Sons of Exile: An Atlantic History of the United Irishmen, 1795-1830

Muiris MacGiollabhui
History
UC Santa Cruz

The intention of this project was to construct an Atlantic history of the United Irishmen from 1795 until 1830 that understood them less as Irish revolutionaries, and more as revolutionaries from Ireland who existed within an increasingly subversive Atlantic World. Their exile, which occurred in advance of the larger Irish diaspora of the nineteenth century, brought the United Irishmen north to Newfoundland and south into the armies of Simon Bolívar. In the West Indies they could be found living among Jamaican Maroons, and in the American South they became entrenched in the plantocracy. The United Irishmen, and the diversity of their experiences provide the opportunity to understand the contradictions and continuities that exemplified a revolutionary Atlantic World.