Upheavals in landownership typically change not only the concentration of land between individuals but also the group identity of its owners. We argue that elites’ group identity has distinct implications from land concentration for the provision of local public goods. To disentangle these theoretical pathways, we study the long-run impact of the Cromwellian Settlement in 17th century Ireland. Leveraging the lottery-based allocation of expropriated Catholic land to different English Protestant recipients, we find significant and persistent local variation in the extent of land owned by Protestants. Drawing on rich original data sources spanning nearly two centuries, we find that local public goods, such as schools and workhouses, became scarcer in areas more intensively exposed to colonial Protestant settlement. Broader economic outcomes, however, show only muted differences. The results underscore the local legacies of settler colonialism and highlight the distinct consequences of inequality between identity-based groups.