This is the third collection exploring people from Ireland, mostly but not exclusively Catholics, who removed themselves to continental Europe. It is a product of the enterprising Irish in Europe project at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Elsewhere, at least another four organizations are forwarding similar researches. These academic organizations have assumed the role that once was taken by the religious orders, as they explored their own antecedents and sacrifices and set themselves in the larger Catholic universe. The secularization of current efforts promises to shift the emphasis away from clerics (or would-be clerics). In the past, soldiers and successful merchants, because well documented and conspicuous, have also been studied. This volume, despite an aspiration to encompass the obscure and poor, concentrates on the familiar triad: those who prayed, warred, and made money. Women remain largely hidden, other than their fleeting appearances as anonymous partners in endogamous or exogenous marriages. Earlier researches focused on Spain and France; now the Low Countries and Sweden are covered. Italy, even Rome, hardly features. Nor do the numerous Catholic territories of Germany.

The compilation starts with a characteristically provocative challenge to many traditional contentions by Louis Cullen, whose writings, especially on the Irish mercantile families and ramifying Irish trade, have done so much to illumine early modern (and later) Ireland. He deflates the numbers, in total and annually, quitting Ireland and reveals how opportunities for lucrative and prestigious employment in the armies, administration, and churches of Catholic Europe contracted sharply in the middle of the eighteenth century. In Spain and Sweden, as well as in France and the Austrian empire, official attitudes toward the unfortunate Catholics from Ireland were determined by dynastic politics. These altered with rapidity, often to the detriment of Irish exiles. Concurrently, the nature of international commerce was changing in ways that did not favor the Irish established on the European littoral of the Atlantic. However, those on other, more distant shores—in the West Indies and North America—benefited.

Despite Cullen's jeremiad about discouraging prospects, several chapters record how individuals prospered within Catholic Europe. Maria Begoña Villar Garcia, in a wide-ranging and stimulating survey, shows the varying experiences of the Irish in Spain. Although numbers and fortunes varied greatly across the peninsula, the émigrés, especially in Cadiz and Malaga, thrived through specializing and utilizing their family and confessional networks. Patrick Clarke de Dromantin, with the aid of notarial documents and inventories, reveals how a handful residing in France adopted in their residences—the furnishings, cellars, and libraries—modes common to the wealthy regardless of origins. A similar point is made by Villar Garcia about the well-to-do of Irish descent in southern Spain.

Several essays continue long-standing antiquarian and genealogical preoccupations. The recovery of accurate biographical information remains useful, since simple aggregations or estimates of emigrants hide remarkable personal stories. Where fuller documentation survives and where researchers have been particularly assiduous, some characters can be fleshed out. Notable in this respect are Martin Murphy's elegant consideration of the Whites and Wisemans from Seville, Jean Parmentier's account of the remarkable success of Thomas Ray and his son in eighteenth-century Ostend, and Steven Murdoch's revelations about the importance of John O’Kelly and Francis Jennings to technological innovation and industrial enterprise in Sweden. We learn, too, that Richard Bellings failed in his diplomatic mission on behalf of the Irish Confederate Catholics to the papacy in 1646. In contrast, Nathaniel Hooke, a convert from Protestantism, was rewarded by Louis XIV for his efforts at the Dresden court of Augustus the Strong.

A number of contributors consider, either explicitly or indirectly, the vexed question of how absence affected attitudes toward Ireland. Enforced exile is properly distinguished from voluntary migration. Those living in introverted and impoverished communities, dreaming of a triumphant return to Ireland, frequently squabbled. The tensions followed and accentuated the regional and cultural divisions within Ireland itself. In contrast, Catholics and Protestants, when far from their homeland, might share a sense of solidarity. Nevertheless, the seemingly comparable experiences of Irish Protestants, whether as grand tourists or economic migrants, are hardly mentioned throughout the volume. On occasion, a fierce attachment to locality prevented easy cooperation of the Irish Catholics with coreligionists from England and Scotland. How strongly the sense of Irishness was felt depended on accidents and choice. Success in alien lands sometimes arose from or resulted in assimilation to the ways of the hosts. With others, the strength of continuing links with Ireland—through travel, commerce, and correspondence—could both bring prosperity in an adopted country and allow Irish loyalties to persist.

Inevitably, the greatest detail relates to those who did well in their new lives. By the 1660s, traditional protectors, notably Spain, were neither disposed nor able to provide much practical support to fellow Catholics from Ireland. In contrast, the legal prohibitions in severely Lutheran Sweden were relaxed in favor of dynamic individuals, even when Catholic and Irish. Investigation of these developments creates an impression of entrepreneurial ingenuity and commercial acumen. Such findings overturn a common perception, not just of the uprooted Irish as victims but as victims of their own conservatism and inertia. Instead, they become energetic counterparts of the deracinated Protestants, including the Huguenots who assumed some of the role in the trades and industries of Ireland vacated by the dispossessed Catholics.

The editors are keen to compare the lot of the Irish with that of other migrants and refugees. The most sustained comparisons are with the Scots, partly because the results of detailed research into their histories are being reported in print. Indeed, the book serves as a good bibliographic guide to recent publications, many of them published in continental Europe. Comparison clearly is important in trying to evaluate what was distinctive or familiar about the uprooted Irish. However, bold interpretative essays are liable to be modified by detailed research. Without minimizing the brave attempts to set the case of Ireland in helpful contexts, this collection—like its two predecessors—will long be valued for the rich variety of its specific studies. Integrating the numerous novelties into a coherent and comprehensive account of the Irish in Europe, let alone of Irish exile and migration, is likely to absorb (and divide) gifted historians for generations to come.