Dr. Patrick Walsh
Associate Professor, History
Biography
am an economic, social and political historian of eighteenth-century Ireland. My current research investigates the processes of state formation in eighteenth-century Ireland within a comparative imperial perspective. I am especially interested in the ways in which the agents of the emerging Irish state negotiated and collaborated with the different interests and groups within Irish society and have written extensively on the history of Irish taxation and the Irish version of the fiscal military state. To this end I have also collaborated with colleagues in the National University of Ireland, Galway on a database of Ireland's international trade, 1683-1829 while I am also co-investigator on the Irish Residential Army Barracks project at UCD. Most recently I have become increasingly interested in the history of Irish property in the long eighteenth-century and its financial and other connections to empire. Prior to coming to Trinity I taught at University College London (UCL) and previous to that I held an IRC-Marie Curie-Sklodowska postdoctoral mobility fellowship jointly at UCL and UCD.
I am currently Co- PI (with Dr Andrew MacKillop, University of Glasgow) on a project funded by the AHRC and the IRC digital humanities networking scheme entitled Comparing and Combining Early Modern Irish and Scottish Land Records: New Transkribus and Natural Language Processing Approaches
I am also Co-PI (with Dr Ciaran O'Neill) on the Trinity Colonial Legacies project
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Patrick Walsh, `This Thing Called a Bank": Swift"s Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture and the 1720 national bank proposals, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 39, 2025
Trinity"s Colonial Legacies. Transparency, Instrumentality, and Agency in an Engaged Research Project in, editor(s)Peter Bille Larsen, Markéta K"ížová, Gertjan Plets, , Dealing with Complex Heritage: Revisiting University Pasts in Contemporary Practice, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2025, [Patrick Walsh, Mobeen Hussain, Ciaran O'Neill]
Patrick Walsh, Review of The Case of Ireland: Commerce, Empire and the European Order, 1750"1848 ., American Historical Review, 129, (4), 2024, p1834 - 1835
Mobeen Hussain, Ciaran O'Neill and Patrick Walsh,, Report on George Berkeley's Legacies at Trinity, 2023
Speaker William Conolly (1662"1729) in, editor(s)Ruth Thorpe, Mary Heffernan , Portrait of a Family: The Conollys of Castletown, Dublin, Wordwell Press, 2023, pp1 - 10, [Patrick Walsh]
Katherine Conolly, 1660-1752 in, editor(s)Ruth Thorpe Mary Heffernan , Portrait of a Family, Dublin, Wordwell, 2023, pp11 - 18, [Patrick Walsh]
Patrick Walsh, Introduction to the Memorials and Transcription Books in the Registry of Deeds, Property Registration Authority, October, 2022, p1 - 27
Patrick Walsh, Edmund Burke's Political Economy, Studies in Burke and His Time, 30, 2021, p149 - 162
Patrick Walsh Douglas Kanter, Taxation, Politics, and Protest in Ireland, 1662-2016, Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan, 2019, 1 - 367pp
Patterns of Taxation in Eighteenth-Century Ireland in, editor(s)Douglas Kanter Patrick Walsh , Taxation, Politics, and Protest in Ireland, 1662-2016, Basingstoke, UK, Palgrave MacMillan, 2019, pp89 - 120, [Patrick Walsh]
Patrick Walsh, Between the Speaker and the Squire: The Anglo Irish Life of William Conolly II, Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, 20, 2018, p52 - 70
The Eighteenth-Century Fiscal Military State: A Four Nations Perspective' in, editor(s)Naomi Lloyd Jones Margaret Scull , Four Nations Approaches to Modern 'British' History: A Disunited Kingdom? , Basingstoke, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2017, pp85 - 110, [Patrick Walsh]
Robert Armstrong, Scott Spurlock and Patrick Walsh, Presbyterian History in Ireland: The Seventeenth-Century Narratives of Patrick Adair and Andrew Stewart, Belfast, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2016
Enforcing the Fiscal State: The Army, the Revenue and the Irish Experience of the Fiscal-Military State, 1690-1769 in, editor(s)Patrick Walsh Aaron Graham , The British Fiscal-Military States, 1660-1783, London, Routledge, 2016, pp131 - 158, [Patrick Walsh]
Patrick Walsh, Review of Periodical Literature on British and Irish Economic History, 1700-1850, Economic History Review, 2016
Ireland and the Royal Navy in the Eighteenth Century in, editor(s)John McAleer Christer Petley , The Royal Navy and the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century , Basingstoke, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2016, pp51 - 76, [Patrick Walsh]
