A New Anatomy of Ireland: The Irish Protestants, 16491770

What was life like for Irish Protestants between the mid-seventeenth and the late-eighteenth centuries? How did experiences differ for peers, squires, and gentlemen, for soldiers and shopkeepers, for women and servants? Toby Barnard scrutinizes social attitudes and structures in every segment of Protestant society during this formative period. His richly textured account, drawing on many contemporary sources, focuses on people, their professions, their preoccupations, and their material worlds. The book abounds with entertaining episodes and memorable characters while reassessing Ireland’s place in the British state and empire and comparing it to other European and colonial societies of the time. Barnard examines the period thematically rather than chronologically and analyzes how Protestants sought to retain their precarious social and economic ascendancy. His inquiry provides new insights not only into this period of Irish history but also into its enduring impact on the shape and complexity of Irish life.