The book will enlarge, complicate, and challenge our understanding of the eighteenth-century European and Atlantic worlds.

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. Re-discovered in 2011 by Dr. Truxes, this cache of (mostly unopened) letters provides a colorful, intimate, and revealing glimpse into the lives of ordinary people caught up in momentous events. Taking this correspondence (published by the British Academy in 2013) as a shared starting point, the ten essays in this volume are not so much "about" the Bordeaux–Dublin letters themselves, but rather reflect upon themes, perspectives, and questions embedded within the mail of ordinary men, women, and children cut off from home by war. The volume’s introduction situates these essays within a broad Atlantic context, allowing the succeeding chapters to explore a range of topics at the cutting edge of early-modern British and Irish historical scholarship, including women in the early-modern world, the consequences of war across all classes in society, the eighteenth-century penal laws and their impact, and Irish expatriate communities on the European continent. Leavening these broad themes with the personal snapshots of life provided by the Bordeaux-Dublin letters, this edited collection enlarges, complicates, and challenges our understanding of the mid-eighteenth-century Atlantic world.

125 letters carried aboard a ship, the Two Sisters of Dublin, captured at sea in 1757, in the midst of the Seven Years War (1756-1763). Most of the letters lay unopened for 250 years until they were rediscovered in the UK National Archives in 2011.

A unique look at the meaning of the taste for wine in Britain, from the establishment of a Commonwealth in 1649 to the Commercial Treaty between Britain and France in 1860 - this book provides an extraordinary window into the politics and culture of England and Scotland just as they were becoming the powerful British state.

The Irish traders who settled in the Charente area moved on to the rapidly growing brandy trade by the mid-18 century. The struggles of these families are described when Ireland fleetingly became the central point of the international brandy business.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was an era of continuity as well as change. Though properly portrayed as the era of 'Protestant Ascendancy' it embraces two phases - the eighteenth century when that ascendancy was at its peak; and the nineteenth century when the Protestant elite sustained a determined rear-guard defence in the face of the emergence of modern Catholic nationalism. Employing a chronology that is not bound by traditional datelines, this volume moves beyond the familiar political narrative to engage with the economy, society, population, emigration, religion, language, state formation, culture, art and architecture, and the Irish abroad. It provides new and original interpretations of a critical phase in the emergence of a modern Ireland that, while focused firmly on the island and its traditions, moves beyond the nationalist narrative of the twentieth century to provide a history of late early modern Ireland for the twenty-first century.

Bordeaux Legends traces the 500-year history of the five world-renowned Bordeaux wines known as "First Growths"--four crowned in 1855, and Mouton Rothschild joining them more than a century later. Wine educator and journalist Jane Anson presents the fascinating story of what it means to be a first-growth wine, what makes these wines so extraordinary, and what that means to the legions of merchants, dealers, and wine lovers who hold them in such high esteem. For the first time, this book brings the estate's separate stories together into one sweeping saga, filled with revealing anecdotes and lively historical detail. With a foreword by Academy Award-winning director and winery owner Francis Ford Coppola and stunning new photographs, this book makes it clear why these five wines are considered among the very best in the world. Praise for Bordeaux Legends "The book is full of the romance of these iconic chateaus, but it also offers interesting details about the business of running their global empires. Ultimately, Anson's book is a look at the complexities of producing the wines that many consider to be among the world's best." --The San Jose Mercury News online