ABSTRACT
In 1672, Sir William Petty wrote that 'Ireland is now divided into Provinces, Counties, Baronies and Farmlands, as that they may be, and have been geometrically delineated; but formerly it was not so, but the Country was called by the names of the Lords who governed the People'. This chapter examines the ideological construction of bordered, internally pacified body politic which would serve as model for English strategies of state formation on the peripheries of Tudor polity. The most violent thrust of the English state formation process was aimed at the peripheries; there, older forms of 'good lordship' arising from the delegation of state authority to local magnates came to be viewed as inimical to goals of political, legal and territorial uniformity. Inducing the Irish to participate in agrarian capitalism was central goal of English policy in early modern Ireland, and one consciously pursued in the composition agreements with Irish lords which sought to replace extra-economic exactions with economic rents.