Patrick Walsh Aaron Graham, The British Fiscal-Military States, 1660-1783 , London, Routledge, 2016, 1 - 318pp
Patrick Walsh, Aidan Kane & Eoin Magennis, Ireland, 1686-1825, Revue de l'OFCE, 140, 2015, p269 - 275
Patrick Walsh, Irish Money on the London Market: Ireland, the Anglo-Irish and the South Sea Bubble of 1720, Eighteenth-Century Life , 39, (1), 2015, p131 - 154
Patrick Walsh, The South Sea Bubble and Ireland: Money, Banking and Investment, 1690- 1721, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2014, 1 - 204pp
Patrick Walsh, The Fiscal State in Ireland, 1691-1769, Historical Journal, 56, (3), 2013, p629 - 656
Patrick Walsh, John Bergin, Eoin Magennis and Lesa Ní Mhungaile , New Perspectives on the Penal Laws: Special Issue of Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Iris an dá chultúr , Dublin, Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, 2011, 1 - 282pp
Biography and the meaning of an Irish Country House: William Conolly and Castletown in, editor(s)Terence Dooley Christopher Ridgeway , The Irish country house: its past, present and future , Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2011, pp21 - 39, [Patrick Walsh]
Patrick Walsh, The Bubble on the Periphery: Scotland and the South Sea Bubble, Scottish Historical Review, 89, (231), 2011, p106 - 124
Patrick Walsh & Anthony Malcomson, The Conolly Archive, Dublin, Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2010
Club Life in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries in, editor(s)James Kelly Martyn Powell , Clubs and societies in eighteenth-century Ireland, 1690-1800., Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2010, [Patrick Walsh]
Patrick Walsh, The Making of the Irish Protestant Ascendancy: The Life of William Conolly, 1689-1729 , Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2010
Patrick Walsh, movement of people? Responses to emigration from Ireland, 1718-30, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, 3, (1), 2010, p221 - 236
Patrick Walsh, A new Edmund Burke letter from 1778, Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Iris an dá chultúr, 24, 2009, p160 - 164
Addison, Joseph (1672-1719); Asgill, John (1659-1738); Boyle, Henry (1668-1725); Boyle, Richard (1612-98); Burgh, Thomas (1670-1730); Butler, Dr James II (1742-91); Carter, Thomas (c.1650-1726); Coghill, Marmaduke (1673-1739); Drummond, John 91649-1714); Hamilton, John James (1756-1818); Harding John (1697-1725); Herbert, Thomas (1656-1733); Hyde, Henry (1638-1709); Hyde, Laurence (1641-1711); Ingoldsby, Richard (1665-1712); McDonagh, Terence (1640-1713); Malone, Anthony (1700-1776); Moreton, William (1640-1715; Nevill, Arthur Jones (1712-1771); Plunkett, Nicholas (1629-1718); Porter, Charles (1640-1696); Pratt, John (1670-1741); Rigby, Richard (1722-1788); Russell, John (1710-1771); Singleton, Henry (1682-1759); Wesley, John (1703-1791); Wyndham, Thomas (1681-1745) , James McGuire James Quinn, Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, [Patrick Walsh]
Permanent tranquillity will not be established while the present system is continued,' Charles James Fox and Ireland, 1801-1803 in, editor(s)Anne Dolan Patrick Geoghegan Darryl Jones , Reinterpreting Emmet, essays on the life and legacy of Robert Emmet , Dublin, UCD Press, 2007, pp35 - 57, [Patrick Walsh]
Patrick Walsh, The Sin of With-Holding Tribute, Contemporary pamphlets and the professionalization of the Irish revenue service in the early eighteenth century, Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Iris an dá chultúr, 21, 2006, p48 - 65
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
Mobeen Hussain, Ciaran O'Neill and Patrick Walsh,, Draft Trinity Colonial Legacies Working Paper on TCD and Slavery, 2023
Patrick Walsh, Deeds and Sasines Working Paper 1: Registry of Deeds Typologies , 2022
Aidan Kane, Eoin Magennis and Patrick Walsh, 'Ireland and Ireland's International Trade, 1683-1825', NUI Galway, 2021
Patrick Walsh, Review of Building the Irish Courthouse and Prison 1750-1850: A Political History, by Richard Butler , Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 36, 2021, p165-68
Patrick Walsh, Review of Irish Proclamations, 1660-1820, by James Kelly and Mary Ann Lyons , Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 34, 2019, p147-50
Charles Ivar McGrath, Patrick Walsh, Suzanne Forbes , 'Army Barracks of Eighteenth-Cenrtury Ireland', https://barracks18c.ucd.ie/, University College Dublin, 2016, -
Patrick Walsh, Castletown, Dublin, Office of Public Works, 2007
