Colonisation idea

NthBelisarius

I was reading a book about the 16th century yesterday and it mentioned the creation of a 'poor' class during this time due to population growth, and I had an idea. Not sure if it would work or not, but any input would be helpful.

Basically, the scenario is an English King in the early 1500's (1510 or so) who wants to replace the Irish in Ireland with the English, who are much more loyal and so on. He comes up with an idea to hopefully get a lot of people there.

Basically, a town/village/geographical area can bunch their money together and pay to move the poor who don't have any land (and are presumably willing) to Ireland where the King has set aside some land for them. The group would have to provide a minimum of settlers, but if the colony is successful half the rents of the colony are paid to the group who raised the money in proportion to how much they put in for the next ten(?) years, after which the land the colony is on becomes owned by the colonists(?).

So the group who raise the money get money (and hopefully a profit) and get to feel good for allowing the poor to make a better life for themselves somewhere else. The colonists themselves have to work for the next ten years, but after that they have their own land. The King gets settlers for Ireland, and if its successful there it can be used to help settle the New World as well.

Would this idea work? Feel free to tell me I'm a complete and utter idiot for even suggesting this :p, but I really couldn't get to sleep last night. Damn this heat :(.
 
Vingilótë

Vingilótë

IIRC, this is basically what happened in Ulster, right? This is a big part of why Ulster is so strongly unionist and thus was retained by Britain, because of the extremely heavy English and Scottish settlement historically, thanks to policies somewhat alike what you described.

This process was repeated in most of Ireland, but it was obviously heaviest in Ulster.

As it happens, since the primary goal was to disenfranchise a rebellious folk, the Crown rarely bothered with actually buying the land, and simply confiscated it from the former owners and redistributed it among English and Scottish settlers.
 

NthBelisarius

I agree its similar to the original Ulster plantations, except the landowners ('undertakers') wouldn't own the land. It would also be marketed as 'helping the poor make a better life for themself', and the poor would presumably gain out of it also because they would gain the land themselves instead of renting it. The people who sponsored it would get 5 years worth of rent in return.

So, would it work? What would some of the problems be? Am I an idiot who should be killed for the benefit of mankind :p?
 
Vingilótë

Vingilótë

Your idea, nonetheless, does have merit; I think that one thing that could be improved is to simply cut out the part about paying the people to move there. The village doesn't really have a significant amount of money, and the payments will be a major obstacle towards the program. In any case, the land, itself, could by itself be incentive to induce the poor to settle Ireland, and the crown could easily do that without the home villages as an intermediary.

So, in the revised version, the process might be something like "Crown confiscates land, Crown gives land to landless villagers, and sponsors their settlement, in return, the settlers pay increased taxes to the Crown to cover the Crown's costs."

But it's worth mentioning that that also happened OTL, when the Crown settled veteran soldiers whom it lacked the money to pay wages to in Ireland.
 

NthBelisarius

I think you misunderstood, or I didn't clarify myself properly :eek: - I didn't mean pay the settlers to move to Ireland, the land is the incentive (as well as the fact that, depending on whether it's workable or desirable, the poor family in question will own the land after ten years). The village or group of yeomen/nobles will sponsor the settlement (possibly in combination with the Crown) and the peasants agree to pay an increased rent for the next ten years, which is split between the sponsors.

As to the soldiers, I had intended that some land would be set aside for them and granted to them after their service (if there is a professional soldier corps). In the Ulster Plantation they were subsidised by several guilds.
 
Vingilótë

Vingilótë

Ah. Then, in that case, the idea seems reasonable enough to me, but to be perfectly honest, I'm not really knowledgeable enough about this area of history to provide more info than I already have.
 

Mike Stearns

NthBelisarius said:
Care to elaborate?
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Because the English Protestants will use this as an excuse to disposes all the English Catholics of their lands and property and forcibly ship them to Ireland. The Irish will be unhappy that the English are taking their land, but will be sympathetic because English Catholics are being persecuted. The English outcasts will make common cause with the Irish and begin planning to force the King, let's assume its Henry VIII, off the throne. The Anglo-Irish Catholics will reach out to the Scotts who have their own scores to settle with the Crown and to the French who are always looking for ways to fuck the English and are perfectly willing to back a Catholic uprising in England if it means that a pro-French monarch sits the throne. Trust me, this is a massive clusterfuck looking for a place to happen.
 
