(2011-14). She was a driving force behind the 1641 Depositions Project and the development of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute which she directed (2015-20). She is a passionate teacher and has held appointments and fellowships at institutions in Brazil, England, France, India, Scotland, South Africa, and the US. She chaired the Irish Research Council (2015-21) and has served on numerous editorial and other boards. She is the author or editor of numerous articles and 13 books. She is the executive producer of a 6-part documentary called From that Small Island: the story of the Irish.
Ohlmeyer applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism, and the Early Modern World, and reported the following:
Page 99 of Making Empire is the opening page of Chapter 4, entitled ‘Agents of Empire’, which I quote from fulsomely here.Visit Jane Ohlmeyer's website.
The chapter begins with a heated exchange taken from Brian Friel’s play, Making History (1988), between Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, and his wife, Mabel, about her brother, Henry. Hugh roared:It’s always the Henrys, the menials in the middle, who get the kicks, isn’t it? … Our Henry? Nobody better. London couldn’t have a more dutiful servant than Our Henry. As you and I know well – but as London keeps forgetting – it’s the plodding Henrys of this world who are the real empire-makers (Brian Friel, Making History (London, 1989), p. 27)Sir Henry Bagenal, like his father Sir Nicholas, had served as the marshal of the army in Ulster and as a member of the Irish privy council. Chapter 2 of Making Empire had focussed on anglicisation and drew on the life and experiences of Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, and Chapter 3 had looked to his wife, Mabel, and her sister Mary, as it explored assimilation and the particular significance of marriage. This chapter uses the careers of their brother, Henry Bagenal, and O’Neill’s close ally, Red Hugh O’Donnell, as points of departure from which to discuss empire and enterprise. Bagenal and O’Donnell, one a member of the Protestant ‘New English’ community and the other a Catholic Gael, came from very different cultures and beg the question of what it meant to be ‘Irish’ at the turn of the seventeenth century? Strictly speaking only the Gaelic-speaking Catholic natives regarded themselves as being ‘Irish’. The ‘Old English’ (or those of Anglo Norman ancestry), many of whom were Catholic, consistently stressed their ‘Englishness’ often at the expense of their ‘Irishness’. The ‘New English’ settlers, the majority of whom were Protestant, who colonized Ireland from the 1530s, flaunted their ‘Englishness’.
Serendipitously page 99 does provide a number of insights into a book which is about how empire shaped Ireland and how people from Ireland then made – and unmade – empires.
First, on page 99 we return to Friel’s play, Making History, which I use to interrogate four interconnected themes which underpin Making Empire: first, that Ireland formed an integral part of the English imperial system with its land and labour fuelling English expansionism; second, that people from Ireland operated as agents of empire(s); third, Ireland served as laboratory in and for the English empire; and, finally, the impact of empire(s) on people living in early modern Ireland.
Second, the mention of O’Neill and O’Donnell on page 99 serves as a reminder of Irish opposition to English imperialism both during the Nine Years War (1594-1603) and over the centuries, as Ireland served as an exemplar for resistance to imperial rule. Resistance ranged from aristocratic revolts to major rebellions (after 1594, 1641 and 1688) and from agrarian, political, and intellectual protest to a continued commitment to Catholicism, to speaking the Irish language, and following Irish ways.
Third, issues of identity touched on page 99 – and so central to Friel’s play - permeate Making Empire. What did it mean to be ‘Irish’, ‘English’, and even ‘British’ in an era of intense colonisation and mobility? What becomes clear is that ‘Irishness’ meant a variety of things to different people and that events that occurred in the early modern period continue to shape identity in Ireland today.
Fourth, there is much truth in Friel’s assertion on page 99 that ‘the plodding Henrys of this world’ were ‘the real empire-makers’. However, they were male and female and came from diverse faiths, ethnic groups, and social backgrounds as they traversed – as migrants, merchants, mercenaries, and menials - the empires of the early modern world. By the 1660s men and women from Ireland were to be found in the Spanish, French, and Dutch Caribbean, the Portuguese and later Dutch Amazon, across New Spain, and in English settlements from Newfoundland to the Chesapeake in North America, the Caribbean, India and the Mediterranean, at Tangier in North Africa. By the 1680s Irishmen, involved in the trade of enslaved people, were also based in West Africa. In short, the Irish were trans-imperial, creating an ‘Irish global empire’ built on the back of other European powers.
What is less clearly stated on page 99 but is central to Making Empire, are two things. First, how, during the early modern period, Ireland served as laboratory for imperial rule as men from Ireland established structures and formulated policies that were first implemented in colonial Ireland and later transferred to other parts of the English/British empire. Ethnocentric ideas and ‘tools of empire’ were trialled in Ireland and then adopted, albeit having been adapted to suit local circumstances, throughout the early modern Anglophone world. They included plantation and modes and structures of governance; policies and practices associated with Anglicization, especially the promotion of English culture, language, religion, education and law; and, finally, knowledge gathering and the need to map and survey land, people, and natural resources. Second, how empires shaped the lives, the landscapes, and the mindsets of those living in early modern Ireland and how early modern events and experiences of empire were remembered (or not), represented, and mis-represented.
--Marshal Zeringue
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