The differing motivations for preventing transatlantic emigration: a case study from west Ulster 1718-1729 in, editor(s)Shane Murphy Johanna Archbold John Gibney Carole Jones , Beyond the anchoring grounds: More crosscurrents in Irish and Scottish Studies , Belfast, Cló Ollscoil na Banríona, 2005, pp324 - 330, [Patrick Walsh]
Research Expertise
Description
I am an internationally recognised leader in my field of eighteenth-century Irish history as evidenced both by extensive publications and success in gaining competitive funding. In 2023 I was elected a fellow of TCD based on my research. My first monograph, The Making of the Irish Protestant Ascendancy, focused on the politics of the Irish ascendancy elite while my my second monograph The South Sea Bubble in Ireland demonstrates how Irish history can contribute to international historical debates. This book led to ground-breaking research on state formation during a Marie Curie Sklodowska fellowship at University College London. The outputs from this research (2 edited books and 4 articles/book chapters) have made a significant contribution to debates in European, British, and Atlantic history on the phenomenon of the fiscal-military state. My third monograph A Colonial Sinew of Power (currently under review at Oxford University Press) develops this research offering a new interpretation of eighteenth-century Ireland. As Co-PI on the Trinity Colonial Legacies project, I am writing a joint authored monograph (for the OUP History of Universities Series). This project brings together my expertise in Ireland"s relationship with empire and the history of colonialism in Ireland, while the broad scope of our book will make an innovative contribution to global debates about the legacies of colonialism. My research career has been defined by interconnections between land and money. Using innovative digital humanities methodologies developed through an IRC/AHRC grant (2020-22) and a successor project funded by the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (2024) I am submitting (Autumn 2024), with collaborators in Glasgow and Sheffield, a large scale UKRI grant application on the historical intersections of property and credit. It will rethink the history of property ownership, and our understanding of the impact of proto-globalisation on the provincial societies of Scotland, Ireland and Yorkshire.Projects
- Title
- Comparing and Combining Early Modern Irish and Scottish Land Records: New Transkribus and Natural Language Processing Approaches
- Funding Agency
- Irish Research Council and AHRC
- Date From
- Aug. 2020
- Date To
- Feb. 2022
- Title
- The Royal Dublin Society: Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism
- Funding Agency
- Irish Research Council
- Date From
- 1 Sept. 2024
- Date To
- 31 Aug. 2026
- Title
- Trinity's Colonial Legacies
- Funding Agency
- Trinity Philanthropy
- Date From
- Sept. 2021
- Date To
- Sept. 2023
- Title
- Ireland and the Infrastructure of Empire: Local, National and Global Perspectives
- Funding Agency
- Trinity Philanthropy
- Date From
- 2019
- Date To
- 2023
- Title
- VRTI Tailte Eireann Reading the Deeds
- Summary
- The Registry of Deeds (now part of Tailte Eireann) contains an extraordinary archive of property transactions stretching back to its foundation in 1708. These records though long known to historians have been under-utilised by scholars who have either been overwhelmed by the scale of the records, the limitations of existing finding aids, or daunted by the complexity of understanding their content. Advances in digital humanities especially the development of sophisticated automatic transcription software (Transkribus), now provides an opportunity to investigate these records in a systematic fashion. This project builds on two prior research initiatives. Firstly, Tailte Eireann have collaborated with TCD through the IRC/AHRC funded Deeds and Sasines project led by Dr Patrick Walsh and Dr Andrew MacKillop (Glasgow) which led to the publication of a public-facing guide to their records. Secondly Taitle Eireann have become a core partner of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (VRTI) with sample digitised volumes now available through the VRTI portal. Continuing such academic partnerships has become a core element in the Digitisation Strategy policy being pursued by Tailte Eireann. Working under the direction of Dr Patrick Walsh (Assistant Professor of 18th Century Irish History, TCD) in partnership with archival colleagues in Tailte Eireann and Digital Humanities experts in the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland one postdoctoral research assistant will be employed on a short term contract focused on a specific purpose.
