ABSTRACT
This chapter represents the author’s career-long research into the demographics of the Irish community in Bordeaux. In this essay, Poussou establishes the most definitive list to date of the number and names of all the people in the Irish community throughout the eighteenth century. He shows how and why emigration from Ireland to Bordeaux occurred in waves, and how and why wars between Britain and France impacted trade and the size of the Irish community. Lastly, Poussou contextualizes the Irish community in comparison to other foreign merchant communities in Bordeaux, as well as to other Irish merchant communities in France and Spain, and concludes that they had a major impact on the economic and social life of the city even into the twentieth century.
