ABSTRACT
The outbreak of the Seven Years' War in May 1756 set Britain and France at military loggerheads for the second time in two decades. War inevitably shaped the conduct of state business in both jurisdictions and disrupted patterns of trade, exchange, and human movement. This chapter seeks to survey the history of Protestant fears of a French invasion in the early eighteenth century. It also seeks to explore the mood of the Protestant community in Ireland in the 1750s, focusing in particular on the two years leading up to the declaration of war in May 1756. The chapter briefly explores the challenges posed to ordinary members of the Irish émigré community in Bordeaux and its environs and the smaller number of French subjects in Ireland, by the fact that the jurisdictions in which they were resident were at war.
