Sunderland, Sadie Alexis;
(2025)
Pragmatism, Politics, and Popish Recruits: Irish Catholic recruitment and service in the British Army, 1775-1783.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This dissertation explores the mechanisms by which Irish Catholics were quietly integrated into the British Army in the late eighteenth century for service in the American Revolution, as well as their experiences during service. This recruitment was illegal due to the penal law which prevented their service, but much like the other penal laws in Ireland, this policy was consistently ignored when it was beneficial to do so. This project uses military history through a social lens, focusing on the identity, treatment, and loyalty of Irish Catholic recruits in order to generate a more substantial picture of their involvement in the British Army during this period. This research provides a reconstruction of their military lives and the social and political contexts in which they were recruited through use of the official record, focusing mostly on the War Office Papers and the State Papers Ireland. Analysis of the official record illustrates that despite restrictions from service and general stereotypes that they would not be effective or loyal soldiers, Irish Catholics were recruited and generally served without significant desertion or disciplinary issues. This analysis is split into three main sections: political and social landscape of Irish Catholic recruitment, elite involvement in this process, and finally three case studies of regiments or corps in which Irish Catholic recruits were present. These case studies show that Irish Catholics were able to use the army as a site of belonging within the British Empire in which soldiering provided a unifying identity which proved more significant than their Catholic identity. This suggests that ideas of belonging within British subjecthood were necessarily becoming more malleable during the late eighteenth century due to pragmatic concerns within the empire, but consistent pushback to trusting Irish Catholics and integrating them into the army illustrates the continued lack of uniform toleration.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Pragmatism, Politics, and Popish Recruits: Irish Catholic recruitment and service in the British Army, 1775-1783 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205287 |
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