Plantation

Abstract: This essay examines the developing use of the term "plantation" to describe human settlement in an Irish context. According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the use of "plantation" in an Irish context dates to the 1610s. This raises some questions, as historians and archivists have commonly applied the term to describe patterns of settlement that obtained in Tudor Ireland following expropriation of native landowners. This interpretive use, however, is, strictly speaking, an anachronism. The essay also examines some of the political and cultural resonances of the term "plantation" in Ireland from the seventeenth century to the present day.