Identity on the medieval Irish frontier: degenerate Englishmen, wild Irishmen, middle nations

Abstract

This work covers themes of hybridity and identity through the vehicle of European expansion and conquest in the Middle Ages. It presents expansion through its ultimate effect: the formation of distant cultural identities uniting the conquering and conquered cultures. Focusing primarily on the interaction between the and the Irish, this work finds two new cultural identities being created. The first consists of the degenerate English, those who adopted the indigenous way of life. The second consists of the wild Irish who adopted some cultural and religious traditions. These groups form a middle people, having adopted enough new traditions to emerge neither English from England nor traditionally Irish. These new identities provide a path toward understanding the frontier experience elsewhere, as the text discusses how expansion involves negotiating new ways of living with new peoples. This interpretation of expansionist cause-and-effect is further supported and grounded by examinations of the relationships among the New Christians, Jews, and Muslims in expansionist Spain as well as those between British colonialists and White Indians in British North America.