a recent effort at revolt; and the lands which were thus gained were allotted to new settlers of Scotch and English extraction. In its material results the Plantation of Ulster was undoubtedly a brilliant success. Farms and homesteads, churches and mills, rose fast amidst the desolate wilds of Tyrone. The Corporation of London undertook the colonization of Derry, and gave to the little town the name which its heroic defence has made so famous. The foundations of the economic prosperity which has raised Ulster high above the rest of Ireland in wealth and intelligence were undoubtedly laid in the confiscation of 1610. Nor did the measure meet with any opposition at the time save that of secret discontent. The evicted natives withdrew sullenly to the lands which had been left them by the spoiler, but all faith in English justice had been torn from the minds of the Irishry, and the seed had been sown of that fatal harvest of distrust and disaffection which was to be reaped through tyranny and massacre in the age to come”.

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