Anglo-Irish chronicles

chronicles, Anglo-Irish, a term for the body of political writings about Ireland written in English during the Tudor and Stuart periods and concerned with justifications for the expropriation of the country by the English Crown, its administration by Crown agents, and the recalcitrance of the Irish in the face of the supposed benefits of that regime. While often presented as history and topography based on personal observations in the country, the chronicles commonly recycled prejudices and misconceptions first circulated by Giraldus Cambrensis. His role as the originator of the stereotypical view dominating the chronicles was applauded by John Hooker in his contribution to Holinshed's Chronicles (1577), and later condemned in the leading work of Gaelic historiography, Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (1613-34). Works such as Edmund Campion's Two Bokes of the History of Ireland (?1570), Richard Beacon's Solon his Follie (1594), Edmund Spenser's A View of the Present State of Ireland (written about 1596), Sir John Davies's A Discovery of the True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued (1612), Barnaby Rich's A New Description of Ireland (1617), and Fynes Moryson's Itinerary (1617) are pervaded by comparisons between the Irish and uncivilized races in other historical and geographical contexts, whether the barbarians of classical antiquity, the savage American ‘Indians’ of the New World, or the Britons before the Roman invasion. In the chronicles Ireland is commonly split into highly differentiated geopolitical regions. The civility of town life in the Pale [see Irish State] and the agricultural wealth of heavily colonized Munster were starkly contrasted with the dank woods and impassable bogs where lurked the Irish rebels. The dangers of such regions are described in works such as William Camden's Britannia (1586). Many of the ethnographic themes and xenophobic caricatures sketched crudely in these writings were later refined into comedy by Anglo-Irish writers from Maria Edgeworth to Charles Lever. Their racist verdict on Gaelic Ireland before and after the Norman invasion was challenged by historiographers in the native tradition such as Philip O'Sullivan Beare, Keating, and Roderick O'Flaherty.