Othering the Irish: English Vilification of the Gaelic Irish during the Tudor Conquest

The sixteenth century Tudor English conquest and subsequent colonization of Ireland was a violent military affair. The English seized land and planted settlers on the island beginning in the Tudor Period, a process that would continue into the following centuries and become the cause of tensions between the Irish and the British to the present day. This study seeks to analyze the ways in which the English justified such violent conquest to themselves, delving into how a discourse of demeaning, belittling, and “othering” the Irish motivated English action in Ireland. Drawing upon the individual accounts of English colonial actors as well as recent scholarship on the Tudor English agenda in Ireland, this work emphasizes that the English conquest and colonization of Ireland went far beyond a military affair. A systematic targeting of Irish culture and society was undertaken by the Tudor English. This paved the way for the Anglicization of the island, the reverberations of which are still being felt to this day