Audrey Horning's Ireland in the Virginian Sea: Colonialism in the British Atlantic challenges the understanding that early modern plantations in Ireland served as a model for British expansion in North America. Horning amasses archaeological and documentary evidence to argue that North American colonial projects did not “mirror” a “model” set in Ireland and to argue furthermore that Roanoke had far greater influence on developments in Ireland than vice versa. These conclusions rest on comparison of the Ulster plantation with Jamestown, each also contextualized within the larger period of English expansion between 1550 and 1650.

Chapters 1 and 2 provide historical background on Ireland and North America respectively preparatory to Horning's principal concern with Ulster and Jamestown. Sixteenth-century plantation efforts in Ireland figure prominently, of course, notably in Munster. These chapters also establish themes and baselines foundational to Horning's later analysis. Among these is an address of towns, trade, and the development of economies, important factors in the work's subsequent comparative assessment of the impact of colonial activities on preexisting systems. Another of Horning's key considerations in both chapters is the impact of colonial activities on native populations, including native-newcomer interactions, again central to later chapters' comparative analysis. The opening chapters also argue compellingly for archaeology's importance in offering balance to the inaccuracy of rhetorically charged contemporary representations. She notes, for instance, the tendency among early modern writers to overstate chaos and incivility in Ireland. Archaeology also serves as a corrective to long-held understandings, the belief that disease was principally responsible for the decline of Native American populations, for instance, a decline more likely due to extended drought (116). In chapter 3 Horning turns to the heart of her assessment, focusing on the Ulster plantation. Particular attention is given to lands assigned to the London Companies, Derry and Coleraine, including a detailed case study of the Mercer Company's holdings at Movanagher, while less detailed discussion is provided for East Ulster, principally Belfast and Scottish settlements. Assessing the built environment, encompassing the importance of towns and trade, is key to her assessment of similarities and differences between Ireland and North America. This chapter also develops Horning's consideration of the “relations between planter and Gael” (179), leading her to counter assumptions regarding the Gaelic population's displacement. She argues that the continuation of Gaelic population and lifestyles, and the often close collaboration between native and newcomer, suggests that although there was a change in governance, the Ulster plantation did not see “a process of cultural extermination” (269). Nor was the Ulster plantation, she argues, a colonial model, a position developed further in the following chapter.

In chapter 4 Horning presents the counterpart consideration of colonial Virginia integrated with more closely drawn comparison to Ireland. Her emphasis on developing economies, notably tobacco farming, but also the need for towns, trades, and industries previously nonexistent in this region allows her to build comparative assessment of colonial expansion's impact in each location. Horning's work reveals a surprisingly lengthy list of individuals with interests in both ventures that warrants further study. Although she includes discussion of writings in which these individuals addressed Ireland and the Americas together, more sustained and expanded analysis would illuminate colonial thought further in this period. Greater consideration of the content of the first royal Virginia charter, which Arthur Chichester assisted in drafting (183), for instance, would have been welcome given his extensive experience in Ireland during the Nine Years War, as lord deputy (1605–1615), and as recipient of substantial land in Ulster.

Horning's attention to the nuances and complexities of native-newcomer relationships challenge starkly delineated categorizations of difference often understood as the source of conflict (though the Old English, occupying a complicated and complicating layer in Ireland's history, warrant more careful attention here). Her constructive demonstration of the very different contexts and factors within which Jamestown and the Ulster plantation were undertaken helps explain their divergent paths as “expediency took precedence over intention” (335). Establishing these differences, though, should not (and is unlikely to) prohibit ongoing study of colonial intentions and rhetoric. Examining intentions and rhetoric is as fundamental to understanding emerging British imperialism as its practice. Horning's emphasis on the continuation of indigenous populations and practices aids in gauging assumptions about their eradication, whether planned or realized. However, the claim that transformation was not forced on an unwilling and subjugated population (361) warrants greater consideration of those who resisted or suffered displacement and violence, as with the Laois-Offaly plantations, alongside those who participated willingly, turning events to their advantage. The retention of difference, rather than its “erasure” (366), need not necessarily signify failed colonial policies or practices; in many cases the retention of difference, in spite of rhetoric against it, ultimately served colonial ends, when employed to reinforce justifications of subjugation, for instance. Similarly, greater attention to competing interpretations of English conquest in Ireland opens up to questioning some of the foundations on which Horning's conclusions rest, such as identification of economic speculation as “the hallmark of plantation in Ireland” (281), the Protestant Reformation as the causal factor in England's desire to conquer Ireland (17), reform as the focus of sixteenth-century English efforts (353), or the assertion that “On paper, the Ulster Plantation was an Irish solution to an Irish problem, approved and implemented by the Irish parliament” (12).

Horning's larger conclusions will surely generate productive study and debate. Her central thesis that Ireland did not serve as “model” for “mirror” activities in the Americas now necessitates refinements in colonial frameworks of interpretation. Horning's closing point that this evidence also challenges long-standing identification of the Ulster plantation as the source of communal conflict in Northern Ireland, conflict she asserts has more to do with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century emigration than that of the early seventeenth century (367), will surely also fuel debate on the relationship between Northern Ireland's early modern and more recent history.