I

The first distinctive feature of the General history is its London publication, the only London first edition among O’Halloran’s works.Footnote ⁶ Neither Charles O’Conor (1710–91), nor John Curry (d.1780), the other two leading Catholic antiquarians of this period published major works in London.Footnote ⁷ The more usual practice for the Irish-based author, Catholic or Protestant, was to publish first in Dublin, followed by a later London reprint,Footnote ⁸ due to commercial resistance to publishing works on Irish history in the London book-market.Footnote ⁹ John Curry’s failed attempt to publish his An historical and critical review of the civil wars in Ireland in London three years earlier is a case in point.Footnote ¹⁰ O’Halloran also faced considerable difficulties in ensuring a London publication for this work. Failing to engage the interest of a London bookseller, he had to publish the book himself using the labour-intensive and time-consuming self-publication by subscription method of publication. That the project entailed a degree of financial risk, as the author would have provided the initial capital to fund the publication process, highlights O’Halloran’s commitment to the project. Why did O’Halloran decide to publish this particular work in London?

Within the context of an article which investigated the difficulties eighteenth-century authors faced in publishing works on Irish history, Toby Barnard has made two points regarding the London publication of the General history that are of interest here. Firstly, he is of the opinion that O’Halloran decided to publish in London having failed to find the necessary two hundred subscribers in the Limerick hinterland; a London publication would attract a wider clientele and greater profit for the author. Secondly, Barnard states that O’Halloran also realised that it was in London ‘that prejudice had to be overcome if the legal restrictions on Catholics were to be relaxed’.Footnote ¹¹ Certainly a London publication would attract a more wealthy clientele as ‘in Dublin – as elsewhere – the wealthy customer usually preferred the London edition to any other.’Footnote ¹² However, O’Halloran had successfully published two previous works by subscription and in each case had attracted more than two hundred subscribers.Footnote ¹³ It seems unlikely that O’Halloran would undertake an arduous London publication for extra profit. He had a successful medical practice in Limerick city and was not dependent on his writings for income. The fact that he could indulge his non-profit-making antiquarian interests testifies in some measure to his financial security. However, Barnard’s second point would agree in substance with the reading presented here. O’Halloran’s London publication was an attempt to engage an imperial audience for this particular work.

London was, after all, the metropolitan seat of the British empire whence imperial affairs were administered, more especially with a centralisation of power in the British parliament, and a shift in power away from the colonies, underway in the post-1763 period, as efforts were made to consolidate and reorganise a newly-extended empire and cope with the ethnic, religious and legal diversity of its newly-won territories.Footnote ¹⁴ The resulting security needs of a Britain with limited population reserves – with its obvious implications for military strengthFootnote ¹⁵ – meant opportunities for Catholic relief that had not, hitherto, existed. The decision in favour of the Quebec Act of 1774, which granted religious toleration to the Catholics of Quebec, was, as Jacqueline Hill has demonstrated, essentially a pragmatic one, arising from issues of military and imperial security.Footnote ¹⁶ If a radical step for a nation whose central identity was, arguably, not only Protestantism, but Protestant opposition to Popery,Footnote ¹⁷ it was a necessary one, and set an imperial context of opportunities for Catholic relief more generally which was the setting for the London publication of the General history.

The more immediate political setting of composition and publication of the General history ¹⁸ was the outbreak of war between Britain and her American colonies in 1775,Footnote which would set in train a series of events that would lead to the first significant repeal of penal restrictions on Irish Catholics. The possibility that France would side with the American colonists was strong, leaving Ireland vulnerable to a French invasion, perhaps accompanied by disaffection among the Irish Catholic population. The American War was monitored with anticipation and celebration by lower-class Catholics who hoped that British defeats would strengthen the hand of the Bourbon powers and lead to restoration and reversal of the Revolution settlement.Footnote ¹⁹ On the other hand, a section of Ireland’s Catholic élite,Footnote ²⁰ amongst whom were O’Halloran’s fellow antiquarians, Charles O’Conor and John Curry, ‘gave uncritical support for the ministry’s American policies throughout this period’ in expectation of some measure of Catholic relief as a reward for their loyalty.Footnote ²¹ Early in 1775, the leading Catholic landlord, Lord Kenmare, offered to raise 1,900 troops for the king’s service in America.Footnote ²² The same summer, a committee representing Catholic gentlemen and merchants, and headed by Lords Fingall and Trimblestone and John Curry, offered to raise funds for ‘encouraging recruits to enlist for his Majesty’s Service’.Footnote ²³

There is only one reference to the American situation in the General history. Here O’Halloran made clear his pro-British, anti-American position, and his opinion of the ‘modern Americans,’ who ‘fought only to destroy the fostering hand that protected and raised’ them.Footnote ²⁴ It is not an improbable conjecture then, that his political alignment, which could benefit Ireland, was a motivating factor in the London publication of the General history. O’Halloran had, it seems, originally planned a Dublin publication for this work,Footnote ²⁵ but in late 1775 he altered his plans and made contact with the Scottish-born publisher, John Murray, to arrange a London publication for the work.Footnote ²⁶

