Ó hAnnracháin, TadhgTadhgÓ hAnnracháin2016-09-082016-09-082014-039780199549344http://hdl.handle.net/10197/7907Plantation is a key theme, and in the eyes of some historians the key theme, in the history of Early Modern Ireland but what is comprehended under that term is less self-evident than might seem apparent at first glance.  Policies of plantation grew out of, and in tandem, with other state-sponsored schemes to pacify and settle the island of Ireland.  Contemporaries, for instance, were quite happy to style settlers who had occupied former monastic sites as 'planters' although such centres of immigration were clearly not comprehended in what Sir Francis Blundell referred to in 1622 as the 'six plantations made in Ireland since the memory of man'.  Moreover, as they evolved, plantation settlements were inevitably influenced by colonial spread as settlers tended to abandon less desirable plantation sites to move to more attractive estates and prime locations.  The geographical and ideological coherence which distinguished the planning of first the Munster and then pre-eminently the Ulster plantation thus rapidly dissolved under the pressure of economic reality.  When viewed in this light, it might be suggested that rather than representing a discrete theme in the history of Early Modern Ireland, plantation might perhaps be better seen as a vital component in the wider topic of British settlement in the island during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.en'Plantation 1580-1641' in Jackson, A. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History (2014), reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press https://global.oup.com/academic/?cc=ie&lang=en&.PlantationIrelandColonizationBook Chapter10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199549344.001.00012016-06-16https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ie/