Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/133

Bonn: Englische Kolonisation in Irland 123 Die Englische Kolonisation in Irland. 'on Dr. Moritz Julius Bonn. (Stuttgart und Berlin: J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger. 1906. Zwei Bande. Pp. viii, 396; 320.) From time to time a book comes out of Germany or France or America which so closely concerns England and English interests and yet so far surpasses anything which Englishmen have done in the same line, that it impresses one with a certain sense of mifitness of things and one almost hesitates to attribute to it its full value. This book is of such a character; a work of scholarly thoroughness and impartiality, of inclu- siveness of subject and minuteness of detail, and yet of originality and breadth. The author, who has already published a history of the decline of Spain during the revolution in prices in the sixteenth century, has not only studied his materials on the ground in Ireland, as he tells us, during repeated and prolonged visits during a number of years, but he has evidently pondered his subject and its problems maturely and now expresses his results clearly and pleasantly. It is perhaps no loss to his treatment of his subject that he has, as he confesses, felt in his own experience the verfiihrische Rcize dcs irischcn Volkcs. A book on a subject on which so little of serious value has been written as the history of Ireland can probably best be reviewed by simply giving a statement of its contents. The first volume covers the period from the conquest in the twelfth century to the rebellion of 1641, the second volume brings the account down to the great famine of 1845- 1S47, and its immediate consequences. The three books of the first volume are devoted respectively to the first or Anglo-Norman coloniza- tion, its history and decay; the battle between the English administra- tion and the clan organization in the sixteenth century; and the new colonization in the seventeenth. The first English conquest and settlement of Ireland was more definite and limited in time than we are perhaps in the habit of recog- nizing. From May 1169 when the first band of conquistadores landed on the southeast coast to March 1172 when Henry II. sailed from Wexford after receiving the submission of all the English and many of the Irish chieftains the original conquest had been completed and the foundations of English administration in Ireland laid. The settlement extended over a longer period. For almost a century and a half, till about 1315, Norman, Welsh and English adventurers, with a sprinkling of Flemings and Jews, came over as members or followers of the early bands of invaders, or in the wake of successive viceroys. But with the early years of the fourteenth century this immigration ceased and the history of the English in Ireland was the history of these men and their descendants until immigration was resumed almost three centuries later, at the close of the sixteenth century. Dr. Bonn gives a careful description of the political and economic organization of these immigrants and of the Celtic community amidst which they settled. In many ways the body of settlers represented Eng-