This first major book on consumption in eighteenth-century Ireland takes its lead from Brewer, McKendrick and Plumb's "The Birth of a Consumer Society" in its investigation of food and drink, new urban housing, newspapers and linen. But as with many other areas of Irish culture and society, consumption cannot be separated from the problems of Anglo-Irish relations, and therefore an appreciation of these political overtones is vitally important. The book will address three very broad questions. First it will explore how the study of consumption can be applied to Irish society and culture, and more particularly its political scene. Second it will examine the significance of British attitudes towards Irish patterns of consumption in the context of eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish relations. Finally it will look at the way Ireland's position in the British empire determined the relationship between politics and consumption.

Discusses the reactions of seventeenth and eighteenth-century writers of Irish history to the unprecedented turbulence of the age. Ireland and the Irish, it is often argued, have been mired for centuries in mindsets which employ the past in order to trace and justify the enmities of the present. However, as Constructing the Past: Writing Irish History 1600-1800 seeks to underscore, the truth of such interactions with the Irish past is far more complex and dynamic. Spanning two hundred years of history, this book finds a relationship with the past which is as adaptive as it is rigid, as iconoclastic as it is reactionary. Beginning with an Introduction by Roy Foster, this innovative volume incorporates a wide range of perspectives on how history in Ireland has been written and perceived from the early-modern period onward. Drawing upon both key moments - including the Cromwellian invasion, the 1688 Revolution and 1798, to name a few - as well as forgotten incidents, each article discusses the ways in which the presentationof the past in Ireland has been forged by the circumstances of its writers and context of those memories. Drawing upon contributions by both highly accomplished and up-and-coming historians of Ireland, Britain and Europe, Constructing the Past seeks to illuminate how the Irish past has been constructed, torn down and again rebuilt by the Irish and historians of Ireland alike. STEPHEN PAUL FORREST serves as the Director of Operations forthe Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation; MARK WILLIAMS is currently reading for a Doctorate in Modern European History at Hertford College, Oxford.