ABSTRACT
Hope works in fi elds of possibility-what motivates a person toward the possible and what deprives a person of hope for those imagined possibilities-and thus hope forges the pathways to power and where power is placed. To deny the Irish hope for the future they desire for themselves divests them of some power to realize that future. Yet Milton did not see the colonial mission in Ireland as depriving the Irish of hope, but rather as substituting the right hope: to enter a better fi eld of possibility, “to improve and waxe more civill by a civilizing Conquest” (YP 3:304), to be more “true” to God’s will and design. The contest for power represents a contest for spirituality, identity, and land.