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NthBelisarius

You're assuming that the English Reformation will happen, I did say around 1510, so 7 years before Luther even writes his Ninety-Five Theses'. Even if it's Henry VIII on the throne, butterflies mean Catherine might give him a son who survives. It's only a 50/50 chance that Mary is female.

I'm more interested in whether it's a viable plan or not to be honest. The other stuff can be worked out later.
 

Hurrah!Praga!

So, basically making Ireland the New World of the sixteenth century, with pseudo-Joint Stock Companies, fee land, and unruly natives? It seems like it would work, replacing a hostile population with an English one, but the Irish might get in the way of things. They'd effectively become a poor class, and it's hard to see them not rebelling or at least fighting with the new English setters. Either a war's going to happen with the Irish, or they get shipped off to England's as of yet nonexistent colonies in the New World.
 
Vingilótë

Vingilótë

Hurrah!Praga! said:
So, basically making Ireland the New World of the sixteenth century, with pseudo-Joint Stock Companies, fee land, and unruly natives? It seems like it would work, replacing a hostile population with an English one, but the Irish might get in the way of things. They'd effectively become a poor class, and it's hard to see them not rebelling or at least fighting with the new English setters. Either a war's going to happen with the Irish, or they get shipped off to England's as of yet nonexistent colonies in the New World.
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Or a famine breaks out, the English whistle, and English control is that much stronger.
 

NthBelisarius

Exactly, the English would very much prefer if there were no Irish in Ireland. I saw a TL round here somewhere (Henry the Great?) that basically got the French to agree to take the Irish and moved them over there. Doesn't have to be France though.

I keep wondering whether Russia/Muscovy would take them for some reason :confused:. Would they welcome several hundred thousand Irish to settle the steppe or prefer that the steppe is settled by Rus?

Zmflavius has probably hit on the easiest option to be honest, Organised Famine are usually effective in ethnic cleansing (I think).

Also, does everyone agree that the plan is workable?
 
Albeques

Albeques

the only thing I'd say is if the English really really wanted to move the Irish they probably wouldn't go through all this trouble, especially in later years, they probably would just deport them somewhere and spread there numbers out so thin that they couldn't hope to come back, whoever disagrees is killed; it wouldn't be the only time they did that, it is what they did to the Acadians in 1755
 
Vingilótë

Vingilótë

Trackah said:
the only thing I'd say is if the English really really wanted to move the Irish they probably wouldn't go through all this trouble, especially in later years, they probably would just deport them somewhere and spread there numbers out so thin that they couldn't hope to come back, whoever disagrees is killed; it wouldn't be the only time they did that, it is what they did to the Acadians in 1755
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There's a difference; there were 10,000 Acadians, but there are in 1500 hundreds of thousands of Irish. Right before the Famine, the population was approaching ten million. You can't just uproot that many people, elsewise the Kingdom of Ireland swiftly becomes the independent Republic of Ireland.
 

Opunium

Zmflavius said:
There's a difference; there were 10,000 Acadians, but there are in 1500 hundreds of thousands of Irish. Right before the Famine, the population was approaching ten million. You can't just uproot that many people, elsewise the Kingdom of Ireland swiftly becomes the independent Republic of Ireland.
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10 million? Are you sure? Wasnt it more like 7 million?
 

NthBelisarius

The population if Ireland peaked at about 8 million in 1840, just before the famine. In 1500 however, the population was around 800,000, which would be much easier. The population of England and Wales at the time was around 3,500,000.

I think if it was done slowly and methodically it could work. I imagine quite a lot of Irish would flee themselves.
 
Albeques

Albeques

however being closer to England makes it easier, they aren't engaged in a major war, and they can use English supporting Irish (which did exist) to help, and then betray them and deport them too they've done that numerous times. either way though you'd need to change the supply capacity to do either
 
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