The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750-1848

Description

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.

James Stafford studied history at Oxford and Cambridge, completing his doctoral research in 2016. After postdoctoral work in Oxford and Bielefeld he is now Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University. He is a frequent commentator on contemporary British and European politics for a range of outlets, and was co-editor of Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy from 2015-20.