In The Welsh and the Shaping of Early Modern Ireland, Rhys Morgan offers the first sustained scholarly investigation of the Welsh presence in colonial Ireland, from the early days of Tudor plantation to the outbreak of the 1641 rebellion. His identification of the Welsh as planters, soldiers, and officers simultaneously serves two larger historiographical goals. First, it provides means to correct the historiographical tendency to label all newcomers to Ireland as New English. Not only does Morgan demonstrate an important and sustained Welsh component in the mosaic of colonial demographics, but he argues further for the crystallization of a “New Welsh” identity. Second, tracing the arc of Welsh reconceptualization of Ireland from “foreign country” to “near abroad” offers a case study in British history—of the movements and interactions of peoples across territories and the creation of cross-border networks and communities.

Patronage emerges as crucial to the Welsh presence in both the military and administration of colonial Ireland. The Welsh encounter with Ireland, as Morgan details in chapter 1, was in large part initially enabled through military service, which, for both the rank-and-file and officer class, was facilitated by lords deputy of Welsh origin or connection, namely Perrot, Essex, and Sidney. The crown's Irish army never contained overwhelming numbers of Welsh recruits, but it saw a significant and sustained presence all the same, at times nearing 20 percent on the ground. Morgan's prosopographical approach reveals something of the officer corps' mindset, and he argues that its members may have deemed Irish service more honorable than did their English counterparts. Patronage was equally vital to Welsh entry to the Irish administration, with the circles of Sidney and Perrot facilitating the emergence of a species of “Castle Welshmen” in the latter sixteenth century. Under the early Stuarts, however, those Welsh who served the regime were more typically officers who had worked their way up the system, be it in Dublin or regional strongholds such as Newry.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, there was also a considerable minority of Welsh in the plantations. In chapter 3, Morgan traces how colonial landholdings helped create transnational networks as new proprietors typically employed agents from, and kept up links with, their home territories. Curiously, however, Morgan's research demonstrates that planters and tenants frequently moved on from their original holdings in pursuit of cheaper and better land. This seems to suggest that in spite of identifiable settlement clustering, the Welsh were not overly concerned to establish ethnically exclusive migrant communities—a finding that may argue for their comfort living and moving amidst a majority English colonial community?

Chapter 4 is the Morgan's most wide ranging and provocative as he takes on questions of culture and identity and argues the existence of a “New Welsh” identity. This identity, he posits, rested primarily on three foundations: networks centered in Ireland but connected to lands held in Wales and to allies there and in administrative centers like Dublin; the reconceptualization of Ireland from foreign to familiar (“foreign country” to “near abroad”); and intellectual efforts, primarily by the antiquarian Meredith Hanmer, to codify and historicize this loyalist identity. The task of breaking up the historiographical monolith of the “New English” is a welcome one, but it is not clear that the state of play is as dire as presented here; there is already a body of scholarship that has explored the various regional, ethnic, and religious origins of the colonial population. Moreover, “New English” is presented here largely as a category of national origin and ethnicity without consideration of how the term is also used more broadly to describe a set of interests adhered to by a range of settlers and indigenous alike, dedication to self-advancement under the cover of loyalty to crown and state religion being its most basic descriptor. Moreover, the neologism, while clever and evocative, is somewhat awkward in that it raises the question of who were the “Old Welsh.” There was a robust, high-stakes dynamic behind the distinction New vs. Old English. No comparable civil struggle raged among the Welsh, at least as evidenced here. As well, it appears that Hanmer was engaged in precisely the sort of undertaking that occupied Old English apologists, and even Gaelic loyalists: constructing historically based arguments that ethnic, linguistic, national, and even confessional difference from the English standard did not equate to inherent disloyalty. Thus, while it is true that the migrants recovered here were “new” to Ireland, and Welsh, it may be open to debate whether they constituted a Welsh version of all that is encapsulated in the term “New English,” and, in turn, whether “New Welsh” functions more usefully as heuristic than category.

Morgan raises many provocative questions, some of the most pressing related to source and method. He laudably and effectively employs the tools of social, military, cultural, intellectual, and political history, and the appendices he provides on approach and findings are helpful and interesting (and should be a more common feature in scholarly monographs). Yet the very limited discussion of language is curious. So, too, is the lack of any Welsh sources—primary or secondary—in the bibliography. Are there no such sources available? Morgan argues that ethnicity was more important than kinship in creating “New Welsh” identity and networks, but what was the role of language in that process? It might also have been useful to assess Irish views: did the locals register an English-Welsh distinction or a New-Old Welsh one? These questions exemplify a certain lightness to the historiographical engagement displayed here. Especially on matters cultural, intellectual, and antiquarian, perhaps a bit more of the vast iceberg of relevant secondary sources may have been allowed to poke above the narrative surface. Nevertheless, Morgan's enlightening and informative study introduces topics and questions that will command further research and lively debate.