The Bordeaux-Dublin Letters, 1757 : Correspondence of an Irish Community Abroad

The book presents 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. The letters from members of the Irish community in Bordeaux and their relatives, friends and trading partners in Ireland communicate the concerns and understandings of ordinary people in a diasporic community during wartime.Written by sailors, merchants, servants, prisoners of war, priests, clerks, and many women, the letters vividly illustrate social and economic structures familiar to historians of early modern trade and the expatriate communities of the Atlantic world.They underline the central role of familial relationships in structuring commerce, and illustrate how communities were sustained across wide expanses of ocean by streams of correspondence, by favours asked and received, and by a flow of commodities, gifts, m