Abstract
In 1807, the well-known English antiquarian, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, published an account of his travels in Ireland the previous year. This included detailed descriptions of the Irish landscape and its antiquities, agricultural practices and the Irish peasantry. This article explores how Colt Hoare's evaluation of the Irish landscape and its constituent elements was informed by contemporary social and political concerns. Landscape acted as a metaphor through which colonial and national identities were constructed. It was constituted both as an economic resource and an object of aesthetic contemplation — in either case, underpinning the political hierarchy of the day. Within this context, antiquarianism — like travel writing — emerges as one of a suite of related elite practices which facilitated the appropriation of landscape both in Britain and abroad.
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