Using the Natives against the Natives: Indigenes as ‘Counterinsurgents’ in the British Atlantic, 1500–1800
Taylor and Francis FDEF_A_439465.sgm 10.1080/1 702430903392877 Defence Studies 470-2436 (pr nt)/1743-9698 (online) Original Article 2 1 & F ancis -2 0 0 00March-June 2010 Way eLee wle @unc.e u A key component of most modern counterinsurgency efforts (hereafter, COIN) is not merely to pacify or appease a local population, but to actively use the locals as part of the solution. 1 Large portions of the US military’s new COIN manual discuss the issues involved with developing what it calls ‘Host Nation’ forces. 2 In any circumstance this is a complex problem, but it is even more complex when the ‘host nation’ is an indigenous people (as opposed to, e.g., colonists) whose social structure and military system is markedly different from the occupier. This paper examines how English or British administrators dealt with this problem in the early modern era in the two contexts of 16th-century Gaelic Ireland and Native North America – not asking just about the use of indigenous peoples as allies, but more specifically as allies in a counterinsurgent role – as like against like. English colonists and later British administrators pushing outwards into the Atlantic basin between 1500 and 1800 never had sufficient people or money relative to the scope of their ambitions, and the ‘Military Revolution’ notwithstanding, European military systems provided only limited solutions. 3 Improvements in European military technology and technique brought tactical superiority in most open-field confrontations, with famous exceptions like Hugh O’Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone’s early victories in Ireland in the 1590s, the Jacobite Highlanders’ successes in 1745–46, and Major-General Edward Braddock’s defeat on the Monongahela River (Pennsylvania) in 1755. Battlefield superiority, however, did not convey rapid strategic conquest capability over land in either Ireland or North America. In navigable waters western European superiority was more marked at both tactical and strategic levels. In the long run improved gunpowder weapons and drilled infantry proved adaptable to most
The Butler revolt of 1569
In June 1569 an English gentleman named Robert Mainwaring was seized on the borders of County Carlow by Irish rebels. They forced a noose around his neck, tightened it, and proceeded to drag him ‘up and down in a halter’, like a man condemned to be hanged. As with many terrorist acts, Mainwaring’s degradation was a carefully calculated publicity stunt, and it quickly achieved its objective. News of his predicament was relayed to London, where the identity of his captors aroused widespread alarm in government circles. He was persecuted on the orders of Sir Edmund Butler of Cloghgrenan, a leading Anglo-Irish lord who was the brother and principal heir of the then childless tenth earl of Ormond, Thomas Butler, and the recent recipient of some generous grants of land and office from the crown. Despite Sir Edmund’s position as deputy governor of the hitherto loyal Ormond lordship in Counties Kilkenny and Tipperary, it soon became clear that his seizure of Mainwaring had signalled the outbreak of a general revolt by several branches of the Butler family.
The Ormond Lordship in County Kilkenny, 1515–1642
A prominent social and economic historian once remarked that the history of late medieval and early modem Ireland suffered from premature generalisation, with an interpretative framework established long before many of the basic facts about Irish social and economic conditions during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had been gathered for analysis. The same could also be said of political history. Despite the belated appearance of a number of regional and local studies covering different parts of the country, the political history of sixteenth and seventeenth century Ireland continues to be written as a story of English officials and Irish rebels. Although Ireland at the beginning of the sixteenth century, far from being a unitary territory, was a patchwork of autonomous and semi-autonomous aristocratic lordships, until recently only those lordships that rebelled against the re-emergence of English royal power under Henry VITI (1509-47) and his successors have received much attention from historians. As yet relatively little is known about those other lordships that collaborated with the crown (and even less about those that endeavoured to stay neutral). This failure to achieve a properly rounded interpretation of developments in the sixteenth century has in tum corroded understanding of seventeenth-century events. Above all, the jarring impact of the English reconquest on Irish society is not fully appreciated. Once the Nine Years War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Mellifont in March 1603, English royal power in Ireland was absolute. For many years beforehand English commentators had often complained that Ireland was ungovernable because it was too unlike England. Now underJames I (1603-25) official intolerance of Irish deviance was extended beyond the mere punishment of rebellion and dissent. It was decided that Ireland was to become more like England. Of particular importance, the autonomous nature of the Irish lordships was to be extinguished. The ostensible reason for the emergence of this policy was that most of the native Irish and Anglo-Irish lords were Catholics, and hence a potential threat to the religious programme of the Protestant monarchy. Of equal weight, however, was the lords' very autonomy. The government found it unacceptable that the Irish nobility could continue to behave like feudal overlords in the provinces, dominating regional society; instead of viewing the lords as a point of contact between the crown and its subjects, the government saw them as a barrier to the greater centralisation of state control. Hence even those lords who had served the crown loyally, in the recent conflict and facilitated the English reconquest of Ireland were to be cut down to size