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We’ve seen some heated debate this week but today let’s celebrate all the excellent work that has been and is being done on questions of Ireland, empire and race. Please pitch in with your own suggestions here and we can use this as a crowdsourced bibliography.
On Ireland and slavery, Nini Rodgers book is a must read. @Limerick1914 has been doing important work on the topic on Irish connections to slavery and their contemporary legacies for years. My colleague @KateJHodgson has been looking Irish involvement in the French slave trade.
My colleague here at UCC @hiramjmorgan has done v interesting stuff on Ireland and Empire in the Early Modern period. Nicholas Canny in Galway has been writing Ireland's place in the emerging British Empire for years. I am also a big fan of Gearóid O'Tuathaigh's comparative work
On Ireland's place in the imperial Atlantic @ciaranon in Trinity is doing great work while his colleague @SpeakerConolly has looked at how imperialism shaped culture, society and economy in 18th century Ireland. I'd love more recommendations for this type of work.
I really enjoyed reading this volume edited by the brilliant @TimTimothy87, Michael de Nie and Paul Townend. It covers a very broad range of topics and perspectives and is well worth checking out: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137596369
There's also this edited volume on 'Ireland's Imperial Collections' which is sitting on my shelf in my quarantined office in UCC. Looks fascinating: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030259839
I have learned so much from @swgannon's excellent twitter stream about the ambiguous place of the Irish (both pre and post-independence) in the apparatus of the British imperial state in the Middle East and beyond. He is definitely worth a follow.
Literature on Irish administrators of Empire is a weak spot in my knowledge so appreciate suggestions here. I know Barry Crosbie has done important work on the role Irish administrators played in India but I'm sure there is other great stuff out there too. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/irish-imperial-networks/AE1FA4F5AA222FF14DD3289DF1EBB7F8
How Irish nationalists related to British imperial expansion in the 19th century is another fascinating area of research. Matthew Kelly and Paul Townend have done really interesting work on this. I learned a lot from this article: https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/194/1/139/2260876
The @globalirishrev project has done great work to shine a lot on how the Irish Revolution impacted on other imperial spaces around the world. The forthcoming book will be fascinating with contributions on India, Egypt, Korea, Algeria (from me!) and much much more.
I really loved @KOM_acc's book on Ireland, India and Empire: Indo-Irish radical connections, which explores both the potential and limits of cross-colonial solidarities. This is another field where there is a wide literature so keep suggestions coming: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719081712/
Ireland's missionaries occupy a fascinating and ambiguous place in our history as sometimes agents of, sometimes opponents of imperialism. Fiona Bateman's work is an essential read, I must check out Fiona Loughnanne's work on missionaries and photography. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230228726_13
The question of Ireland's own coloniality, if and how postcolonial theory applies here has generated lots of scholarship. Clare Carroll and Patricia King's edited volume might be a good place to start engaging with this: https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268022877/ireland-and-postcolonial-theory/
For a countervailing opinion that pushes back against the relevance of postcolonial theory to an Irish context see Denis Donoghue's piece. https://www.chronicle.com/article/fears-for-irish-studies-in-an-age-of-identity-politics/
I am a bit of a Gearóid O Tuathaigh fan boy but I must say I found his measured assessment of these debates in this book chapter to be excellent. Definitely worth a read: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137450753_3
Thanks to @SpeakerConolly from reminding me of this pioneering article from W.A. Hart on Africans in Eighteenth Century Ireland. It's a really important piece of scholarship and a cracking read! https://www-jstor-org.ucc.idm.oclc.org/stable/pdf/30006953.pdf
There's loads more excellent scholarship out there so keep the suggestions coming. I'd also love recommendations for accessible texts that tough on these issues. For example, I very much enjoyed @fallon_donal's podcast on Guinness in Nigeria https://podtail.com/en/podcast/three-castles-burning/from-the-liberties-to-lagos-guinness-and-nigeria/
If I'm ever to publish my own research on the settlement of Irish peasants in colonial Algeria and on perceptions of the Irish revolution among Algerian nationalists, I need to get off Twitter so I'll leave it there for now but look forward to your suggestions!
