Munster plantation

In Irish history, a major confiscation of native Irish lands in counties Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Waterford by the English crown in 1586, following the death in rebellion of Gerald Fitzgerald, 14th and last Earl of Desmond (c. 1533–1583). Originally estimated at some 245,000 ha/600,000 acres, the surveys and claims were greatly overstated and ultimately only half that amount was actually confiscated for Protestant English colonization.

Rapid growth of the plantation in the 1580s and early 1590s was accompanied by severe disputes between both English settlers and native Irish, and among the settlers themselves. In 1598 a native Irish uprising effectively destroyed the first colonies and ruined several of the early investors, including the planter poet Edmund Spenser. Re-established following the rebels' defeat in 1601, the plantation grew steadily. The extraction of timber and iron yielded large profits but the plantation areas also rapidly developed a strong export trade in cattle and sheep. By 1641 the plantation was securely established with an expanding population that had grown from just over 3,000 in 1592 to an estimated 22,000.