The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750–1848 (Ideas in Context, Series Number 138)

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries have long been seen as a foundational period for modern Irish political traditions such as nationalism, republicanism and unionism. "The case of Ireland" offers a fresh account of Ireland's neglected role in European debates about commerce and empire in what was a global era of war and revolution. Drawing on a broad range of writings from merchants, agrarian improvers, philosophers, politicians and revolutionaries across Europe, this book shows how Ireland became a field of conflict and projection between rival visions of politics in commercial society, associated with the warring empires of Britain and France. It offers a new perspective on the crisis and transformation of the British Empire at the end of the eighteenth century, and restores Ireland to its rightful place at the centre of European intellectual history "In the closing decades of the eighteenth century, Ireland became the object of a vigorous debate concerning the promise and perils of commerce in an era of global war and revolution. This debate concerned not just the identity and future of the Irish polity itself, but of the British Empire of which it was a central part; and the relationship of that empire to its European allies and rivals. As such, it had many participants: not only Irish and British, but French, German, Swiss and Italian"-- Provided by publisher Demonstrating Ireland's central role in European debates about empire and commerce in the global age of revolutions, this pathbreaking book offers a new perspective on the crisis and transformation of the British Empire at the end of the eighteenth century, and restores Ireland to its rightful place at the centre of European intellectual history.