| SEMESTER 1 2025/26 |
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Michael Vance (Saint Mary's University, Halifax) |
| 13 November 2025 |
Lunchtime Seminar 'The Irish soldier settlers of Nova Scotia, 1818-1838' Venue: K114, Newman Building Date: Thurs 13 November 2025 Time: 12pm |
| Abstract: | Following the Napoleonic Wars, a significant number of Irish veterans of the 98th Regiment of Foot settled in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The men had been recruited from across Ireland and had served in the Channel Islands and the West Indies before being sent to garrison Halifax in 1811. Preliminary research has revealed that the soldiers were recruited from twenty-five counties across Ireland, including Ulster, but that Tipperary, Limerick, and Roscommon were particularly well represented. This presentation will summarize what has been learned to date about these soldier settlers and outline a plan to develop profiles of all the Irish soldiers in the regiment who settled in Atlantic Canada by linking the British military records with local sources in Ireland. By gaining a more complete understanding of the Irish soldiers who settled in the colony, this research, generously supported by the Craig Dobbin Scholarship fund, highlights both the role of the British military in Irish migration and the significance of early nineteenth-century settlement in developing links between Ireland and the wider North Atlantic World. |
| Bio: | Michael E. Vance is a professor of history at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His research focuses on 19th-century Scottish emigration and settlement as well as the nature of Scottish overseas identity. He has also conducted related studies of Irish settlement in British North America and published a collection of essays, co-edited with Mark G. McGowan, on Irish Catholic Halifax: from the Napoleonic Wars to the Great War, Historical Studies [Journal of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association] Vol. 81 (2015). Among his most recent publications are Reappraisals of British Colonisation in Atlantic Canada, 1700-1930 (Edinburgh: 2020), co-edited with S. Karly Kehoe, and “‘Red Haggis’: A Depression-Era Comic Strip in the Young Worker,” Labour/ Le Travail 95 (Spring 2025): 241-256. His article, “‘Located on Land in Nova Scotia’: British Soldier Settlement after the Napoleonic Wars,” Acadiensis 52, no. 1 (Spring/printemps 2023):36-64, co-written with William R. Miles, is the staring point for his current research project examining Irish soldiers who settled in Atlantic Canada after serving in the British Army |
