Jonathan Bardon has written many hugely popular and widely acclaimed books on Irish history but I doubt if he has produced a more important one than this.
There has never been an account of the Plantation of Ulster so accessible to scholars and general readers alike. Thorough and balanced it sets events in their global context as well as in relation to the titanic European contest between Reformation and Counter Reformation. As a student of history more than 50 years ago I longed for such a book. My years of teaching would have been much more fruitful if there had been anything similar available.
Jonathan Bardon makes it clear from the start that colonization, racism and religious fervour have been (and still are) eternal and universal themes. One need look no further than Libya-so much in the news this year-victim of Mussolini's ambitious Plantations and evictions in the 1930's, attended by similar notions of racial superiority and claims of civilizing the natives while claiming all that was best for the invader.
Noting that others shared similar fates, however, does nothing to diminish the shocking nature of the atrocities committed. This "Plantation of Ulster" is no dehydrated history. In many aspects it is a horror story. At the same time it brought with it many positive changes and ironically the opportunity for the native Irish ultimately to make English the language in which they became world leaders.
Reading the names of the protagonists we soon begin to reflect not only on their very complex origins but on the political and religious diversity of their present day descendants. Many of the descendants of those who suffered or inflicted suffering ended up on the "other" side,through inter-marriage and/or conversion.
And not only us.
Douglas Carson(quoted in the frontispiece) tells us, with inimitable brevity, that Queen Elizabeth II herself is descended on her mother's side from Sorcha, the daughter of Hugh O'Neill, the defeated Earl of Tyrone. In a real sense she embodies both sides of the contest.
I believe that Bardon's "Plantation", so thorough and reasonable, and wonderfully well written, will help current and future generations in Ulster to better understand one another.