Colonization And Globalization, Circa 1500-Circa 1800

Funded by: IRCHSS (Irish Research Council for the Humanities & Social Sciences).

Participants

Details

This project assumes, and will establish, that the first effort of modern times to consolidate empires both within Europe and overseas was also that which resulted in trade, communication, labour-recruitment and knowledge being organized inter-intra and trans-nationally. The project will thus demonstrate the existence of proto-globalization long before the 'global age', and will also challenge received wisdom, by demonstrating the interconnectedness of European overseas expansion (where, previously, attention was given to discrete and competitive overseas empires of the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English and French), and by relating consolidations within Europe to European trans-oceanic colonization.

The project leaders have books in hand which, independently, will sustain its two overall themes, but, the primary purpose of this project is to mobilize existing supervisory capacity at NUI, Galway to enable a team of three Ph. D. students to explore particular aspects of the subject as follows:

1. To study a range of European literatures and cartographies promoting and describing overseas endeavour to establish the extent to which promoters of colonization in several European countries shared knowledge, and consciously replicated midified or rejected the rationalizations and achievements of their rivals.

2. To identify and study the endeavours of Irish planters on West Indies islands dominated by the English, the French and the Spanish, with a view to establishing the extent to which, collectively, they advanced communally shared objectives, not necessarily incompatible with the nationally-focussed targets of the European promoters of overseas empire.

3. To examine the inter-relationships between recruitment of white labour for European settlements overseas, with military and naval recruitment during these same centuries.

Publications from this project

"I Cappuccini Europei nell' America Francese nella prima metà del seicento", article published in Miscellanea di storia delle esplorazioni geografiche, XXVII, Genova, Bozzi, 2002, pp.85-109.

"L'Acadia e i missionari francesi: un rapporto difficile", acts of the international meeting "Culture e letterature di lingua francese in Canada", 17-19 May 2004, Monopoli (Bari), pp.131-138.

"Les activités des missionnaires catholiques romains en Acadie/Nouvelle-Écosse (1610-1755)", Les Cahiers de la société historique acadienne, pp.4-29.

"James Jones: An Irish Catholic missionary in Nova Scotia, 1785-1800", acts of the international meeting "Il Canada e le rotte della libertà", 5-9 October 2005, Monopoli (Bari), pp.569-575. Viaggiatori e missionari nel settecento. Pacifique de Provins fra Levante, Acadia, e Guyana (1622-1648), Genova: Edizioni Città del Silenzio, 2006, 98 pp.

- "Le rôle et les activités des missionnaires catholiques en Acadie de 1610 à 1710", Revue Histoire Ecclesiastique, vol.102 (2007), nr°2, pp.428-445.

- "Capucins, jésuites et récollets en Acadie de 1610 à 1710 : une première évangélisation assez chaotique", Histoire & Missions Chretiennes, nr.2, pp.163-176.

"Few, Uncooperative, and Endangered: The Troubled Activity of the Roman Catholic missionaries in Acadia (1610-1710)", in Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society, Journal, vol.10 (2007), pp. 147-162.