That O’Halloran’s London publication was an attempt to engage an imperial audience can be further supported by reference to the narrative of the General history. Although O’Halloran’s historical timeframe was from the earliest period to the twelfth century, he frequently inserted digressions which were contemporary and political in direction, two of which, totalling ten pages, focused on penal restrictions on Irish Catholics.Footnote ²⁷ O’Halloran argued that, after the Treaty of Limerick (1691), when the ‘bold and restless spirits’ had departed, there existed an opportunity for tranquillity and prosperity to be restored to ‘the peaceable sons of Ireland’.Footnote ²⁸ The Irish parliament, however, instead of ‘conciliatory acts’, or ‘labouring to make the horrors of war be forgot’, but rather acting out of a ‘zeal for religion’, concentrated its energies to ‘convert and reform their new subjects, by penal laws’, and ‘make wilful obstinate recusants feel the utmost force of them!’Footnote ²⁹ O’Halloran described the Protestant Irish parliament that had enacted penal legislation as ‘pretended Irish friends’ and the ‘most determined enemies to Britain’, their legislation having served to swell the armies of France, thereby strengthening the arm of Britain’s arch-enemy.Footnote ³⁰ O’Halloran’s discourse here seems intended to bypass the parliament of Ireland and to bring the issue of Catholic relief into the imperial arena, presided over by the British parliament. In fact, in his argumentation he has reversed the polarity of the prevailing line of reasoning used to justify penal legislation on Irish Catholics as a security threat, by directing attention instead towards the Protestant parliament of Ireland, on which he lays sole blame for constituting the threat to the national security of both Ireland and Britain.

II

The second distinctive feature of the General history is the location and profile of its subscribers. The analysis of the subscription-list revealed three major groupings: Irish émigrés in the service of European Catholic powers, a British political élite and an Irish subscriber group. Barnard viewed this list, amongst others, as an indication of O’Halloran’s social networking reach,Footnote ³¹ but it carries further, political, significance. While the presence of an Irish subscriber group in a work on Irish affairs is to be expected, the substantial representation from Ireland’s military and commercial diaspora, and from among British political élite, warrants investigation for two reasons. Firstly, because such a profile is not revealed by a search of subscription lists for works of like genre and period, Catholic or Protestant.Footnote ³² Secondly, their appearance comes at a moment of opportunity for Catholic relief which could prove beneficial to both groups. What significance can be attached to this event, and what was the public and political profile of these particular subscribers?

There are seventy-seven subscribers in the Irish émigré group. This figure represents 66.3 per cent of the overseas subscriber group of 121, or 16.1 per cent of the overall subscriber figure of 479. There are two distinct major sub-groups within the Irish émigré grouping: thirty-four military subscribers (44.2 per cent of the émigré grouping) and twenty-seven subscribers from the commercial émigré class (35.1 per cent). The significance of these figures only increases when the difficulties of collecting overseas subscribers are taken into account. The lack of individuals involved in politics and government is only apparent: the militarisation of administration in Bourbon Spain, meant that military and civil administration duties were not totally separate areas, and resulted in exceptional Irish soldiers being promoted to civil administration positions,Footnote ³³ O’Halloran subscribers among them.Footnote ³⁴ In Spanish terms, foremost was the Nantes-born lieutenant-general Ricardo Wall (1694–1778), who was virtually a ‘Spanish prime minister’ during the reign of Charles III, and continued to enjoy royal patronage throughout his life.Footnote ³⁵ One of the many Irishmen that Wall helped elevate to power, and another O’Halloran subscriber, was Alexander O’Reilly (1723–94), born in Baltrasna, Co. Meath, elevated to the rank of count for his services to the Spanish crown in 1770, and appointed military governor of Madrid and, in 1780, governor of Cádiz.Footnote ³⁶ The military subscribers also included a strong Jacobite element. The Duc de Fitz-James (Charles de Fitzjames, 1712–87), was a grandson of the Stuart king, James II, by his illegitimate son, James Fitz-James, (1670–1734).Footnote ³⁷ Francois-Jacques Walsh de Serrant (1704–82) was created Comte de Serrant by Louis XV in 1754/5, received a commission in the regiment of Clare in 1760, and in 1784 was made Maréchal de Camp.Footnote ³⁸ Don Felix O’Neil, major-general and commandant-general of Galicia and inspector-general of the Spanish infantry, had joined the Irish Brigade in 1744, and was sent to Scotland in 1746 where he fought at Culloden and remained with Charles Edward after the defeat.Footnote ³⁹ Also listed is the leading Jacobite Count Arthur Dillon (1750–94), colonel of the family’s proprietary regiment from the death of his uncle, Theobald, 7^th Viscount Dillon, in 1691.Footnote ⁴⁰ Moreover, O’Halloran’s subscription list contains the names of twenty-two high-ranking military officers representing the Irish regiments of Ultonia and Hibernia who were in the service of Spain at this period.Footnote ⁴¹