- Funding Agency
- Virtual Fecord Treasury of Ireland Philanthopic Funding
- Date From
- 1 August 2024
- Date To
- 31 December 2024
- Title
- Reconciling the irreconcilible: loyalism and patriotism in Ireland, 1756- 1801
- Funding Agency
- Irish Research Council
- Date From
- 1-September 2023
- Date To
- 31 August 2027
- Title
- Seaweed harvesting across Irish and Scottish coastal communities and exchange with the industrial world, c 1750-1900
- Summary
- In human history, our oceans are seemingly ever-present: a source of food, commercial opportunity and adventure. Perhaps ironically, histories detailing distant maritime voyages and trade are plentiful in comparison to those concerned with more proximate nearshore environments. The intertidal world, sites to which human access has emerged and receded according to the regular attack and retreat of the shore"s waves, has historically provided important sources of not just nutrition, but fuel, fertiliser and animal feed. Through the proposed environmental history of the Irish-Scottish Kelp industry (c 1750-1900 CE), opportunities emerge for comprehending heretofore neglected aspects of industrialising Britain, alongside the potential for a new perspective regarding the significance of humanity"s interactions with and exploitations of shoreline environments. From the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, coastal communities around the Scottish and Irish coasts harvested seaweed (usually Brown algae seaweeds) producing, amongst other things, an alkaline ash. This output was a vital ingredient for the burgeoning chemical, textile, fertiliser, and glass industries of Britain and Ireland. I propose to investigate how coastal communities across Ireland and Scotland interacted with their shoreline environments by collecting seaweed and participating in complicated imperial and industrial networks feeding into urban manufacturing hubs across Britain. In a larger sense, I propose that this form of subtidal and intertidal exploitation was the opening up of a new vertical resource frontier in the story of Britain"s chemical and industrial Revolutions
- Funding Agency
- McDowell Memorial Studentship
- Date From
- 1 Sept 2024
- Date To
- 30 Aug 2028
Recognition
Representations
Director Castletown Foundation
Member, Tailte Eireann Registry of Deeds Digitisation Advisory Group
General Editor, Eighteenth-Century Ireland
Peer Reviewer for Irish Historical Studies, English Historical Review, Scottish Historical Review, Historical Research, Economic History Review, English Studies, Irish Economic and Social History and Eighteenth-Century Ireland,
Peer Reviewer for monographs submitted to Palgrave MacMillan and Routledge
Member of Judging Panel for Economic History Society New Researchers Prize, Cambridge, April 2016
Commissioned by Office of Public Works to write comprehensive new 64-page guidebook to Castletown House, Co. Kildare (8,000 copies printed).
Awards and Honours
Fellow of Trinity College Dublin
Certificate of Achievement, Civil Service Excellence and Innovation Awards
Irish Research Council (IRC) and Arts and Humanties Research Council (AHRC)Digital Humanities Networking Grant
Provosts Project Award
IRC New Foundations Award
IRC CARA Cofund/Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship
IRCHSS Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship
IRCHSS Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship
Memberships
Director, Castletown Foundation
Committee Member Eighteenth Century Ireland society
Member Digitisation Strategy Advisory Group, Tailte Eireann
Member Advisory Board of Beyond 2022: Virtual Treasury of Ireland
Member Economic History Society
Member Irish Economic and Social History Society
Member Money, Power and Print Network