Navigating revolutions and restorations : the Irish colleges in Paris and Rome between 1772 and 1849

Abstract

Scholarship on the Irish in Europe has flourished in recent decades and studies examining the network(s) of Irish Catholic continental colleges and their members have formed a significant part of this. However, much of the existing literature focuses on the early modern period, while the nineteenth century has been comparatively neglected. While patterns of Irish migration began to shift in the eighteenth century and legislation previously imposed on Catholics and dissenting Protestants in Ireland was gradually repealed, this thesis shows that these institutions and their residents remained important nodes connecting Irish people and continental Europe. Drawing on material from a mixture of state, church and newspaper archives in Paris, Rome and Ireland, this thesis builds on earlier literature and constructs a fuller analysis of the two Irish Colleges during the first half of the nineteenth century. It establishes why they proved to be so enduring; how they navigated the challenges they faced and the extent to which the nature of their role in relation to their host cities and Ireland was transformed by the process of adaptation and development. It highlights the connections and disconnections within and between the Colleges, as well as with their host cities, the broader Irish community in Europe and, of course, with Ireland itself. These relationships could be shaped—indeed in some cases strained—by the revolutions, regime changes and wars that punctuated the period, and also by political, social and economic developments back in Ireland. As Catholic institutions, the Colleges were frequently impacted by changing relations between the church and the state. Moreover, as Irish institutions composed of subjects of Britain, shifting relations between states, whether France and Britain, Britain and the Papal States or the Papal States and France, were also significant.