There is also a substantial representation from Ireland’s émigré merchant class in this list, with twenty merchants from Cádiz, six from Málaga and one from Ferrol included. In the eighteenth century, the Irish were the dominant group among the British population of Cádiz, and amongst the wealthiest were the Cádiz Irish merchants, who were slightly more affluent than their counterparts at Málaga.Footnote ⁴² The Murphy family of Cádiz owned more ships than any other Irish merchants, operating twenty vessels trading between Spain, the rest of Europe and the Indies;Footnote ⁴³ Edward and Barnard Murphy were O’Halloran subscribers. So were Power and Langton from the Cádiz trading house of Carew, Langton and Power which was amongst the wealthiest in the city. Another O’Halloran subscriber, John Galway, owned substantial property in Cádiz and in the surrounding countryside.Footnote ⁴⁴ Both William Terry of Málaga, a port of call for European–African and Atlantic traffic, and Dominic Terry of Cádiz, were subscribers, the latter also heavily involved in the public affairs of Cádiz, as royal representative in council affairs.Footnote ⁴⁵ Another O’Halloran subscriber involved in public office was Thomas Quilty of Málaga, an alderman.Footnote ⁴⁶ The subscription list of the General history thus included some of the most iconic military figures and some of the wealthiest merchants from Ireland’s émigré community.

There were only two other Irish-Catholic antiquarians that could possibly have drawn on this émigré support, Charles O’Conor and John Curry. There is no evidence that they chose to do so. The reason for this may lie in O’Conor’s assertions of Catholic loyalty, which were central to his case for Catholic relief. O’Conor believed that continued declarations and demonstrations of Catholic loyalty would gradually argue Irish Protestants out of their prejudices.Footnote ⁴⁷ His approach could be considered an insular one, centred on finding accommodation for Irish Catholics within the Protestant state. His historical works focused on the political sophistication of early Irish government and deliberately excluded references to military exploits, which he felt reinforced the stereotyped barbaric image of the Irish.Footnote ⁴⁸ References to Irishmen prominent in the armies of the traditional enemies of Britain would not complement this approach. Moreover, O’Conor would likely have viewed such an association as counter-productive, as more likely to inflame rather than soothe Protestant fears surrounding the Catholic issue in general, an attitude shared by the Catholic Committee of which he was a founder and leading member.Footnote ⁴⁹ In contrast, O’Halloran championed the European and military element of early Irish history and origins, and showed no reluctance whatsoever in valorising Irish military achievements, either in the distant past, or the present.Footnote ⁵⁰

It is not altogether surprising then to note that these émigré subscribers did not appear by chance in the General history subscription-list. A comment in the Hibernian Journal confirms that O’Halloran wrote to Ireland’s French and Spanish military diaspora soliciting their support in the form of subscription for his General history.Footnote ⁵¹ Moreover, in the ‘Preliminary Discourse’ to this work, O’Halloran stated that Sir James Aylmer, colonel of the regiment Ultonia,Footnote ⁵² had collected over one hundred subscribers in Spain on his behalf. This would suggest that the composition of the subscription-list was, to a certain extent, a result of deliberate orchestration by the author, and could be viewed as an extension of the political message which informed his narrative. This position does not suggest that the author handpicked each individual subscriber; what it does suggest is that the overall composition of the subscription-list was his creation, and indicates the imperial, rather than the insular direction of his discourse. It is unlikely that O’Halloran would have solicited this émigré support if he was attempting to impress an Irish Protestant audience. For Ireland’s Protestant ascendancy class, this parade of an alternative Catholic aristocracy ‘in waiting’, holders of a what could be considered more legitimate land-title claims in many instances, would have been alarming.Footnote ⁵³

The British imperial assessment of the situation as the war in the American colonies advanced and a possible French invasion of Ireland loomed was one where it was felt that the Irish nobility and merchants would remain loyal to Britain, but that the Catholic masses, with nothing to lose, would support a French invasion of Ireland.Footnote ⁵⁴ Recruitment had not been successful and desertion numbers were high. The numbers in regiments on the Irish establishment had now fallen to below 9,000 and they had to be reinforced.Footnote ⁵⁵ Within this context, the inclusion in O’Halloran’s subscription-list of those representing a proven military resource and a successful commercial sector was a timely reminder of resources that could perhaps be utilised, in exchange for a small measure of Catholic relief. In fact, O’Halloran’s strategy here, albeit on an élite and international level, was an extension of, and perfectly in tune with those earlier schemes of the Catholic élite, mentioned above, to raise Catholic troops for the American War. These offers of support were made to Britain via the Dublin parliament.Footnote ⁵⁶ What is distinctive about O’Halloran’s approach is its direct appeal to Britain.

