William Petty, Political Anatomy of Ireland

Sabine Reungoat (L'Université Paris-Est Créteil)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.04: English Writing and Culture of the Seventeenth Century, 1625-1688.
Vol. editors: Jennifer Brady (Rhodes College), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Neil Forsyth (Université de Lausanne), Claire Preston (Queen Mary, University of London), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University)

Domains

Political Economy

Dates

First circulation or publication 1691

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Treatise

Resources

The Political Anatomy of Ireland was written by William Petty in 1671-1672 and published in 1691. In this treatise, Petty made an overall survey of Ireland’s economy and population based on statistical evidence and put forward a series of proposals aimed at “improving” the country’s agriculture and trade, reforming its political institutions and securing the Protestant interest.

The Political Anatomy was written during Petty’s second long stay in Ireland. Edward Chamberlayne (1616-1703), author of the Present State of England (1669), had appealed to him for material on Ireland while working on a new edition of his book, and this may have prompted Petty to write his own …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1429 words

Citation: Reungoat, Sabine. "Political Anatomy of Ireland". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 December 2020 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=39167, accessed 19 April 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here