By Charles Ivar McGrath
Published in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature, January 2026.
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Abstract

This article focuses upon military mobility and movement in, around and out of Ireland in the eighteenth century, with a particular emphasis upon the Irish-associated regiments of the British army. While a great deal of attention has rightly been given to the Irish who served in foreign armies in the early modern period, especially after the Williamite–Jacobite war of 1689–91 and the flight of 12,000 ‘wild geese’ to the continent to continue to fight for James II in exile, a less dramatic and more quotidian movement of soldiers around Ireland and in and out of the country became a regular occurrence in the eighteenth century. Traditionally overlooked by historians in favour of the aforementioned proto-nationalist ‘wild geese’ and their fellow-travellers, the movement of soldiers of the British army around and in and out of Ireland as part of the imperial project of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has in fact left a much more visible impact upon Ireland, both in terms of infrastructure and demography. Commencing with the rules regarding the movement of soldiers around the newly established country-wide barracks network in early eighteenth-century Ireland, this article then examines the movement of the Irish-associated regiments of the British army both around Ireland and overseas.