There is support for this reading within the text of the General history. In a digression on penal legislation O’Halloran, drawing a contrast between the effects of the inclusive policy pursued by the Milesians towards their defeated enemies and the opposite conduct pursued since the Revolution (1688),Footnote ⁵⁷ implied that had not the ‘cruel hand of oppression’ (penal legislations) being applied by the Irish parliament, Irish soldiery would not have left ‘their fire-sides and households-gods, to seek protection in foreign climates, and fight the battles of the enemies of their country’.Footnote ⁵⁸ In other words, O’Halloran implied that if penal restrictions had not been imposed, and the Irish émigrés allowed to integrate and strengthen the kingdom, as per Milesian policy, they would now, the logical inference is, be fighting in the ranks as part of the British imperial armed forces, for ‘their country’ (Britain) and not, as with many of those émigrés on the subscription-list were at this period, in the service of Catholic European powers. He further added ‘How happy for Ireland; what millions of money, and thousands of lives might have been saved to Britain, had such principles of equity and sound policy governed Irish counsels for eight years past!’Footnote ⁵⁹ O’Halloran’s grievance was not with the conquest of Ireland by the English per se, but with the manner of the conquest and how the defeated Irish were subsequently treated.

O’Halloran’s argument, that the exclusion of Irish Catholics had proved detrimental to the security of Britain and Ireland, was current amongst some members of the Protestant ascendancy élite. During the debates on Gardiner’s Relief Act in the Irish House of Commons, an O’Halloran subscriber, William English, argued that penal restrictions had driven ‘soldiers and statesman’ from ‘our native shores’.Footnote ⁶⁰ Another O’Halloran subscriber, the pro-repeal M.P. John Scot, drew attention to Irish élite soldiery on the continent:

Whether these Irish émigrés would have agreed with O’Halloran’s identification with Britain is doubtful, and his description of French and Spanish service as fighting ‘the battles of the enemies of their country’ is a little startling. Dillon’s regiment had demanded the privilege to be the first regiment sent to America to fight the British.Footnote ⁶² However, the opportunity to serve in the British army would have been welcomed by many Irish career soldiers in pursuit of advancement and promotion.Footnote ⁶³ Although barred officially from serving in the British armed forces until 1793, in the 1780s, the British army received applications from Irish Catholic officers serving in continental armies, seeking to transfer to the British army.Footnote ⁶⁴ O’Halloran’s argument is contemporary and potent. The British empire’s constant need for soldiers had led to a remarkable volte face in respect of Scotland and her once largely Jacobite Highlands, which had come to be viewed not as an expensive nuisance, but as ‘the arsenal of the empire’.Footnote ⁶⁵ O’Halloran does not draw this comparison with Scotland specifically, but the example would have been difficult to ignore as issues of imperial security now provided a similar importunity for Ireland to replace, or at least, compliment Scotland, in this regard.

The British subscriber group contained a total of forty-four subscribers, including thirty-four members of the nobility (77.2 per cent of this group) and twenty-one individuals with significant political influence, either in the British House of Commons or House of Lords (47.7 per cent) in both the Whig and Tory parties.Footnote ⁶⁶ Among the most notable of those listed were Charles Watson-Wentworth, marquis of Rockingham,Footnote ⁶⁷ and his right-hand man, William Cavendish-Bentinck, duke of Portland, both of whom would head Whig ministries.Footnote ⁶⁸ Sir George Savile is particularly important within the Irish context as on 14 May 1778 he introduced a Catholic relief bill (forerunner of Gardiner’s Irish Relief Act) in the British House of Commons.Footnote ⁶⁹ A further Whig magnate among the subscribers was William Cavendish, duke of Devonshire, lord treasurer of Ireland and governor of Cork from 1766 to 1793.Footnote ⁷⁰ Charles James Fox, who would hold the post of foreign secretary in Rockingham’s administration in 1782, later to form a coalition with Lord North in 1783, was listed,Footnote ⁷¹ as was John St. John, M.P. for Eye, a relative of Lord North, and a constant supporter of the North administration.Footnote ⁷² Edmund Burke, M.P. for Bristol, Catholic sympathiser and O’Halloran correspondent was a subscriberFootnote ⁷³ and so was Sir Robert Spencer,Footnote ⁷⁴ brother of the duke of Marlborough, and an M.P. in the British House of Commons for a total of forty years.Footnote ⁷⁵

If O’Halloran’s intent was to activate an imperial interest in his General history, and the message it contained by virtue of the London publication of this work, the unparalleled representation from the British political élite in the subscription-list would indicate that his message had been received. This position does not suggest that these British élite figures had any interest in a history of Ireland told from the traditional perspective per se, but rather, as this author has suggested elsewhere, a more likely explanation for their appearance can be found in the immediate political context of a desire on the part of the British government to encourage passage of Gardiner’s Relief Act in Ireland by demonstrating British parliamentary support for the measure.Footnote ⁷⁶ The political focus of Catholic antiquarian writing at this period was to agitate for repeal of penal restrictions on Irish Catholics. Subscriber support in this list could suggest support for removal of penal restrictions on Irish Catholics, at this particular juncture at least. The point here is that the presence of a British-based Protestant political élite in the subscription list of an Irish-Catholic author, presenting a traditional view of Irish history, and one that challenged the established Protestant world view, is unprecedented. On the other hand, to find British-based subscribers in, for example, the subscription-list to Temple’s Irish Rebellion, republished for the seventh time in 1766, is not surprising,Footnote ⁷⁷ given that Temple’s work lent historical support to the position of the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, and was republished frequently, especially at times of threat.Footnote ⁷⁸

