Ireland, France, and the Atlantic in a Time of War

In March 1757 ¿ early in the Seven Years¿ War ¿ a British privateer intercepted an Irish ship, the Two Sisters of Dublin, as it returned home from Bordeaux with a cargo of wine and French luxury goods. Amongst the cargo seized were 125 letters from members of the Irish expatriate community, which were to lay undisturbed in the British archives for the next 250 years. This edited collection is not so much "about" the 1757 Bordeaux-Dublin letters as reflections on themes, perspectives, and questions embedded in the mail of ordinary men, women, and children cut off from home by war in the mid-eighteenth century. The introduction situates the essays within a broad Atlantic context.