Abstract
The introduction surveys theoretical and historiographical approaches to Ireland’s relationship to the British Empire, noting questions generated by earlier scholarship, and proposing a renewed engagement with the topic that avoids the dangers of polarised debate. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the editors emphasise instead, particularities, nuances and complexities to the relationship. The volume is organised around discussions of habitation, representation, resistance/collusion, and networking, among other related aspects of the Irish involvement in the empire.
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- 1.
C.E.B. Brett, Buildings of Belfast, 1700–1914, rev. ed. (Belfast: Friar’s Bush, 1985), 67. See also Richard Davenport-Hines, “Blackwood, Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple, First Marquess of Dufferin and Ava (1806–1902),” last modified 3 January 2008, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/31914.
- 2.
The Case of Ireland, Being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England, Stated, rev. ed. (London: J. Almon, 1770), 111.
- 3.
For an authoritative overview of the political developments of the late eighteenth century, see S.J. Connolly, Divided Kingdom: Ireland, 1630–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 384–484.
- 4.
Alvin Jackson , “Ireland, the Union, and the Empire, 1800–1960,” in Ireland and the British Empire, ed. Kevin Kenny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 124–25. See also David Fitzpatrick, “Ireland and the Empire,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 3: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Andrew N. Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 494–97.
- 5.
Alvin Jackson , Ireland, 1798–1988: War, Peace, and Beyond (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), provides a nuanced narrative of politics in nineteenth-century Ireland.
- 6.
Kevin Kenny , “The Irish in the Empire,” in Ireland and the British Empire, ed. Kevin Kenny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 92.
- 7.
Hiram Morgan , “Empire-Building: An Uncomfortable Irish Heritage,” Linen Hall Review 10 (1993): 8–11.
- 8.
Stephen Howe , Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 4. In addition to Howe’s work, other recent interventions include Clare Carroll and Patricia King, Ireland and Postcolonial Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003); Kenny, ed., Ireland and the British Empire; Joseph Lennon, Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004); Terrence McDonough, ed., Was Ireland a Colony? Economics, Politics and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2005); Julia Wright, Ireland, India and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Kate O’Malley, Ireland, India and Empire: Indo-Irish Radical Connections, 1919–64 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008); Michael Silvestri , Ireland and India: Nationalism, Empire and Memory (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre, Cosmopolitan Nationalism in the Victorian Empire: Ireland, India and the Politics of Alfred Webb (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Keith Jeffery and Robert J. Blyth, eds., The British Empire and its Contested Pasts, Historical Studies XXVI (Irish Academic Press, 2009); Barry Crosbie, Irish Imperial Networks: Migration, Social Communication and Exchange in Nineteenth-Century India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); David Dickson, Justyna Pyz and Christopher Shepard, eds., Irish Classrooms and British Empire: Imperial Contexts in the Origins of Modern Education (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012); Kevin O’Sullivan, Ireland, Africa and the End of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013); Timothy G. McMahon, Michael de Nie and Paul Townend, eds., Ireland in an Imperial World: Citizenship, Opportunity and Subversion (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
- 9.
See, especially, Kenny, “Ireland and the British Empire: An Introduction,” in Ireland and the British Empire, ed. Kenny, 2–4, and Jackson, “Ireland, the Union and the Empire,” 123–25 and 136.
- 10.
It is worth noting that the phrase was earlier used of Ireland by William Molyneux . Arguing that Poyning’s Law was not to be applied to the detriment of Ireland, Molyneux insisted, “his Majesty will be very loth to have such a precious Jewel of his Crown handled so roughly.” See The Case of Ireland, 127.
- 11.
See Kenny, “The Irish in the Empire,” 98–101, and R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London: Penguin Books, 1988), 345. For a recent overview of famine-era migration, see also William J. Smyth, “Exodus from Ireland—Patterns of Emigration,” in Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, 1845–52, eds. John Crowley, William J. Smyth and Mike Murphy (Cork: Cork University Press, 2012), 494–503.
- 12.
Though this term has been criticised for political incorrectness in the wake of Indian-nationalist and postcolonial critiques, we retain its use (though mindful of imperialist implications) as it remains the most convenient and frequently cited shorthand phrase covering the events of 1857.
- 13.
Sir Patrick Cadell, “Irish Soldiers in India,” Irish Sword 1, no. 2 (1950–1951): 79.
- 14.
The Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), for instance, possesses a significant archive of papers from the middle-class Ulster Graham family, several of whom served in India during the mutiny; see A.T. Harrison, ed., The Graham Indian Mutiny Papers (Belfast: PRONI, 1980).
- 15.
Michael Silvestri ’s book, Ireland and India, earlier cited, includes significant discussions of the mutiny and its commemoration in Ireland.
- 16.
Crosbie , Irish Imperial Networks, 17.
- 17.
Emma Rothschild , The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).
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Roberts, D.S., Wright, J.J. (2019). Introduction. In: Roberts, D., Wright, J. (eds) Ireland’s Imperial Connections, 1775–1947. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25984-6_1
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