Gulliver Exhibited to the Brobdingnag Farmer (from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels) by Richard Redgrave (1836) V&A, CC BY-NCGulliver’s Travels, first published on October 28 1726, is a masterpiece of satire that continues to have the power to provoke, to amuse, and to shock. Most readers familiar with it will know that its author, Jonathan Swift, was not only Irish-born but was Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin when he wrote what is unquestionably his greatest work. What they may not know, however, is that the text is shaped in fundamental ways by Swift’s experience as a member of Ireland’s Protestant elite.This group was a minority whose identity was constructed on the assumption that they were to bring order and civilisation to a wild and benighted country. They believed they would “improve” Ireland through their superior grasp of reason and their cultivated manner of living.This civilising mission was from the start complicated by the irreconcilable contradictions for Ireland’s Protestants, who originally described themselves as “the English people of Ireland”“. They believed their role was to represent and model a superior culture to the inhabitants of Ireland. But, as they discovered, living in Ireland meant accepting that they were in fact considered inferior themselves. As Swift’s contemporary William Molyneux acutely observed: If the English in Ireland be treated as Englishmen, they will be Englishmen still in their hearts and inclinations, but if they be oppressed, they will turn Irish, for fellowship in suffering begets love and unites interests. In his Drapier’s Letters, a series of political pamphlets published in 1724 as he was working on Gulliver’s Travels, Swift likewise expressed his frustration at the anomalous position and unstable status of the Anglo-Irish: Am I a freeman in England, and do I become a slave in six hours by crossing the Channel? Jonathan Swift at the Deanery of St Patrick’s (1905). Wikimedia The focus here on travel as the means by which a free man is transformed into a slave is suggestive of the extent to which the dizzying disorientation and defamiliarisation that characterises Gulliver’s Travels has its roots in the complexities of Swift’s Irish identity.The increasingly popular genre of travel literature in the 18th century functioned, broadly speaking, to establish the perspectives of western European travellers as definitive and authoritative. In contrast, Gulliver’s Travels works to question and radically undermine that position.Part I sees Gulliver as a giant in Lilliput, with much of the satirical humour generated by the fact that the tiny Lilliputians are unaware of the comic incongruity between their size and their sense of their own importance. The "most mighty Emperor of Lilliput” for example – who is about six inches tall – is described as the “delight and terror of the universe” whose dominions “extend five thousand blustrugs (about 12 miles in circumference) to the extremities of the globe”. Although Gulliver’s size suggests that he’s in a dominant position relative to the Lilliputians, this dominance is undermined by the monstrous nature of his huge body. Fearing that simply satisfying his basic need for sustenance will drive their country to famine, the Lilliputians consider killing him. However, they decide against it on the grounds that his immense, rotting corpse would be a source of disease. Part II then sees Gulliver utterly humbled and stripped of authority through the simple device of making him tiny in Brobdingnag, a world of giants. In this situation, it’s Gulliver who fails to recognise the absurd figure he presents as he seeks to convince the king of Brobdingnag of England’s greatness. The king’s damning response to his lengthy account is to pronounce the English “the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth”.Swift’s savage delight in undermining English claims to power and superiority, driven by his experiences as a disenchanted member of the Irish Protestant establishment, is further emphasised in Part III. Here, he visits the flying island of Laputa, where commonsense has been abandoned in favour of the fanciful experiments developed by the “Academy of Projectors”. This group is a satiric take on England’s Royal Society, which was founded in London in 1660 with the aim of promoting scientific enquiry and “improving natural knowledge”. Gulliver Presented to the Queen of Brobdignag by Charles Robert Leslie (1835). National Trust, CC BY-NC Swift’s contempt for projectors (close in meaning to the modern word innovators or speculators) is also evident in his Modest Proposal (1729). In this satirical essay, the great innovation of the self-styled projector is to solve Ireland’s social and economic problems by selling its surplus infant population for human consumption.The profoundly shocking conjunction of rational method and barbaric cruelty that characterises A Modest Proposal is foreshadowed in the final book of Gulliver’s Travels. In this conclusion, the Houyhnhnms, a race of hyper-rational horses, calmly deliberate whether or not to exterminate the Yahoos. This oppressed group are reluctantly recognised by Gulliver as human, but are treated as a bestial subspecies by their horse masters. This chilling episode is rendered all the more disturbing by Gulliver’s agonised unwillingness to acknowledge his kinship with the Yahoos, and his self-abasement to the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver’s deranged insistence on identifying with the Houyhnhnms sees him, when he returns home, take to living alongside his horses rather than his own wife and children. Gulliver’s final madness can be read on one level as a metaphor of the Anglo-Irish dilemma – a portrayal of a colonial population that remains stubbornly allied with a power that actually despises and oppresses them. However, Swift’s achievement is much more far reaching than this.His unique dual perspective within the prevailing power structures of his time enabled him to grasp the folly of believing that one frame of reference is the only one possible. It is this that makes Gulliver’s Travels vitally relevant to contemporary readers 300 years since its first publication. This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.Clíona Ó Gallchoir does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.