This is a most timely collection of essays, appearing as it does just before two major 400th anniversaries in 2007, that of the foundation of the Irish Franciscan College in Louvain in May 1607 and that of the flight of the Earls in September 1607. The raft of conferences and events taking place both in Ireland and abroad to mark these two events will ensure a heightened interest in the fortunes of Irish émigrés on the continent of Europe, and the participants will find much to whet their appetites in the pages of this volume. Irish communities in early-modern Europe falls into three sections, eight essays on Irish immigrants in France, seven essays on Irish immigrants to Spain, and a final section of seven disparate essays that defies neat categorization but provides fascinating information. It is intriguing to read of the heroic Irish involvement in the ‘surprise of Cremona’ during the War of the Spanish Succession in February 1702 – surely a topic that cries out for a film. It is equally intriguing to learn that Lutheran Sweden, despite its strictly exclusive confessional laws, was sufficiently flexible to employ the entrepreneurial mining skills of the Catholic Irishman, Colonel John O'Kelly (1672–1753). The book concludes with a thoughtful and challenging essay by Jane Ohlmeyer stressing the need not only for scholars of the Scottish and Irish diasporas to work more closely with each other, but also to co-operate with colleagues analysing the migrant experiences of other European nations.

Given the current interest in Louvain and the flight of the Earls, the essays by Villar García, O'Scea, Recio Morales, and García Hernán are of particular relevance. María Begoña Villar Garcia divides the Irish immigrants into Spain into four groups: soldiers, scholars and clerics who were educated in Irish seminaries in Spain, Irish bishops and priests, and traders. While the last category was much smaller than the rest, in economic terms, these traders were the most significant of all the Irish contingents. Ciaran O'Scea traces the difficulties that Irish exiles with low levels in literacy and little experience in keeping papers encountered in dealing with the highly developed Castilian bureaucracy. Despite the initial difficulties, however, these obstacles provided a necessary stimulus to acquiring literacy, as the more perceptive migrants realized that this was the only way to secure their advancement in their host country. Bureaucratic difficulties, however, were only one of the obstacles encountered by the Irish in adapting to the Spanish way of life, and Óscar Recio Morales outlines the strategies adopted by the Irish in order to elicit a positive response from the Spanish monarchy. These entailed the creation of a specific political ideology based on three factors, the hypothetical Iberian origins of the Irish as recounted in the Milesian myth, their track record of military service to the Spanish crown, and their unswerving allegiance to the Catholic faith. The use of the Milesian myth can be traced as far back as the reign of Charles V in 1534 and was still being exploited in the early nineteenth century. This triple approach served the Irish well in the seventeenth century but was not so successful in the eighteenth century. While an Irishman like Ricardo Wall could attain the highest offices in the Spanish administration, becoming secretary of state from 1754 to 1763 and secretary of war from 1759 to 1763, nevertheless, he was still considered a foreigner by the partido español (Spanish party). Even in the seventeenth century, however, the carefully created ideology of the Irish was fractured by infighting and provincialism. They were seen as ‘a nation of nations’ and to offset this negative perception Irish immigrants started adopting the Spanish expressions nación irlandesa (Irish nation) and de nación irlandes (of the Irish nation) to distinguish themselves from Welsh, Scottish, and English immigrants. This terminology not only helped to present a united front to the Spaniards, but also served to display a new Irish self-consciousness of sharing a common identity among paisanos (compatriots).

While a good command of Spanish was necessary to ensure successful adaptation to the way of life of the host country, the émigré clergy had to face another linguistic problem regarding their pastoral role in returning to Ireland as missionary priests. In a document written by Florence Conry in 1604 he pointed out that Old English clerics would not be successful missionaries in Gaelic areas because of their lack of Irish: lo que predicaran en las tierras fuera de las ciudades sera tan obscuro como prophesia (that which will be preached in the areas beyond the city will be as obscure as prophesy). The Jesuits countered on the other hand that English was the language of administration and public life. Furthermore, Irish was among the most difficult languages in the world and even among perfect speakers, only about three out of 30,000 could read and write it.

The question of Irish immigrants was becoming so problematical that in 1600 Philip III ordered that only people who carried safe-conducts from Hugh O'Neill, Hugh O'Donnell, and Mateo de Oviedo, bishop elect of Dublin, be permitted to enter Spain. One of the advantages envisaged by a Spanish invasion of Ireland was ridding the court of unwelcome hangers-on. The defeat at Kinsale only served to exacerbate this problem, however. And by November 1604 there were 176 Irishmen and 75 Irishwomen at court. A new solution to Spain's ‘Irish problem’ emerged with the formation of O'Neill's Irish regiment and its transfer to Flanders. While Florence Conry was gaining important influence over Puñonrostro, Lerma, and Philip III himself, the Irish Jesuit James Archer claimed that the Irish would always be attracted en masse to the Spanish court when there were people like Friar Florence to ‘act as a clerk and godfather’ to them.

It seems to me that Óscar Recio Morales's essay, in particular, offers valuable insights into the foundation of St Anthony's College in Louvain. There was much more to Florence Conry's hostility to the Jesuits than mere provincial antagonism between Gaelic Irish and Old English. Conry's emphasis on the need for returning missionaries to be proficient in Irish was not chauvinism but good pastoral strategy. Since the Irish colleges under Jesuit control in Spain were unwilling to foster such a pastoral approach, the only remedy was to found a new college where the Irish language played a major role in the formation of missionary clergy. Given the Spanish authorities' hostility to Irish immigrants, it made good sense to seek permission for a college outside Spain itself, but in territory under Spanish dominion. Louvain was an ideal location, not only for the intellectual ambience of this university city, but also for its proximity to the headquarters of the newly founded Irish regiment in the Spanish forces. The problem of the low level of literacy in the Irish language raised by the Jesuits, was skilfully confronted through the adoption of different linguistic registers by the Franciscans in Louvain, popular verse for those that were illiterate, and a new register of prose that was half-way between that of demotic verse and that of the professional learned classes.

Recio Morales notes the Irish émigrés' adoption of the term nación irlandes (Irish nation) as the seventeenth century progressed. This awareness can actually be traced back to the very beginning of the century. The word nasión (nation) appears for the first time in the Irish language in 1609 in Tadhg Ó Cianáin's account of the journey of the exiled earls to Rome. Just as the concept of nación española (Spanish nation) was deliberately fostered in Spanish Rome to unite the various nations of the Iberian peninsula, similarly Ó Cianáin, more than likely influenced by Florence Conry, saw the value of bringing Gaelic Irish and Old English together to present a united front under the term nasión Éireannach (nation of Éireann).

Thomas O'Connor and Mary Ann Lyons are to be congratulated on producing a splendid volume that is both highly informative and thought provoking. It also draws attention to the need for more and more scholars to engage in the exciting study of Irish communities in early modern Europe.