III

The third distinctive feature of the General history is the imperial resonance of its narrative. Based primarily on the defence of Gaelic civilisation, the main purpose and political intent of works such as the General history, Charles O’Conor’s Dissertations, or, John Curry’s publications on the 1641 Irish Rebellion, was to challenge the pejorative view of the Irish disseminated in the dominant Anglophone historiography which legitimised the exclusion of Irish Catholics from the political nation, and to diffuse the heat in the politico-religious debate.Footnote ⁷⁹ The General history was also part of the quest to provide Ireland with a ‘philosophical’ history, as David Hume had done for England and William Robertson for Scotland.Footnote ⁸⁰ Moreover, it sought to redeem Irish antiquity from the publications of James Macpherson and the ensuing Ossianic scandal.Footnote ⁸¹ The use of arguments from history/pseudo-history as a political statement, or restatement, of Ireland’s past at critical periods, was not a novel occurrence. The twelfth century produced the monastic compilation, Lebor gabála Érenn, which was primarily a defence of immemorial rights of possession against the Norman invasion.Footnote ⁸² The seventeenth century witnessed Keating’s reconstructed version of the ancient Irish past, Foras feasa ar Érenn, which was primarily a defence of the Stuart dynasty and Catholicism.Footnote ⁸³ What was important for Keating, and reflected the political climate of his time, was a need to establish the parity of Ireland’s kings with their British and Saxon counterparts.Footnote ⁸⁴

The political context within which O’Halloran was writing was different again, one which witnessed the post-1763 consolidation of the British empire. In response O’Halloran introduced the concept of a Milesian empire, rather than a Milesian kingdom, into his narrative, the first such use in this type of literature. Eighteenth-century usage of the term ‘British empire’ could include the notion of Britain and her overseas possessions as one body politic overseen by the imperial arliament in London, the meaning which it will be accorded here, and an understanding which can be identified in eighteenth-century Ireland.Footnote ⁸⁵ Within this context, O’Halloran’s General history attempted to demonstrate that Ireland’s ‘Milesian empire’ had welded the sceptre of an extended empire in Britain and parts of Gaul in the pre-Roman period, until, finally, in the sixth century, it lost its last colony (the Albanian Scots), and was, thereafter, confined to the island of Ireland.Footnote ⁸⁶ The reason for this alteration, it can be suggested, was to demonstrate that the Irish had an historic suitability for an imperial role, which complemented a current suitability as imperial agents, as suggested by the inclusion of Irish émigrés in the subscription list.

In other ways, too, the influence of a British imperial context on O’Halloran’s reconstruction of the Irish past can be demonstrated. Within Gaelic historiography, the origin of the Gael in Scythia, their subsequent migrations and final conquest of Ireland, had always formed an integral part of the narrative of origin, from its first textual manifestation in Lebor gabála Érenn. This tradition was replicated over time by subsequent Gaelic antiquarians. In the process, certain core elements of the tradition became conventionalised, and carried a special significance in defining the dominant meaning of the traditional narrative.Footnote ⁸⁷ A comparison of O’Halloran’s account with the traditional narrative to identify where his account deviates from the accepted norm in light of the eighteenth-century political context makes it apparent that he introduced both structural and terminological changes into his account of the early Irish past.

Firstly, O’Halloran made three significant alterations to the migratory routes of the early ancestors of the Irish. According to Keating, the territory of Scythia and the birthplace of the eponymous ancestor of the Gael, Phaenius, King of Scythia, was located in the interior of Asia, with access to the Mediterranean via a Scythian river called the Tanais.Footnote ⁸⁸Lebor gabála also places Scythia in northern Asia.Footnote ⁸⁹ O’Halloran located Scythia on the Syrian coast and claimed that:

By moving the location of Scythia to the Syrian coast, and identifying it as the site of ancient Phoenicia, and Phaenius, the eponymous ancestor of the Gael, as the King of Phoenicia, O’Halloran linked the narrative of early beginnings with an historically significant and ancient empire.Footnote ⁹¹ Phoenicia was not only a geographical location but a highly emotive and succinct political concept, and one that could be readily understood by a reasonably well-read eighteenth-century audience. The claim of the Phoenicians to supremacy in navigation, commerce, arts and the sciences before other nations was well documented.Footnote ⁹² To strengthen his argument O’Halloran compared the customs, mode of worship and language of the Phoenicians and the Gael, and concluded that the Gael were the ancient Phoenicians.Footnote ⁹³ They were called Phenians from Phaenius: ‘Phaeni o Phaenius adbhearta, brigh gan dochta’.Footnote ⁹⁴ According to O’Halloran’s narrative, the Milesians who invaded Ireland in the year A.M. 2736Footnote ⁹⁵ were direct descendants of the ancient Phoenician Empire.Footnote ⁹⁶ This is the first link in the chain which will provide the early ancestors of the Gael with an imperial past and is confirmed in the text:

