I am an AHRC funded PhD student at Lancaster University researching the smuggling networks of the Isle of Man and Channel Islands during the long Eighteenth-Century. At the heart of my study are questions regarding the relationship between smuggling and insular constitutional liminality; looking at the interventions by figures such as the Duke of Atholl in protecting and cultivating coteries of smugglers. My research intends to integrate our understanding of the Channel and Irish Sea as spaces of maritime history in the early-modern period, and answer questions about the chronological evolution of the Eighteenth-Century illicit economy in reaction to the often-vigorous exertions of British authorities to stamp it out.

 

My research uses digital methods such as GIS and network analysis to recreate the smuggling hinterlands of the insular entrepôts, and in the process inform our understanding of the Irish Sea and the Channel as spaces of maritime history. At its heart will lie cost-surface maps integrating information from insular and British archival sources to analyse and predict the diffusion of smuggled commodities through networks identified in mercantile correspondence. My M.A. dissertation concentrated on a GIS analysis of the settlement patterns of Irish immigrants on the Isle of Man in the Nineteenth-Century.

 

My research into Eighteenth-Century smuggling fits within a broader fascination with maritime history, the application of digital techniques, and the histories of popular resistance and illegality. I would welcome questions and submissions around these research interests, and more generally early-modern political and economic history.