Ireland and Virginia: An Odd Couple?
*As I write this, I’m being careful to ensure that I am conveying what my advisor and mentor has written. It feels important to make a note at the start that Dr. Horning is my Committee Chair and main advisor at this time. I want to communicate to the best of my ability what all writers remark in their works as I go, but I’m finding it difficult as I feel this piece is especially sensitive since I want to do it solid justice.
Sincerely, A Student Trying to Make Sure They Understood and Got It Right :P
In the 17th century, plantation efforts began in earnest on both sides of the Atlantic. One was set to cultivate a new territory and the other to further control over a nearby island. Audrey Horning demonstrates the nuances that differentiate the achievements of the English in Jamestown and on the island of Ireland, paying there special attention to the Ulster region. Comparisons made between the two lands often distill perceived similarities into these easy-drinking ideas of places composed of barbaric native people without sophisticated technologies and knowledge as well as poor control of land and its use. This is one understanding of how the English viewed the two places, and it is one fraught with imperfect and ineffective expectations. While the general sentiment holds that English forces in both places found their neighbors to be different to say the least, this experience is short-sighted and ignores the connections on one side of the ocean that set apart the Irish Gaelic past from the Indigenous American one. The Irish were well-traveled to an extent and proved their connection to the Continent in multiple ways: weaponry, studies, religion, trade, and so on. Indigenous Americans were strong in their knowledge of their region and it is known that to the North of what becomes Virginia there were other travelers of Spanish missionary background. It is possible that they or neighboring tribes were met by these other European strangers. However they were met with many fewer such instances of communication with these foreign entities.
What guided the entire reading was the remark that follows.
“The contradictions inherent to colonial entanglements—where individuals of differing backgrounds can, on one day, find themselves sharing their labor, languages, material culture, food, drink, and cultural practices more generally and, on the next day, find themselves locked in mortal combat—are exposed in both lands. Dissecting the process of English (and, after 1603, British) expansion into both lands also brings into sharp relief the often chaotic and haphazard character of early modern colonialism. There were no accepted models, and disaster was a frequent outcome” (3).
It is convenient that today when we consider the past imperial powers like England/Britain were always so well-planned and able to devise their methods of genocide and early manifest destiny. However, they were not, much as it irked them, often successful. This is not to say, of course, that they did not commit atrocities or visit horrors upon their new neighbors. It is a reminder that these people, when they arrived in a new-to-them place, relied on those native to the land to assist in them in not perishing immediately.
As I continue to write about and work within places that are fraught with nuance and what appear to be obvious binary spaces and places, this text serves as a constant reminder to observe the threads that bind people within the realization of the past. It’s a matter of paying attention always to the details.
