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Hell or Connaught: Cromwellian Colonisation of Ireland 1652-1660

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It all begins with their massacre and decimation of little Catholic Ireland, and erupted with Christian Cromwell's Protestant forces.

From the back cover:

Cromwell's ruthless colonisation of Ireland is a story of cruelty and terror whci still reverberates after more than three hundred years. Peter Berresford Ellis's acclaimed account of the period chillingly recreates 'the curse of Cromwell' the executions and mass transportations, the confiscation of lands and the banishment of Irish landowners 'to Hell or Connaught'.

Then for the usual biased British balance you can read all the fawning books about Cromwell's "spirituality" and faith.

This book, published in 1975 in Northern Ireland, recounts the truth of the Cromwellian curse, beginning in 1652 and climaxing some two hundred years later when the British, not content with decades of inhumane and unjust and cruel treatment of the defeated Irish race and land, starved four fifths of the remaining population in the so-called Famine while
sending boatloads of grain and good Irish beef to London.

Several other worthy tomes serve to study this shame of the mid eighteen hundreds. Rarely though do we discover a work which so worthily and well exposes the cruelties of Cromwell in his crimes against humanity, crimes and horrors of terrorist genocide which continued another two hundred and fifty years to squeeze Ireland dry for the benefit and wealth of the British crown.

If you believe we soon leave Iraq in peace, wait another three hundred years and then let me know. Not until the last drop of petroleum falls, and of their "foreign" blood.

Mr. Ellis performs an admirable task, writing lucidly and succintly in recounting completely this complex and tortured and shameful history, in a gripping narrative of the historical reality impossible to put down and which we must never forget. Who ignores their history is condemned to repeat it, now in Iraq.

P.B. Ellis does a reasonably good job of summarizing the scholarship on the Cromwellian era in Irish History. His presentation of events provides enough details for the reader to appreciate the complexities of Anglo-Irish politics during this time. And yet, the reader doesn't have to already be an expert in the field to understand the big picture.