The history of Ireland in the 1650s is synonymous with Oliver Cromwell and with his supposed pronouncement on the fate of the Catholic population: ‘Go to hell or to Connacht’. This slogan is shorthand for the policy of transplantation, the forced relocation of people. The transplantation to Connacht was a central aspect of the land settlement implemented in the aftermath of the Cromwellian conquest. It was designed primarily to clear the ground for a Protestant colonisation of the other three Irish provinces. The present work constitutes a reassessment of the history of the transplantation, examining its background, its implementation and its outcomes between 1649 and 1680.

The ‘Cromwellian’ slogan offers a useful point of entry into the complex of interpretations which have been constructed around the transplantation across the centuries. It in fact originated in 1790s Ulster in the same vicinity as the Orange Order, and it was seemingly first linked explicitly to Cromwell by a French writer only in the 1830s. Thereafter, the ‘Cromwellian’ became a nationalist byword for perceived shortcomings in Britain's rule of Ireland past and present. As late as 1965 the Irish minister for lands explained that his preferred policies were necessary ‘to undo the work of Cromwell’. Even today, individuals or groups deemed to be obstructing the ‘progress’ of the country run the risk of being labelled as Cromwellians.