ABSTRACT

The early modern period is recognized as one of the most tumultuous in Ireland’s political, socioeconomic, and cultural history, resulting in transformations to power structures, land ownership, economic activity, settlement patterns, and demographic and sociocultural profiles—all of which took place alongside the accelerating incorporation of the island into globalized flows of goods, ideas, and people. This same period is also acknowledged as experiencing the coldest sustained period of the broader Little Ice Age (c.1350–1850), with prolonged changes in background average temperature and precipitation accompanied by an increased frequency and severity of extreme and potentially global weather events. 2 These natural and human- driven upheavals combined to transform the Irish physical landscape beyond recognition between 1550 and 1730. Despite an awareness of the broader significance of these political, economic, social, and cultural alterations, interest in this aspect of early modern Ireland has been largely confined to historical geographers, social and economic historians, and, more recently, environmental historians. Yet even a cursory examination of the political history of this period makes clear that extreme weather events and environmental destruction from decades of warfare formed a significant context for and backdrop to contemporary commentators’ experiences of the continually evolving political landscape. To uncritically consign such accounts to the realm of irrelevant hyperbole is to severely underestimate the dependence, even in peacetime, of a predominantly agricultural society on favorable environmental conditions. In a period marked by unrest, uncertainty, and upheaval, environmental deteriorations and uncertainty added exponentially to the already substantial challenges faced by natives and newcomers alike.