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"In March 1757--towards the beginning of the Seven Years' War--a British privateer intercepted the ship The Two Sisters of Dublin as it returned from Bordeaux with a cargo of wine in defiance of government prohibitions forbidding trade with France. Amongst the cargo seized were 125 letters from members of the Irish expatriate community, which were to lay undisturbed in the British archives for the next 250 years. Re-discovered in 2011 by Dr. Truxes, this cache of (mostly unopened) letters provides a colorful, intimate and revealing glimpse into the lives of ordinary people caught up in momentous events. Taking this correspondence (published by the British Academy in 2013) as a shared starting point, the ten essays in this volume are not so much 'about' the Bordeaux-Dublin letters themselves, but rather reflect upon on themes, perspectives, and questions embedded within the mail of ordinary men, women, and children cut off from home by war. The volume's introduction situates these essays within a broad Atlantic context, allowing the succeeding chapters to explore a range of topics at the cutting edge of early-modern British and Irish historical scholarship, including women in the early-modern world, the consequences of war across all classes in society, the eighteenth-century penal laws and their impact, and Irish expatriate communities on the European Continent. Leavening these broad themes with the personal snapshots of life provided by the Bordeaux-Dublin letters, this edited collection enlarges, complicates, and challenges our understanding of the mid-eighteenth-century Atlantic World"--Provided by publisher Introduction: A connected Irish world / Thomas M. Truxes -- The Irish colony in Bordeaux, 1757: a representative sample of Irish communities abroad? / Nicholas Canny -- The Boyds in Bordeaux and Dublin / L.M. Cullen -- "Precarious and dangerous times" : Ireland and France and the spectre of invasion, 1690-1760 / James Kelly -- Seven sisters? : the seaport cities of mid-eighteenth-century Ireland / David Dickson -- Prize-taking : its role in maritime strategy and ultimate success in the Seven Years' War / Daniel A. Baugh -- The outset and course of the Seven Years' War in Bordeaux, 1755-1763 / Jean-Pierre Poussou -- Fate, providence, and trust in the Atlantic / Karen Ordahl Kupperman -- Between lines : language, intimacy, and voyeurism during global war / Christian Ayne Crouch -- "It is with pleasure I lay hold of evry occasion of wrightin'" : female domestic servants, the Bordeaux-Dublin letters, and the epistolary novel / Marie-Louise Coolahan -- Spanish subornment of English and Irish textile workers, 1749-1756 / Thomas O'Connor -- Appendix 1: Shipping movements, Bordeaux, 1754-1766 -- Appendix 2: Overview of trade with the British Isles, 1723-1773 -- Appendix 3: Trade with the British Isles, 1755-1766 -- Appendix 4: Bordeaux's trade with the British Isles, 1733, 1753, 1773 -- Appendix 5: Selected exports to the British Isles compared with those to other countries
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