Claims of genocide are always not too far from the surface when discussing the Elizabethan wars in Ireland.  Massacres and famines did take place but how far were these a matter of policy, a manifestation of racial ideology or just the incidence of unfolding events?  Hiram Morgan will attempt to trace the evolution of English policy towards Queen Elizabeth's rebellious subjects in Ireland on this question with particular reference to the revolts in Munster and Ulster in the late sixteenth century.

Hiram Morgan is Senior Lecturer and Head of the School of History at University College Cork. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University and was previously a fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies, QUB. He is author of Tyrone’s rebellion (1993) and has edited Political ideology in Ireland, 1541-1641 (1999), Information, media and power through the ages (2001) and The battle of Kinsale (2004). More recently he has brought out scholarly texts: Great deeds in Ireland (2013) and Ireland 1518 (2015) He was a founder in 1992 of History Ireland and its co-editor until 2002. He is director of CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts of Ireland, the largest Irish Studies website in the world. He is working on a biography of Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, for publication by the Royal Irish Academy.