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Conclusion

Ireland between Empires

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2022

James Stafford
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
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Summary

A complex, triangular relationship existed between Ireland, Britain and France that structured eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debates over the vicissitudes of empire in Ireland. The significance of this relationship, I have suggested, was not reducible to the military threat France occasionally posed to British rule. It lay instead in the influence of Franco-British rivalry and emulation exerted over the political economy of empire, and in the manner this was interpreted by contemporaries in Ireland, Britain and Europe. The threat, and the example, of France inspired British and Irish efforts to reform and consolidate empire, alongside Irish attempts to escape from it. In Ireland, political thinkers across Europe saw not just a land of religious dissension and emergent ‘nationality’, but a vital case study in the workings of mercantile power politics, and in the consequences of the persistence of aristocratic inequality in an era of commercial growth and agrarian transformation. The government of Ireland was not, therefore, a narrowly Irish problem. It lay at a vital intersection between contemporary understandings of commerce, empire and international order.

Type
Chapter
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The Case of Ireland
Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750–1848
, pp. 253 - 260
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Conclusion
  • James Stafford, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: The Case of Ireland
  • Online publication: 27 January 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009031905.008
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  • Conclusion
  • James Stafford, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: The Case of Ireland
  • Online publication: 27 January 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009031905.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conclusion
  • James Stafford, Columbia University, New York
  • Book: The Case of Ireland
  • Online publication: 27 January 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009031905.008
Available formats
×