SOURCE: "Edmund Spenser and the Development of an Anglo-Irish Identity," in The Yearbook of English Studies: Colonial Imperial Themes, Special Number, Vol. 13, 1983, pp. 1-19.

In the following essay Canny argues for the value of Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland as a contribution to the political theory of colonization and the history of Ireland.

Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland, composed in 1596, has long been accepted as a fundamental contribution to the theory of colonization, but it has not been adequately appreciated as a political text because commentators have at once exaggerated and diminished its originality.¹ The exaggeration has happened because scholars have contended that Spenser's opinions were altogether more advanced than those held by any of his contemporaries in Ireland, and the diminution has resulted from the attribution of these advanced opinions to the influence of Machiavelli, Montaigne, Bodin, and, most recently, of...