14 November 2013

Gresham College lecture: The Londonderry Plantation from 1641 until the Disengagement at the end of the Nineteenth Century

In this talk from 23 October Professor Stevens Curl considers "The Londonderry Plantation from 1641 to the end of the nineteenth century, demonstrating how the behaviour of the King led to the alienation of the City of London and its support for Parliament, and explaining the long period of disillusion in the face of the Land Agitation and political ferment of the latter part of the 19th century."

Curl expresses his views forthrightly:

"secure in their fortresses of invincible ignorance"
"this should be glaringly obvious, even to the most myopic"
"Anglocentric historians ... take the path, not of the myopic, but of the blind" 
and 
"The importance of the Londonderry Plantation in the history of these islands should be stressed: to ignore it, as far too many have done, is bad history, irresponsible, and careless, to put it at its mildest."

As for North America, Curl's view is that:
"Contrary to popular belief, most 18th-century emigrants (to BNA) were of Ulster-Scots Protestant stock. It is beyond the bounds of possibility that the Americans would (not) have won their independence without the determined (Prebyterian) Ulster-Scots, still smarting from memories and handed-down tales of their treatment in the North of Ireland."
Connect at http://goo.gl/jS7KK7

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Anne in Ottawa says, "I am almost half Ulster-Scots in background. Some of my distant cousins on FamilytreeDNA are people whose families have settled in the southern United States in the 1700's. There are small threads of DNA that we have in common. Perhaps some missing people on my tree are those who emigrated early on to the United States and supported the Revolution. "