Ireland: Oppression and Opportunity

This chapter considers Ireland's condition during the late eighteenth century. The Genevans presented Ireland as a new and stable state, pregnant with possibility for enlightened living and commercial development. Yet that was not entirely the case. At the time, Ireland was undergoing constitutional and economic upheaval. Moreover, Ireland was seen to be in crisis in part because of the effects of events in North America upon trade. Ireland did, however, remain Protestant and a British colony, with an Anglican established church. Thus the events of the late 1770s and early 1780s were a response to the new Ireland that had been created in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.