ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book illustrates how historians with very different specializations and research interests might – if left to their own devices – respond to a single archival source. It establishes a basic context for the essays by providing sketches of Ireland and France in the period of the Bordeaux–Dublin letters, as well as a brief overview of the early phase of the Seven Years' War. The book surveys the Irish abroad in Europe (Great Britain, the Low Countries, France, and Iberia) and America (the British and "foreign" West Indies and North America) in the era of the Seven Years' War. It explores connectivity in eighteenth-century Atlantic society by sampling the richness of the Bordeaux–Dublin letters, looking as well at the political, sectarian, cultural, and linguistic issues that shaped identity within Bordeaux's Irish colony.
