Munster and India

While historians have for some time interpreted early modern Ireland within a broader Atlantic context of expansion and settlement, it will be argued here on the basis of a family-based case study that aspects of the quickly evolving society of the southwestern province of Munster are more profitably comprehended within a global template of colonial capitalism. ¹ It is proposed accordingly that an expansive geographical and cultural perspective illustrates similarities in an early phase of English colonial expansion which enriches understanding of a fascinating process of simultaneous conflict and accommodation, and which is suggestive of new research directions in the history of early modern Ireland. The value of family history in a global context has been ably demonstrated by Emma Rothschild in her study of the Johnstone brothers and sisters who lived in Scotland and around the world during tumultuous and rapidly changing times in the eighteenth century. In writing the story of a relatively minor family, Rothschild has aimed to enhance knowledge of new ideas and sentiments which were deeply influential in the context of the period and the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Presenting her work as a form of microhistory, Rothschild argues that it offers ‘new ways of connecting the microhistories of individuals and families to the larger scenes of which they were a part’. ² Not dissimilarly, the fortunes of the Hedges family of Munster were shaped and influenced by the political and social upheavals of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland. Moreover, participation by members of the family in the colonial commercial ventures of the East India Company complements their experience in Munster. Therefore, consideration of the experience of the brothers Richard and Robert Hedges results in a combination of local and global perspectives, which enables a textured appreciation of early modern English colonialism. If the following account of Richard and Robert Hedges is fundamentally about their single-minded quest for wealth and influence in Ireland and India, reconstruction of their story also highlights new research themes in early modern Irish material, cultural and economic history, and the allied utility of sources as diverse as Gaelic poetry and legal deeds.