The second alteration O’Halloran made to the traditional narrative provided a link between the Gael and the Carthaginian empire. O’Halloran submitted that Gaothluigh Mheadhonacha, which previous Gaelic antiquarians had taken to mean Gothland/Gothia,Footnote ⁹⁸ referred in fact to Getulia on the North African coast bordering on Carthage.Footnote ⁹⁹ O’Halloran claimed that both Carthage and Numidia were very early inhabited by Phoenician colonies, and identified this early Carthaginian colony as the Gael under the leadership of Laimh-fionn in A.M. 2279.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The Laimh-fionn colony remained in this area for approximately 280 years and as they were a ‘commercial’ and ‘a warlike people’, O’Halloran argued that they would have ‘planted colonies’, and formed regular settlements there.Footnote ¹⁰¹ He further argued that the place names surrounding Carthage corresponded ‘exactly to the ancient Irish language’ which strengthened his hypotheses. For example, he reckoned ‘the plain surrounding Carthage was called Magaria; and mugh is Irish for a plain’; the harbour of Carthage was called Cohon, and ‘cuan is Irish for an harbour’; Cirta he derived from the Irish for city which is cathair, and Carthage, he derived from cathair and oghe, a maiden city.Footnote ¹⁰² Although the Carthaginian empire did not rise to prominence until some time after this period, approximately A.M. 3350, based on O’Halloran’s assertion of a Phoenician colony under Laimh-fionn in the area around Carthage, it would seem to follow that at least a portion of the Carthaginian empire were direct descendants of this earlier Laimh-fionn colony.Footnote ¹⁰³ According to O’Halloran then, not only were the Gael a branch of the ancient Phoenician empire, they were also the progenitors of the great Carthaginian empire. Phoenicia and Carthage provide major anchor points in O’Halloran’s narrative of origins, and forged a direct link between the Irish ancestors and two major ancient maritime trading empires of the Mediterranean.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Thirdly, according to the traditional narrative, although there are some variations as to specifics, the migratory route of the Gael included a trip to the land of the Amazons on the Caspian Sea, a journey north to the Rhipean mountains, a trip to Britain and back, a visit to the island of Gothland and the land of the Goths, in addition to a short sojourn on the island of Sicily.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ All of this O’Halloran omitted, instead prioritizing the maritime nature of their expansion. From their departure point at Phoenicia, as they worked their way through the Mediterranean, sailing past the Pillars of Hercules to Corona, from where they eventually sailed to Ireland, their expansion route was by sea. Maritime expansion was a concept which was easily translated into eighteenth-century terms for a British empire viewed primarily as a maritime trading nation.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ What was important for O’Halloran as regard the early migrations, was to reconstruct an ancient Milesian imperial past, in an embryonic or potential state, at least, to underpin his assertion of a Milesian empire in Ireland at a later date.

To provide historic evidence for the existence of a Milesian empire in Ireland, O’Halloran referred to the speech of the English delegate at the Council of Constance (1414–18).Footnote ¹⁰⁷ According to O’Halloran, English advocates seeking voting rights as an independent nation at the Council of Constance claimed that as ‘Europe was divided into four empires … the Roman, the Constantinopolitan, the Irish and the Spanish’ they were entitled to rank as a nation as they were a ‘branch of the [Irish] empire’ by virtue of Henry V’s being monarch of Ireland.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ In his first antiquarian work, Insula sacra, O’Halloran had referred to the Council of Constance, but there he had used the term ‘free kingdom’ and not ‘empire’.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Two years later, in his Introduction, he again referred to the Council of Constance, but this time he substituted the term ‘empire’ for ‘kingdom’.Footnote ¹¹⁰ The notion of Ireland’s ancient imperial status, based on the assertion of the delegate at the Council of Constance, is present in the Introduction but only briefly stated (it filled only half a page), and was argued for more strongly and at greater length in the General history, where it filled four times more text, and was a vital component in directing the narrative. The insertion of the term ‘empire’ was a deliberate fabrication on O’Halloran’s part. If indeed the English delegates made such a claim, and even this is in doubt, the term ‘kingdom’ and not ‘empire’ was used.

