In its examination of the colonial connections that bound nineteenth-century Ireland and India together, this book has highlighted the central role played by Ireland and Irish people in the construction and expansion of the ‘Second British Empire’ during the ‘long’ nineteenth century. As an alternative to the existing historiography on the Irish diaspora that focuses almost exclusively on Irish settlement and migration to North America and Australasia, it has stressed the ubiquitous influence and distinctiveness of Irish presence in constructing and maintaining almost two centuries of British colonial rule in South Asia. Moreover, the persistence of Irish networks in India throughout this period has demonstrated just how important both Ireland and India were in the discourses and practice of modern British empire-building and ‘imperial globalisation’. By examining patterns of Irish migration, social communication and exchange, this study has brought into sharper focus the different coexisting layers of identities of Irish men and women during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a recognition of which challenges the dialectical formula that so often positions Irish nationalism and unionism as being irreconcilable under the Union. Once divided by religious and political considerations in Ireland, domiciled Irish men and women in India (Anglicans, Catholics and Presbyterians from varying social classes and economic backgrounds) were drawn together in a common imperial bond – a long-standing and multifaceted association that had important implications for the development of British and Irish identity alike.

In describing the multiplicity of Irish connections within the context of Britain’s Indian Empire, the book demonstrates how ‘imperial networks’ (and their resultant relationships) were always subject to constant change and flux – responding to both local and international events – and how they were used by their contemporaries (settlers, migrants and indigenous agents) as mechanisms for the exchange of a whole set of ideas, practices and goods during the colonial era. Moreover, approaches to the study of Ireland’s imperial past that facilitate such connections allow us to move beyond the old ‘coloniser–colonised’ debate to address the issue of whether Ireland or the varieties of Irishness of its imperial servants and settlers made a specific difference to the experience of empire. By focusing upon a cross-section of nineteenth-century Irish society in India (Irish elites and the less well connected alike) – and their resultant interconnections – we can reveal much about Ireland’s multidirectional involvement in the nineteenth-century British Empire.