404. Norman Conquest: Colonising Ireland (Part 4)

Strongbow landed on the Irish coast on August 23, 1170. Within weeks, he had taken Dublin, the most prosperous trading city in Ireland, a Viking foundation that served as the entrepôt for a thriving Irish Sea slave trade. The conquest that followed—and the English racism that justified it—opened a wound whose pain is still being felt today. This is the fourth installment of Empire’s series on the Norman Conquest, and it moves into much less familiar territory: how the Normans spilled over from England into Scotland, Wales, and finally Ireland, creating what historians have called the First English Empire.

The Moral and Economic Justification for Conquest

The intellectual groundwork for Norman expansion into the Celtic fringe was laid by William of Malmesbury, writing in the 1120s. He revived a classical distinction: the Celts were barbarians not because they were pagan—they were Christians—but because they failed to meet the socioeconomic standards of Norman England. England had stolen a march on its neighbors in the tenth and eleventh centuries. It had abundant silver coinage, towns with thousands of people, international trade, Romanesque cathedrals, and proto-universities. Scotland, Wales, and Ireland had none of these things. They did not mint coins; the only specie they had was imported or stolen from England.