In this absorbing study of Irish and Scottish Catholics in the western Atlantic fringe colonies of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, Newfoundland and Trinidad, S. Karly Kehoe takes to task the body of scholarship that identifies Protestantism as the core of the British identity that emerged during the second half of the eighteenth century. Not only does Kehoe challenge explanations founded upon on a ‘common Protestantism’ that bound together England and Scotland, she goes further to propose that Scottish and Irish Catholicism played a fundamental role in the development of the British identity. In doing so, Kehoe forces us to confront the elephant in the room — the place of Ireland in the evolution of this new identity within the neighbouring islands and throughout the wider British empire.

Empire and emancipation identifies two key drivers for Catholic participation in the second British Empire. The first was the urgent need of the British state to recruit and train Irish and Scottish Catholics for military service. The 1778 Catholic Relief Act facilitated the large-scale recruitment of Catholics into the armed forces in the wake of the American colonies’ revolt, an exercise that intensified towards the century's end. While scholars including Ian McBride have demonstrated Britain's heavy recruitment in Ireland, Kehoe's study draws attention to the high visibility of Catholic recruitment in British North America, where the strengthening military culture testified ‘to the expanded role that minority populations like Catholics were playing in the empire’ (p. 99). Kehoe contends that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the army and navy constituted ‘neutral spaces’ that enabled demonstrations of loyalty and served to facilitate the incorporation of Catholics into the machinery of empire. Catholic ambition constituted a second driver for purposeful commitment to British identity. The Catholic populations of Scotland and Ireland increasingly sought to achieve social mobility and economic advancement by embracing British identity. This Atlantic case study demonstrates persuasively that empire offered Scottish and Irish Catholics plentiful opportunity to pursue acceptance and reward.

Kehoe's book makes a strong case for the importance of the Atlantic fringe in this process of identity formation and imperial incorporation. In British North America, and in Trinidad, the significant size of the Scottish and Irish Catholic populations ensured local administrations acknowledged and arrived at accommodations with Catholic populations earlier and with more urgency than was conceivable in Georgian Britain. Though Quebec, with its substantial French Catholic population, constituted a special case, Kehoe shows that through this Atlantic fringe rapid population growth that included sizeable Catholic communities hastened measures to instil and protect religious tolerance. Mutually supportive relationships developed between local administrators and ambitious lay Roman Catholic populations as the Irish and Scottish populations, conscious of their political potential, helped shape the emergence of new colonies. Catholics in these environments proved adaptable and embraced multiple identities reflective of their religious backgrounds, national origins and newfound sense of Britishness. In the case of the Irish, increased educational opportunity after 1829 helped expand their reach into empire. The training of religious women fuelled the development of Catholic education that proved vital for the Irish and Scottish settler populations while the high numbers of Irish men undertaking medical training likewise extended the influence of Catholics across the globe.

Conditions did not remain static, either in the Atlantic colonies or the United Kingdom. From as early as the 1820s, the rising power of Irish bishops was evident through this oceanic space, a tendency that became more pronounced in subsequent decades. Drawing upon its diverse colonial case studies, Empire and emancipation skilfully explores the nuances of local interactions between clerical leaders, the laity and colonial administrations. Kehoe shows that in Trinidad French influence, the history of slavery and perceptions of race contributed to the complex relationship between colonial authorities and the church.

Transnational histories have their greatest impact when they destabilise our assumptions about the direction and velocity of historical flows and force us to confront the complex, multi-directional movement of peoples, ideas and materials in the past. Empire and emancipation provides an exemplar of excellent transnational history that challenges us to rethink important questions about the making of British identity and the place of the Irish within the British empire. With its skilful and sustained focus upon these Atlantic colonies, the book makes a compelling case for the importance of the maritime world in Irish history. Its findings also pose new challenges for historians of the global Irish. In Australia, for example, historians of Irish migration and settlement have often taken Catholic Emancipation in 1829 as the watershed for the beginning of a new, more accommodationist colonial environment. Kehoe's study indicates the need to question this assumption and to re-examine the nature and extent of religious interaction across the British Empire in the forty years prior to emancipation.