Excerpt from 1000 Years of Irish Prose, Vol. 1: The Literary RevivalThe new period of British colonization of Ireland which began under Queen Elizabeth and continued to the end of the seven teenth century created a fundamental schism in Irish life which has persisted to the present day. Where the old anglo-norman colonists of the twelfth century and after were largely assimilated by the prevailing Gaelic culture, and in any case shared the religion of the people they invaded, the new colonists set out to destroy the Gaelic culture they found in situ; they felt the less sympathy for it because it was associated in their minds with the Roman Catholic religion, which was regarded by both Scottish and English settlers as an abominable heresy. Thus, as in the Spanish conquest of South America, the normally selfish outlook of a colonizing group was reinforced by religious bigotry - as well as by genuine religious idealism. Intermarriage between colonizers and-colonized, which had been the chief agency of norman-gaelic assimilation, was now out of the question. Religion, culture, political and economic status went hand in hand. Even in present-day Ireland the rough-and ready equation of an irish-gaelic name with Roman Catholicism and peasant origins is more often right than wrong.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.