Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content

Inaugural Lecture: Rum, Salt Beef and the Loa: transatlantic connections between Ireland and the French Antilles (QUB)

Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited or keynote talk at national or international conference

Description

Ireland’s connection to Atlantic plantation colonies has been the subject of much recent scholarship. The fact that the Irish were often slave-owners, planters and merchants has come to complicate the “Green Atlantic” paradigm, which emphasizes Irish victimhood (as indentured workers; migrants; refugees). This research, however, privileges the Anglophone Caribbean, neglecting another crucial story: the trans-empire connections, which criss-cross the parallel national-linguistic lines along which Caribbean history has been imagined and understood. The most enduring and significant of these is between Ireland and the territories annexed primarily by the French (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint-Domingue/Haiti). In this talk, I investigate the ways in which the Irish travelled to and operated in these islands, then interrogate the multiple, complex and often contradictory meanings that attach to Irishness in the French Caribbean imaginary.
Period18 Jun 2026
Held atSchool of Arts, English and Languages
Degree of RecognitionLocal