Ireland's Atlantic coastal clans were not isolated, purely Gaelic societies in the Middle Ages

The peoples who lived along the western seaboard from the 11th to 17th centuries were part of a culturally dynamic society that was firmly embedded within the wider western European social world, writes Colin Breen

Dunguaire Castle, Kinvara, Co Galway. Far from being a Gaelic idyll, the peoples who lived on the Atlantic coasts of Ireland and Scotland in the past had short, hard and often brutal lives, defined by a continual struggle to survive in difficult physical environments. Picture: Enda O'Loughlin

Our western seaboard was once thriving and cosmopolitan. In my three decades investigating the history of the complex Atlantic coastal communities of Ireland and Scotland, what has become apparent is how complex, cosmopolitan and linked to European society those pre-colonial Gaelic communities once were.

During the period from the 11th to 17th centuries — what we know as the Middle Ages — a series of lordships existed along these coastlines that were largely independent political territories lying beyond the control of the English and Scottish crowns. Kin-groups such as the O’Sullivans, O’Malleys, O’Donnells, MacDonalds or the MacLeods were among the septs or clans that controlled these territories.