1641 Depositions

都柏林圣三一学院收藏的“1641份证词”包括约3,100份个人陈述，其中主要是各阶层的新教徒，讲述了他们在1641年爱尔兰天主教爆发叛乱时的经历。这些材料是由政府指定的专员在十年的时间里收集的，大约有19,000页。它被系统地用于随后对叛军领导人的审判，并为在奥利弗·克伦威尔的保护国制度下有关天主教土地所有者待遇的决定提供信息。在17世纪的前几十年，苏格兰和英格兰的种植园主(他们越来越多地将自己定位为英国人)殖民了该省，经常驱逐当地的天主教人口。这些证词生动地记录了这些殖民和“文明”过程，其中包括新教在斯图亚特王国最偏远地区的传播，引入低地农业和商业做法，以及当地对这些发展的反应。这些证词也构成了备受争议的指控的主要证据，即1641年叛乱始于对新教定居者的大规模屠杀，因此它们是爱尔兰最旷日持久和最痛苦的历史争议的核心，这一争议从未得到令人满意的解决。事实上，1641年的大屠杀，如威廉国王在博伊恩的胜利(1690年)和索姆河战役(1916年)，在阿尔斯特创造和维持新教徒/英国人的集体身份认同方面发挥了关键作用。这些材料在早期现代欧洲的其他地方是无与伦比的，为1641年的叛乱以及17世纪爱尔兰、英格兰和苏格兰的社会、经济、文化、宗教和政治史提供了独特的信息来源。然而，由于手稿的脆弱性，阅读起来很困难，访问也受到限制。该项目的目的是转录和数字化“1641份证词”，创造一种学术界和公众都感兴趣的独特研究工具。网站出版将使用户能够完全获取所有图像和成绩单，并可进行免费文本搜索，而数据库的建设(技术附录中所述)将促进各学科更详细的研究项目，并为教学环境提供一个理想的工具。该项目将为研究生研究提供材料，提高主要申请者的研究和出版成果，并为四名研究人员提供宝贵的培训和工作经验。它还将为手稿收藏的转录和数字化提供一种工作方法，可应用于其他独特的历史收藏。还将有其他一些具体成果，包括在一份大众期刊上发表一篇介绍该项目的文章，在一家学术期刊上发表一篇被推荐的文章，在1641年举行一次重要的国际会议，其论文将以编辑后的卷出版，以及在TCD图书馆举办一次展览(包括出版的目录)。通过利用现有的国际研究网络，该项目还将解决关键的史学辩论，以及爱尔兰的跨国界身份问题。初步讨论还显示了文学、语言学、性别研究、人类学和历史地理学等学科之间的广泛兴趣。这项AHRC申请是阿伯丁大学、剑桥大学和TCD联合倡议的一部分，该倡议将发展这三个大学之间现有的机构联系。TCD已同意为该项目投入582,866欧元(见所附教务长John Hegarty博士的信)，该项目将重点关注关键的战略目标，特别是爱尔兰裔苏格兰人的研究，以及阿伯丁大学和TCD手稿资源的数字化。

The collection of '1641 depositions' in Trinity College Dublin comprises some 3,100 personal statements, in which mainly protestant men and women of all classes told of their experiences at the outbreak of the rebellion by the catholic Irish in 1641. This material, collected by government-appointed commissioners over the course of a decade, runs to approximately 19,000 pages. It was systematically used in the subsequent trials of rebel leaders, and to inform decisions relating to the treatment of catholic landholders under Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate regime. During the early decades of the seventeenth-century Scottish and English planters (who increasingly identified themselves as 'British') colonised the province, often dispossessing the native catholic population. The depositions vividly document these colonial and 'civilizing' processes, which included the spread of Protestantism in one of the remotest regions of the Stuart kingdoms and the introduction of lowland agricultural and commercial practices, together with the native response to these developments. The depositions also constituted the chief evidence for the sharply contested allegation that the 1641 rebellion began with a general massacre of protestant settlers, and as a result they have been central to the most protracted and bitter of Irish historical controversies, which has never been satisfactorily resolved. In fact, the 1641 'massacres', like King William's victory at the Boyne (1690), and the battle of the Somme (1916), have played a key role in creating and sustaining a collective Protestant/British identity in Ulster. This body of material, unparalleled elsewhere in early modern Europe, provides a unique source of information on the 1641 rebellion and for the social, economic, cultural, religious, and political history of seventeenth-century Ireland, England and Scotland. However, it is difficult to read, and access is limited because of the fragility of the manuscripts. The aim of this project is to transcribe and digitise the '1641 Depositions', creating a unique research tool of interest to both the academic community and the general public. Web site publication would give users full access to all images and transcripts, with free text search, while the construction of a database (described in the technical appendix) will facilitate more detailed research projects in a variety of disciplines, and provide an ideal tool for use in the teaching environment. The project will provide material for postgraduate research, enhance the research and publication outputs of the principal applicants, and give valuable training and work experience to four research staff. It will also deliver a working methodology for the transcription and digitisation of manuscript collections, which can be applied to other unique historical collections. There will be a number of other specific outcomes, including an article for a popular journal describing the project, a refereed article for a scholarly journal, a major international conference on 1641, the papers of which will be published in an edited volume, and an exhibition (including a published catalogue) in the TCD Library. By exploiting existing international research networks the project will also address key historiographical debates, as well as cross-border issues of identity in Ireland. Preliminary discussions have also revealed a wide level of interdisciplinary interest from literature, linguistics, gender studies, anthropology and historical geography. This AHRC application is part of a joint initiative, involving the University of Aberdeen, Cambridge University and TCD, which will develop exisiting institutional links between all three. TCD has agreed to commit €582,866 to this project (see attached letter from the provost Dr John Hegarty), which will focus on key strategic aims, particularly for Irish-ScottishStudies, and the digitisation of manuscript sources at both the University of Aberdeen and TCD.