Another update. This one is a
bit of a smoking gun. This is from "The Unending Frontier", Prof. John Richards of Duke University, 2003, University of California Press. The quotes are all from chapter 6, "Landscape Change and Energy Transformation In The British Isles."
Quote:
P 221, "Forest Depletion"
During the sixteenth century and first half of the seventeenth, wood, the principal source of energy and primary building material for English society, became increasingly costly and less accessible. By the Tudor period, English forests, probably no more than 10 percent of land surface, were being rapidly depleted both by overcutting and by conversion to cultivation and pasture. Energy demands from a population doubling in size and an energetic industrial sector strained the biomass resources of England.
Quote:
P 223
In large measure because of timber shortages in England, Wales, and Scotland, Ireland suffered colonial exploitation of its forests during the seventeenth century. Firm colonial control freed proprietors to exploit Irish forests. The generally accepted estimate is that about one-eighth of Ireland was covered by forests and woods in 1600, and an additional amount was composed of land that was barren, boggy, or both. By 1700, the Irish woodlands had been reduced to about 2 percent of the total land area. A flourishing seventeenth-century timber export trade died out in the early years of the eighteenth century, and Ireland became a timber-importing country.
The collapse of the Ulster rebellion led by Hugh O'Neill in 1603 marked the final stage in the Tudor conquest and opened up the island to more intensive colonization and economic exploitation. One of the inducements offered to English settlers was the profit to be made from cutting woodlands as part of their civilizing mission.
Quote:
P 224
Depletion of Irish woodlands invariably caused hardships to the general population. Peat, rather than wood or charcoal, necessarily became the cheapest and most accessible fuel. Hazel growth, used extensively in rods for traditional wattling or siding of huts, declined precipitously by 1700. More and more, the rural Irish turned to sod and brushwood as construction materials for their huts.
As noted in a previous post, the Nine Years War in Ireland, 1594-1603, ended with "the collapse of the Ulster rebellion led by Hugh O'Neill in 1603" noted above. The death toll in that rebellion is estimated at about 100,000 people. The English Civil Wars began less than 40 years later. Estimates are that about 41% of the entire Irish population died in those wars. Over the course of the seventeenth century, Irish forests were exploited for timber and fuel for England, which resulted in a decline of forest cover from about 12.5% of the Irish landscape to about 2%. This really looks to me like the British killed significant percentages of the Irish population and stole some of their most valuable resources.
That doesn't strike me as a smooth transition.
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