Making Ireland poor: Poverty, trade, and sectarianism in the eighteenth century Atlantic

Ireland was a cosmopolitan centre of trade in the eighteenth century. Communities of traders were integrated in the French and Spanish empires as well as being represented in banking networks in London that articulated American trade with Continental European markets. Despite cosmopolitan experience Irish elites represented themselves as divided by culture and challenged by endemic poverty. This paper exports how and why Ireland became poor, how the capacity to move in cosmopolitan spheres and create new forms of value was lost in a process of sectarianisation of society. The chapter concludes with an approach to understanding the drivers of anti-cosmopolitanism in the eighteenth century.