The 1641 depositons: Politics, Society and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms
The 1641 depositions: Politics, Society and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms
The 1641 depositions, a collection of nearly 4,000 witness statements, reveal a wealth of information about the various cultural, political and social nuances of seventeenth-century Ireland and the wider world. Taken during the troublesome events of the 1640s and 1650s, they became the chief evidence for the hotly contested massacres of Irish Protestants by native Irish Catholics during the 1641 rebellion in Ireland. From the early modern period until the mid-twentieth century, their ‘ritual status’ meant that few historians, or indeed publishers, wanted to write about or print the depositions unless they referred exclusively to these atrocities. In more recent times, however, historians have developed new innovative approaches to re-assess the evidence contained within. This has illustrated their value as a historical source for understanding early-modern Ireland.
We therefore invite proposals from postgraduate, postdoctoral and early career researchers working on the 1641 depositions and/or the events of the seventeenth century under the following themes:
- Identity, Memory and print culture.
- Material Culture and Society.
- Military Landscape, Codes of Conduct, War and Society.
- Religion and confessional conflict
Please send a proposal of 300 words with a short CV to 1641depositions@tcd.ie by 31 January 2010. The conference will take place 9-10 April 2010.
