Imposing Order on Atrocity

Supervisory Team: Dr Joan Redmond (King’s)

Based at: King’s

KOM Theme: B – Embodied knowledge, C – Systems of knowledge, D – Chronologies of knowledge

The 1641 Irish Rebellion was one of the most shocking events of the seventeenth century: thousands were killed and displaced, and the uprising contributed significantly to the unravelling of King Charles I’s rule in the years that followed. Yet the central documents concerned with the rebellion, the 1641 Depositions, remain highly contested but also puzzling, as we still do not fully understand how they were collected and how witnesses approached the task of describing the most awful experiences: of death, violence, robbery, desecration, and more.

This PhD project will turn detective on the Depositions themselves: interrogating the work of the clergymen who were in charge of their collection; uncovering their particular interests and biases when it came to the stories of victims; and how they understood the religious and ethnic divisions at play in seventeenth-century Irish society. It will also ask deeper questions about the process and nature of being a witness to atrocity in the early modern world: what kinds of strategies did people use to bring coherence to horror? As sworn statements, the structures of the law were important; also influential were religious models of ‘witnessing’ for religious faith, especially through martyrdom. How did these different worlds interact and support one another, and how did people think about crucial ideas, such as the distinction between eye-witnessing and hearsay, or the role of the supernatural in the courtroom? All of these themes and more are open for exploration with this project.

In undertaking this project, you will be contributing not only to the dynamic fields of seventeenth-century Irish and British history, but will also have opportunities to consider Ireland and Britain in a wider early modern context, including the emerging colonial world. Further, the project presents the exciting opportunity to study topics such as violence and conflict from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining legal, religious and cultural histories, record-keeping and creation, and the study of palaeography among many approaches. The furnishing of skills as well as the production of scholarship of the highest quality are core aims of this doctoral project.

Applicants for this project will be expected to have a good working understanding of seventeenth-century British and Irish history; knowledge of contemporary wider contexts, such as continental Europe and the Atlantic world, will be advantageous. Knowledge of early modern palaeography is highly desirable, as well as experience working with contemporary legal and/or religious primary sources.