ABSTRACT
The question of why towns decline is the antithesis of the question of why towns grow. In the case of medieval Ireland, as elsewhere in Europe, more attention has been paid to the latter than to the former. Proto-town origins in the shape of so-called ‘monastic cities’, a small number of Scandinavian ports established in the ninth and tenth centuries, and a much greater number of planned Anglo-French (Anglo-Norman) foundations of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, together with a plethora of speculative ventures that are sometimes referred to as ‘rural boroughs’ – all these elements, when combined, make up the orthodox account of urban growth in medieval Ireland. Similarly, decolonization is the antithesis of colonization. 1 The towns that existed in Ireland c.1300 had reached their individual stages of urban development largely, though by no means entirely, through a combination of colonial initiatives and pressures, first, by the Scandinavians and, secondly, by the Anglo-French who both absorbed and displaced their northern predecessors. Accordingly, the complex processes associated with decolonization and urban decline after 1300 can be understood only against the background of previous developments in the early and high Middle Ages.