Additionally, O’Halloran argued for equivalence between the term ‘ard rí/ high king’ and the term ‘emperor’. In the General history, O’Halloran stated that Ireland’s kings or ‘monarchs may truly rank as emperors, being the sovereigns of kings’.Footnote ¹¹¹ Following from this assertion, O’Halloran addressed Ireland’s high kings of the traditional narrative in the more contemporary style of emperor, which significantly altered the resonance of his history. For instance; ‘Eochaidh the son of Muireadhach … was proclaimed emperor’; Footnote ¹¹² ‘Roderic O’Connor last emperor of Ireland’;Footnote ¹¹³ ‘Conal-Claon made emperor’.Footnote ¹¹⁴ All matters relative to the high king were, subsequently, prefixed with the term ‘imperial’ in his narrative. The armies of the reigning monarch are everywhere referred to as either ‘the imperial army’ or the ‘imperial troops’, and exist as a constant refrain throughout the narrative, impressing on the reader the ‘imperial’ status of Ireland.Footnote ¹¹⁵ For example, Colman-Rimhidh ‘defeated the imperial troops in the bloody battle of Sleamhna’;Footnote ¹¹⁶ a ‘most bloody battle is fought at Cuildreimhne; the imperial army is defeated with great slaughter’.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Miscreants were also placed ‘under the ban of the empire’ as in A.C. 118, when Eochaidh king of Leinster was ‘put under the ban of the empire’ by the monarch Tuathal,Footnote ¹¹⁸ or in A.C. 154, when the monarch Con proposed putting Criomthan king of Leinster ‘under the ban of the empire’.Footnote ¹¹⁹ O’Halloran does not make clear whether this meant expulsion from imperial territory or punishment.

Irish claims to an ancient glorious past were ridiculed by the British periodical review literature, and the concept of a Milesian empire, as O’Halloran must have been aware, would have been incomprehensible for his intended audience.Footnote ¹²⁰ To bridge this gap in understanding, it appears, O’Halloran positioned the Roman empire, a concept which was familiar to his audience, as the Other against whom the excellence of his Milesian empire was given authority in his narrative. Keating also stated that no other people in Europe had been ‘more valiant than they, [Irish] for contending with the Romans for the defence of Scotland’.Footnote ¹²¹ Keating’s references to the Roman empire are brief, but he emphasised that Ireland was never occupied or threatened by any foreign power, even the Roman one. However, the Roman Empire, or Ireland’s engagements with the Romans, is not a central concern of his narrative.Footnote ¹²² Much of O’Halloran’s descriptions concerning encounters with the Romans was very much of his own conjecture, and highlights the contemporary direction of his narrative in constructing a powerful military past for Ireland. O’Halloran may well have hoped that the juxtaposition of the Milesian and Roman empires in his history, would engage the ear of a British élite audience, who were fully conversant with the latter at least.

The link between Rome and Ireland is established early in O’Halloran’s narrative account of the Milesian invasion of Ireland by paralleling the similarities in the establishment of both dynasties. The last battle fought by the Milesian invaders with the Damnonii, for the kingship of Ireland, was at Tailtiu. The decisive point in this engagement, according to O’Halloran, was the fight between the commanders of the opposing armies: the three sons of Milesius and the three sons of Cearmada of the Damnonii. At this point in the narrative, O’Halloran interjected to comment that ‘the fate of Ireland now, like that of Rome in the days of the Horatii, hung on the swords of these contending brothers!’Footnote ¹²³

For the well-read eighteenth-century reader, the story of the dispute between the city of Rome (Horatii) and Alba Longa (Curatii), was a familiar reference from Livy’s accounts of the history surrounding the foundation of Rome, which like the Milesian account, was the story of three brothers, in this instance, fighting on behalf of their cities.Footnote ¹²⁴ The Horatii (Romans) were successful, as were the Milesians. The reason O’Halloran highlighted the similarity between these two encounters was to establish in the minds of his audience an equivalence between the significance of both events. By establishing a link between the foundation of the Milesian empire and the Roman empire, or at least with one of the many stories surrounding the foundation of the Roman empire, he was attempting to transfer some of the significance and iconic resonance that surrounded the Roman event to the Milesian event, by linking it to Rome and the story of the Horatii and Curatii. There is no similar reconstruction of this battle in the traditional narrative. The Lebor gabála simply states that at the battle of Tailtiu ‘there fell the three kings and the three queens of the Tuatha Dé Danann’.Footnote ¹²⁵ Keating’s account read ‘The sons of Cermad were defeated by the sons of Milidh’.Footnote ¹²⁶

Equally striking as a demonstration of Ireland’s past military power was the manner in which O’Halloran attributed the ebb and flow of Roman power in Britain to unrest or peace in Ireland. For example, in A.C. 137, unrest in Ireland during the reign of Tuathal ‘accounts well for the Romans extending their bounds, as they did at this time, in Britain’.Footnote ¹²⁷ In A.C. 221, ‘The distress and confusions occasioned by this revolution in favour of Mac Con, will well explain why Severus extended the Roman arms in Britain’.Footnote ¹²⁸ O’Halloran appears to be suggesting that the military power of the Milesian empire was such that it could have broken Roman power in Britain, if the conditions in Ireland had been right. In A.C. 183, O’Halloran commented that so successful were Conaire’s attacks against the Romans that ‘had his reign lasted longer the Roman power over that country would have been totally annihilated’.Footnote ¹²⁹ Moreover, O’Halloran conjectured that in A.C. 367, the Irish monarch Criomthan, styled ‘monarch of Ireland and Albany, and leader of the Franks and Saxons’ headed the coalition of states against the Romans on the continent known as the ‘Saxon League’ and, moreover, joined with the Picts and Saxons and broke through the Roman wall, ‘carrying desolation through all her British provinces’.Footnote ¹³⁰ Taking the pursuit a step further, the monarch Niall of the Nine Hostages, pursued the Romans onto the continent.Footnote ¹³¹

