'The Plantation of Ulster', by Jonathan Bardon (2011)

How NOT to write narrative history

This is an infuriating book on an important topic. The Plantations of Ulster were indeed the most important colonisation attempts within Europe in the early modern period. The physical and psychological damage it wrought combined with long-term subjugation and resentment to have repercussions that are—famously—felt to this day. What were the ‘Plantations of Ulster’? In brief, they were the displacement of Irish people and their Gaelic Lords of the island with ‘planted’ Scottish and English people. The lion’s share of this activity was done under Elizabeth I and James VI of Scotland/ I of England.

The Plan of the City of Londonderry. The clue is in the name: this city was built as a colonial ideal city.

Attempts had been made to dominate the Emerald Isle long before the ‘Plantations’ that Jonathan Bardon’s popular history book is about. Notably, there was the Anglo-Norman invasion, which put many ‘Old English’ names on the island who eventually integrated. By the late medieval period, the Anglo-Norman invasion receded into a memory, and although the Old English might have borne English second names, they were essentially Irish. The north-western part of Ireland, Ulster, had never been successfully Anglo-Normanified, and was perhaps the most Gaelic part of the island of all.

The first problem with Bardon’s book is that it fails to make a very simple and very important point. The Plantations of Ulster did not begin with a well-organised ‘adventure’ and colonisation plans. The Plantations began with a war, the Nine Years’ War. This is a point so basic that it is easy to overlook, and it seems this is what Bardon’s book has done. But to those of us completely unfamiliar with the history (i.e. me, and presumably a lot of other readers) it is essential to establish this fact. The Nine Years’ War establishes important facts about the plantations:

1. The plantations of Ulster began on a footing of great cruelty and violence that obviously would not be forgotten;

2. The Gaelic Lords of Ulster, and the entire island of Ireland, had strong international connections to the Catholic world (duh) and most importantly to Spain, who were having a slight disagreement with the English in the late 16th century.

Point 2 is just as important as point 1, because it captures the fact that this is a story of international politics, not a story of a hapless backwater full of savages (the latter is, though, what the English thought was going on at the time). Moreover, the involvement of the Spanish (spoiler: they failed) sets up much of the drama and interest of the whole story. Would the Spanish, who were busy fighting the new Dutch breakaway state in the north, come to the rescue of the Catholic order in Ireland? (Spoiler: they didn’t).

None of these broad-brush observations are made by Bardon’s book. Bardon’s book gives us the facts with which we might make these observations, buried later in the text, but he doesn’t make them for us. A history book for any audience should do this. A history book intended for the general reader absolutely must do this. The lack of ‘seeing the wood for the trees’, the ‘bigger picture’, is my first criticism of this book, and I think it is its most important problem.

Bardon clearly has a fondness for detail. He likes lists of names, lists of numbers and statistics, and he is really fond of lengthy direct quotations from original sources. I cannot blame Bardon for this. I do love the primary material of any period, and I think it is the most important thing for keeping in contact with the reality of history. To put it bluntly, without referring to the primary sources enough, one is always in danger of simply making stuff up. I also like numbers and statistics, which can put some quantitative rigour to what is normally a fairly subjective exercise of storytelling. However, as much as I like these details, they are not well in this text. Rather than insightful context, the hundreds of block quotations in the book feel rather like the holes in Swiss cheese, always ready to break the flow of storytelling. There are just too many block quotes in the book.

Cynically, block quotes can be used as a crutch by bad writers. You don’t have to write something when, err, someone else wrote it. But I don’t think the craft of writing—from sentence to sentence—is a problem for Bardon. Each sentence he penned himself is quite readable, and at times the prose is quite stylish and elegant. However, it’s not the parts of the book themselves that are the problem, but rather the relationship between parts, the structure or (pretentiously) the ‘meta text’ that suffers. The narrative is not obviously structured either by chronology or by theme. It jumps about from chronological sweep (where it does go backwards and forwards at times). It jumps into some really fascinating thematic treatments, such as on Religion and a part of a chapter that ends up talking about Gaelic food. Either a thematic or a chronological approach would be fine, but Bardon never seemed to make a deliberate choice between the two. The result is yet more confusion and frustration.

On the theme of confusion, there are more issues with the way the book is structured. One of the problems is the endless subtitles within chapters. Normally, these would be a helping hand to the reader, reinforcing the flow of a narrative and giving a generalised sense of what is happening. Unfortunately, this is not the case here. Readers are treated to many subtitles titles with colons leading to quotations from primary sources. The seventeenth-century language of these quotations becomes oppressive when the function of a title is to guide, not to flourish.

Moreover, each title is doing something very specific, making a peculiar point about one small element. For example, we have ‘It will be Exceeding Chargeable: The City Contemplates Colonisation’ in the chapter on the colonisation of Londonderry. This title makes little sense for two reasons. Firstly, the early modern English use of ‘chargeable’ is obscure. Does this mean profitable or unprofitable? (It turns out, unprofitable). Secondly, the quotation is pointless. The city indeed contemplated taking on Derry, and whether or not they thought it was ‘chargeable’ at any point is moot. So the title confuses the reader, distracting the narrative flow and turning their attention to a peculiar 17th century turn of phrase that had to do with a momentary anxiety about the Derry/Londonderry project. The chronic overuse of quotations and colons in academic titles is a serious and general problem in my view, so it’s unfair to put all of the blame on Bardon here.¹

The chapter, by the way, fails to set out why the City of London wanted to colonise Derry in any clear terms. Readers may be thinking it’s obvious: for profit. It is not obvious. Nothing in history is obvious. Profit may have been one element, but it is not enough to explain a risky venture. The chapter assumes readers will be content to accept that the livery companies (trading guilds of the City of London, like vintners or barbers) should have taken on the challenge.

What can we learn from this history book, other than some historical facts? For me it was an instructive reminder in how difficult it must be to write a book-length account of anything. There are so many different ways a reader can get lost in the length of a book, and their attention needs to be carefully handled. It doesn’t matter how nicely and clearly one can craft individual sentences, if those sentences fail to hang together in a coherent structure. The rationale for the book—thematic or chronological—should be one of the first choices an author makes and they should stick to it. Finally, authors must empathise with their audience, and to do this, they must use their imagination to forget how much they know and approach the subject from first principles.

1. I had an intense sense that I have already written at length here on the problem of colons. Oddly, I don’t think I have done this yet. So you, dear reader, can look forward to that incredibly exciting treat.