Irish Imperial Networks


Book Description

This is an innovative study of the role of Ireland and the Irish in the British Empire which examines the intellectual, cultural and political interconnections between nineteenth-century British imperial, Irish and Indian history. Barry Crosbie argues that Ireland was a crucial sub-imperial centre for the British Empire in South Asia that provided a significant amount of the manpower, intellectual and financial capital that fuelled Britain's drive into Asia from the 1750s onwards. He shows the important role that Ireland played as a centre for recruitment for the armed forces, the medical and civil services and the many missionary and scientific bodies established in South Asia during the colonial period. In doing so, the book also reveals the important part that the Empire played in shaping Ireland's domestic institutions, family life and identity in equally significant ways.




Wales and the British overseas empire


Book Description

This unique collection of essays is the first book to explore the many relationships that developed between Wales and the British overseas empire between 1650 and 1830. Written by leading specialists in the field, the essays explore economic, social, cultural, political, and religious interactions between Wales and the empire. The geographical coverage is very broad, with examinations of the contributions made by Wales to expansion in the Atlantic world, Caribbean, and South Asia. The book explores Welsh influences on the emergence of ‘British’ imperialism, as well as the impact that the empire had upon the development of Wales itself. The book will be of interest to academic historians, postgraduate students, and undergraduates. It will be indispensable to those interested in the history of Wales, Britain, and the empire, as well as those who wish to compare Welsh imperial experiences with those of the English, Irish, and Scots.




The Cambridge History of Ireland: Volume 3, 1730–1880


Book Description

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was an era of continuity as well as change. Though properly portrayed as the era of 'Protestant Ascendancy' it embraces two phases - the eighteenth century when that ascendancy was at its peak; and the nineteenth century when the Protestant elite sustained a determined rear-guard defence in the face of the emergence of modern Catholic nationalism. Employing a chronology that is not bound by traditional datelines, this volume moves beyond the familiar political narrative to engage with the economy, society, population, emigration, religion, language, state formation, culture, art and architecture, and the Irish abroad. It provides new and original interpretations of a critical phase in the emergence of a modern Ireland that, while focused firmly on the island and its traditions, moves beyond the nationalist narrative of the twentieth century to provide a history of late early modern Ireland for the twenty-first century.




British and Irish Experiences and Impressions of Central Europe, c.1560–1688


Book Description

Whilst much recent scholarly work has sought to place early modern British and Irish history within a broader continental context, most of this has focused on western or northern Europe. In order to redress the balance, this new study by David Worthington explores the connections linking writers and expatriates from the later Tudor and Stuart kingdoms with the two major dynastic conglomerates east of the Rhine, the Austrian Habsburg lands and Poland-Lithuania. Drawing on a variety of sources, including journals, diaries, letters and travel accounts, the book not only shows the high level of scholarly interest evidenced within contemporary English language works about the region, but how many more British and Irish people ventured there than is generally recognised. As well as the soldiers, merchants and diplomats one might expect, we discover more unexpected and colourful characters, including a polymath Irish moral theologian in Vienna, an orphaned English poetess in Prague, a Welsh humanist in Cracow, and a Scottish physician and botanist at the Vasa court in Warsaw. This examination of the diverse range of Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English religious, intellectual, political, military and commercial contacts with central Europe provides not only a more balanced view of British and Irish history, but also continues the process of reintegrating the histories of the European regions. Furthermore, by extending the focus of research beyond widely studied areas, towards other more illuminating, international aspects, the book challenges scholars to analyse these networks within less parochial, and more transnational settings.




This House Is Not a Home: European Everyday Life in Canton and Macao 1730–1830


Book Description

Lisa Hellman offers the first study of European everyday life in Canton and Macao. How foreigners could live, communicate, move around – even whom they could interaction with – were all things strictly regulated by the Chinese authorities. The Europeans sometimes adapted to, and sometimes subverted, these rules. Focusing on this conditional domesticity shows the importance of gender relations, especially the construction of masculinity. Using the Swedish East India Company, a minor European actor in an expanding Asian empire, as a point of entry highlights the multiplicity of actors taking part in local negotiations of power. The European attempts at making a home in China contributes to a global turn in everyday history, but also to an everyday turn in global history.




The First Irish Cities


Book Description

The untold story of a group of Irish cities and their remarkable development before the age of industrialization A backward corner of Europe in 1600, Ireland was transformed during the following centuries. This was most evident in the rise of its cities, notably Dublin and Cork. David Dickson explores ten urban centers and their patterns of physical, social, and cultural evolution, relating this to the legacies of a violent past, and he reflects on their subsequent partial eclipse. Beautifully illustrated, this account reveals how the country's cities were distinctive and--through the Irish diaspora--influential beyond Ireland's shores.




Conflict, Commerce and Franco-Scottish Relations, 1560–1713


Book Description

Using untapped archival sources from Britain, France and America, Talbott presents a comparative view of British relations with France over the long seventeenth century.




Goods from the East, 1600-1800


Book Description

Goods from the East focuses on the fine product trade's first Global Age: how products were made, marketed and distributed between Asia and Europe between 1600 and 1800. It brings together established scholars as well as new, to provide a full comparative and connective study of this trade.




Sustaining the Fleet, 1793-1815


Book Description

An assessment of the work of the contractors who were commissioned by the Victualling Board to provision the fleet in this period. Provisioning the fleet, and the army overseas, during the French Wars of 1793-1815 was a major undertaking. This book explains how the Victualling Board in London handled this enormous task, focusing in particular on contractors -that is the merchants and brokers, who provided a vast range of commodities including flour and biscuit, salt beef and pork, as well as huge quantities of fresh water and coal, and every other item needed. It shows how these merchants could be large or small concerns, and provides detailed case studies of different kinds of contractors, including examples of contractors based both in Britain and in the navy's overseas bases. The book demonstrates how, overall, the contracting system represented the mobilisation of a substantial part of the British economy for war; how the performance of contracting was effective, with little or no corruption; and how the contractors took considerable financial risks and made only reasonable margins. It assesses the performance of the Victualling Board, arguing that this was good, and that the problem in the major area of weakness - accounting - was quickly addressed following a major crisis in 1808-09. It concludes that this was "an impressive performance" by the state, but that the overwhelming advantage was the resilience of the market, and that it was "upon the success of the contractors that the war at sea was won." For most of his career, ROGER KNIGHT was on the staff of the National Maritime Museum, leaving as Deputy Director in 2000. Since then he has taught at the Greenwich Maritime Institute at the University of Greenwich, where he is currently Visiting Professor of Naval History. MARTIN WILCOX completed a doctorate in maritime history at the University of Hull, and has been employed as postdoctoral research fellow at Greenwich Maritime Institute since 2006.