Plantations by Land and Sea

This book traces the development, and subsequent implementation, of the policy of plantation from the mid-sixteenth through to the early seventeenth century focusing specifically on the North Channel context. By examining why plantation emerged as a policy within the north of Ireland, why it was implemented within the western Highlands and Isles of Scotland, and the repercussions of such a policy, the book will engage with debates about plantation as part of a «civilising» policy, and what that meant for communities and individuals that were brought together by the waters of the North Channel. Rather than view plantation as a tool of state formation, formulated at the centre and imposed onto the periphery, the author seeks to emphasise it was the result of ongoing dialogue between a number of individuals and communities and was as much a response of the centre to events on the periphery. Thus, while plantation in the northern province of Ireland came to be a pivotal part of James VI and I’s «British» project, the outworking of that policy was rather different.

Having worked previously at the universities of St Andrews and Strathclyde, Alison Cathcart is currently Associate Professor of Early Modern Scottish History at the University of Stirling. Her previous work on clanship in the central and eastern Scottish Highlands highlighted the interaction between local, regional, and national agency; while the focus is now on the western Highlands and Isles, the region is placed within broader archipelagic contexts. Increasingly she describes herself as a historian of the periphery and is interested in local, and insular, communities who live at the interface of land and sea and their interaction with «central» authorities, while also drawing on economic, environmental, legal, and maritime dimensions to such relationships.