the_dunk_tank

nah capitalist settler colonialism is distinct from primitive conquest and accumulation. all the Normans did was (mostly) kill the old nobility and knick their stuff. the saxons were just as the norman peasant or the dijonnais peasant, not a group targeted for dispossession & extermination.

this distinction was observed just within the island of Ireland. the normans took over ireland in the 12th century, same way they did england, but all that came of it were some administrative impositions, and different names on the nobles. in a few centuries, like their compatriots in England spoke English, they were speaking Irish. now in the 16th century, the synthesis of protestantism, a centralizing state, and a developing merchantilist/capitalist economic system drove a different sort of conquest of Ireland. no longer sharing a common religion, the english took all the land from the catholics (irish) & while happy to make them dirt-poor laborers, they systematically kept them from food & killed so many in the wars, the English lords found themselves lacking sufficient labor---thus came the settlers, Good Protestants who wouldn't rise up, who'd make common cause with the landlords against the indigenous, for fear of being driven off the stolen land

Was gonna say, it absolutely was