In contrast, the Lebor gabála statement regarding Niall was sparse, ‘Níall Noí-giallach took the kingship of Ireland and of the Western World for a space of twenty-seven years’.Footnote ¹³² In Keating’s account of Niall there is no mention of pursuing the Romans, ‘Niall … sent a fleet to Brittany in France ..., for the purpose of plundering that country …; and it was in this captivity that they brought Patrick … .’Footnote ¹³³ Keating’s concern here is not with Niall’s European forays, but in noting that this was the king who first brought Patrick and, by extension, Christianity, to Ireland. Irish encounters with the Roman empire act as a counterpoint in O’Halloran’s narrative to demonstrate to his contemporary audience the power and influence of his alleged Milesian empire, and by extension, the historic suitability of the descendants of this empire as imperial agents.

Another innovation that O’Halloran introduced into his narrative was the idea that troops from Ireland aided the Carthaginians during the Punic wars.Footnote ¹³⁴ Although this assertion does not provide supporting evidence for the existence of a Milesian empire, it does present the argument that the Irish are capable of aiding the contemporary British empire by supplying troops, as they have done previously for another empire, the Carthaginian empire:

The above extract is a useful example of the subscription-list complementing the text of the General history. Firstly, attention is drawn to the military accomplishments of the French and Spanish subscribers in the subscription-list. Secondly, the military success of this group retrospectively verifies the existence of a similar mercenary military body in the Carthaginian army. O’Halloran’s linkage of an historical and current military aptitude, in this brief digression, creates the impression of a continuous historical stream of Irish military ability. His message reads like a manifesto for Irish participation in empire: the Irish inherently make good imperial soldiers, and to ‘preserve domestic tranquillity’ this type of martial spirit is best put to use in war. The linkage in this short extract, between a past and current military aptitude, represents in microcosm the core argument presented here. The aim of the General history was to showcase Ireland’s current and historic readiness for an imperial role.

In conclusion, this paper has attempted to demonstrate that the General history, inclusive of its place of publication and composition of its subscription-list, was a work shaped and informed by the opportunity for Catholic relief during the Anglo–American crisis, marking its publication as the most politically potent and pragmatic work from an eighteenth-century Irish antiquarian. By situating the appeal for Catholic rights in the imperial rather than in the insular context, and attempting to engage the interest of the British empire directly in Irish Catholic relief by demonstrating an Irish historic and current suitability for imperial service, O’Halloran broadened the discussion base of Catholic relief politics and internationalised Ireland’s potential. A similar strategy would not be employed by the Catholic Committee until 1792, when a new mood of militancy permeated Catholic agitation for relief, under the leadership of John Keogh.Footnote ¹³⁶ In this regard, O’Halloran has to be credited as the first antiquarian to recognise the political significance of the newly-extended British empire in relation to Ireland and Irish affairs. His virtue lay in recognising that in the final analysis it was the imperial parliament in London, and not the Dublin parliament, that would make the final decision in relation to Irish Catholics. O’Halloran embraced the imperial project, and could be viewed as a harbinger of a later empire-wide Irish participation in the British empire on an administrative and officership level. In fact, the imperial careers of O’Halloran’s sons are emblematic of an outward-looking context for O’Halloran’s thoughts. His second son, John, was a captain in Colonel Brown’s regiment of American Loyalists and secretary to the governor of the Bahamas.Footnote ¹³⁷ His youngest son, brigadier-general Joseph O’Halloran spent over fifty years in British service in India and on his eventual return he received a knighthood from William IV.Footnote ¹³⁸

The General history reads like an Irish manifesto for participation in empire; however, it is not possible to say whether his work was ever used in this way. Catholic numbers into the British army did increase after 1778, and Irish Catholic officers also began to receive commissions into the British army, although this was still strictly illegal.Footnote ¹³⁹ In the 1830s, there were more Irishmen than Englishmen in the British army, and between 1825 and 1850, forty-eight per cent of all troops in the Bengal army were Irish.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ However, there is some evidence to suggest that the General history may have been used in the manner intended, as a documented account of Irish fittingness for inclusion, by another diaspora some sixty years later. There was only one edition of the General history. However, there was substantial demand for this work in the Irish-concentrated centres of New York and Boston in the nineteenth century where it enjoyed a long publication history. Between 1845 and 1887 the General history was republished in full eight times as part of larger historical works on Ireland.Footnote ¹⁴¹ In the New World, the Irish demonstrated their fittingness for inclusion predicated on their military reputation, as they had done in the Old World.Footnote ¹⁴² The wider influence of this work in providing a literary support framework, around which the Irish/America diaspora constructed their political identity, has yet to be assessed.