Catholic Merchants and Anglo-Irish Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century: Commerce, Religion and Society

I will uncover the role of Catholic Ireland in the growth of Britain's Atlantic empire. Catholic Ireland was not simply a colony, peering in from outside the window. The left ventricle of the beating heart of empire, Irish ports channelled manpower, goods and capital across the emerging British world. My research will bridge a lacuna between the traditional Irish historiography and scholars of Britain's imperial fiscal-military state.

In both quantitative and qualitative terms, I will examine the impact of Catholic trade in financing and expanding Britain's empire in the long eighteenth century. Specifically, my Masters research will focus on the role of Irish Catholics in the commercial Atlantic.

For my doctoral research, I will expand its size, chronology and scope. I will examine the global impact of Catholic Irish trade. Accounts of the British Empire in India, Australasia and Africa have increasingly focused on the roles played by the United Kingdom's component cultures and peoples. However, these have overwhelmingly been biased towards Irish and Scotch Protestants; given the illicit nature of Catholic affiliation, the loudest voices in the historical record have often been Protestant, and historians have overlooked the significance of the Irish Catholic contribution.

Studies on Catholic commerce are increasingly popular among British and European historians. I will expand the scope into global, imperial history. I seek to uncover whether we may find a form of 'economic nationalism' in Irish Catholic subjects across the empire. This I will define not only in overt acts of economic patriotism, such as the favouring of 'British' goods, but also in Irish Catholics' active participation in the economic and political systems that underpinned the Empire. This, I believe, will be the defining undercurrent of my doctoral research. It will first be a comprehensive study of one neglected part of British economic history, but it will also look to redefine conceptions of Britishness, and more significantly, Irishness. This, I believe, has implications that go beyond the historiography. Irishness, Britishness, and indeed identity itself, are important contemporary concepts. By examining economic, religious and cultural identity, I believe my research has the potential to have far reaching personal and cultural significance.