The Amity Papers: Thomas Truxes, Jane Ohlmeyer, and John Shovlin

This event coincides with publication of a new book on a significant event in Irish history: the 1690 Siege of limerick, the only major Catholic victory in the Williamite War (1689–1691). To celebrate the publication of The Amity Papers, 1690: The Siege of Limerick and Franco-Irish Mercantile Networks by the British Academy and Oxford University Press, the leading authority on late 17 th-century Ireland, Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History (1762) at Trinity College Dublin, will join the authors, Professor Tom Truxes of Glucksman Ireland House and Professoe John Shovlin of NYU’s History Department, in a discussion of the book’s significance as a window into Irish society at a turning point in the nation’s history.

In late September 1690 – in the midst of war – a small Irish trading ship, the Amity of Limerick, set out for France. Somewhere south of England, the Amity was seized as a prize of war by an English warship, HMS Nonsuch. In December, following legal proceedings that led to confiscation of the ship and cargo, the 74 documents contained in the Amity’s mailbag were bound together, sealed, and added to the huge collection of records of the English High Court of Admiralty. When in early 2016 the documents were discovered by archivists at the British National Archives, the seal was broken and Professor Truxes was invited to London to assess the significance of the collection. Immediately, in partnership with Professor Shovlin, the two set to work transcribing and contextualizing these rare documents in preparation for publication.

There is nothing in print comparable to The Amity Papers, 1690. Eye-witness accounts of the first siege of Limerick and its aftermath are exceedingly rare and, until now, have been available only in state papers, military dispatches, and memoirs of contemporary political figures. The Amity Papers — by far the largest collection of its kind — dramatically enriches our understanding of the stirring events of 1690 from the perspective of ordinary men and women trapped in the vice of late-seventeenth-century siege warfare. In addition, the documents are rich in detail on Limerick’s wartime trade, as well as the thriving Irish expatriate communities in France at Nantes, La Rochelle, Saint-Malo, and Rouen.

Thomas M. Truxes is Clinical Professor in Irish Studies and History at Glucksman Ireland House NYU. His research interests include early-modern Irish history; Ireland and the Atlantic world before 1800; early-modern maritime history and the overseas trade of British America; and eighteenth-century urban life, particularly in New York City. His recent book The Overseas Trade of British America: A Narrative History (Yale 2021) received The Society of Colonial Wars in the State of New York's 69th Annual Distinguished Book Award.

Jane Ohlmeyer is Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Modern History (1762) at Trinity College Dublin and Chair of the Irish Research Council, which funds frontier research across all disciplines. She is an expert on the New British and Atlantic Histories and has published extensively on early modern Irish and British history. She is the author or editor of numerous articles and 13 books. She is the editor of Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of Ireland, published in 2018. Her most recent book is an edition of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon's A Short View of the State and Condition of the Kingdom of Ireland (Oxford, 2020).

John Shovlin is Professor of History at New York University. His research focuses on the history of capitalism in Europe from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. His first book, The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism and the Origins of the French Revolution explored the political economic debates that helped catalyze the French Revolution. His current research focuses on understanding how capitalism shaped global politics, and vice versa, from the seventeenth century to the present.

Host or Publisher Glucksman Ireland House NYU