By Marc Caball
Published in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature, January 2026.
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Abstract

While Ireland’s location within an expansive early modern Atlantic context has been the subject of considerable scholarly enquiry, interconnections between East and West have received less attention. The present essay aims to situate Ireland’s position in a context of intersecting capitalism and colonisation from the specific perspective of an English colonial family. It is argued that members of the Hedges family of County Cork were animated by a remarkably tenacious commitment to unabashed material and financial advancement within what was a global milieu of colonial expansionism.