Metropole and Colony: Irish Networks and Patronage in the Eighteenth-Century Empire

This study examines how social networks helped to overcome problems of physical distance in the British Empire during the eighteenth century. In particular, it explores the relationships between ethnicity, patronage and place by focusing on a group of Irish professionals. By piecing together connections between lawyers, merchants and medical doctors in various places including Ireland, London, Jamaica and Senegambia, this essay suggests that Irish networks were flexible enough to allow for dialogue, disagreement and change, but were also durable enough to transcend time and space. These qualities were crucial for sustaining the obligations of patronage that characterised the ‘Old Society' of eighteenth-century Britain and generated the means to overcome some practical problems of imperialism.