Medieval Ireland

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Consideration of the period between 950 and 1400 is of crucial importance in understanding Irish history. This course not only covers the range of continuities and radical discontinuities that marked Ireland's development during this time, but charts the attempted conquest of the entire country by the English Crown. The lecture series also seeks to answer a number of questions. Why did the Papacy give the English Crown sovereignty over Ireland? Why did a country like Ireland, on the verge of attaining political and economic centralization, not organize better resistance to English attempts to subdue it? Why did the English colony fail to prove more successful in exerting its will over indigenous Irish potentates? Culturally the period also witnessed the growing assimilation of English invaders to the norms of Gaelic Irish politics and society. Lastly, events in Ireland had a serious influence on developments in England, Wales and Scotland, provoking, amongst other things, the fall of the Plantagenet dynasty and an attempted invasion by King Robert I of Scotland.