Conclusion

The transformations of Irish economy and society in the later middle ages shared many similarities with those of Britain and north-west Europe. Nevertheless, there were marked differences, not least those created by the particular circumstances of the complex and ambiguous interrelationships that surround the broad dichotomy between Anglo - and Gaelic-Irish. The Anglo-Normans adapted to, but also irrevocably altered, extant political and economic structures. In turn, they borrowed much from Gaelic-Irish culture and exploited its political fragmentation to create the system of lordships that, through time, further accentuated the intense regionalism of Ireland so readily apparent in early medieval society. By the end of the middle ages, the complex threads of continuity and change had combined to create an Ireland that was highly decentralized in political terms, culturally diverse, yet possessing some salient economic unity through the continuing importance of the mercantile economy which integrated it into the wider European realm. The inability of the crown to establish centralized English political control over Ireland was essentially predestined by the abrogation of power to individual barons in the early years of the Anglo-Norman colonization. Yet this political failure cannot conceal the enduring strength of the urban and commercial economy, particularly after the upturn of the later fourteenth century, the factor which above all others demonstrates the oversimplification inherent in the concept of a Gaelic Revival. Fourteenth - and fifteenth-century Ireland maintained its trading links with Britain and Europe, some of the more distant ports such as Galway, with its rich Iberian trade, effectively functioning as ‘city-states’. Changes did take place and there was some attenuation of Anglo-Irish settlement in the more exposed marches. But the well-established communities of the more intensely settled arable regions survived, and indeed prospered, despite the more militant and effective system of Gaelic-Irish opposition already apparent in the fourteenth century. In sum, while fragmentation defines the condition of Ireland throughout the middle ages, it had become a remarkably more diverse society by 1500, testimony to the myriad interactions between Anglo - and Gaelic-Irish and the innumerable permutations thereof.