Empire and Emancipation: Scottish and Irish Catholics at the Atlantic Fringe, 1780-1850
S. Karly Kehoe, "Empire and Emancipation: Scottish and Irish Catholics at the Atlantic Fringe, 1780-1850 "
English | ISBN: 1487541074 | 2022 | 302 pages | PDF | 10 MB
English | ISBN: 1487541074 | 2022 | 302 pages | PDF | 10 MB
Empire and Emancipation explores how the agency of Scottish and Irish Catholics redefined understandings of Britishness and British imperial identity in colonial landscapes. In highlighting the relationship of Scottish and Irish Catholics with the British Empire, S. Karly Kehoe starts an important and timely debate about Britain’s colonizer constituencies.
The colonies of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, Newfoundland, and Trinidad had some of the British Empire’s earliest, largest, and most diverse Catholic populations. These were also colonial spaces where Catholics exerted significant influence. Given the extent to which Scottish and Irish Catholics were constrained at home by crippling legislation, long-established patterns of socio-economic exclusion, and increasing discrimination, the British Empire functioned as the main outlet for their ambition. Kehoe shows how they engaged with and benefitted from the security needs of an expanding empire, the aspirations of an emerging middle class, and Rome’s desire to expand its influence in British territories.
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