Montserrat, although part of England's empire, was settled largely by the Irish and provides an opportunity to view the interaction of Irish emigrants with English imperialism in a situation where the Irish were not a small minority among white settlers. Within this context Akenson explores whether Irish imperialism on Montserrat differed from English imperialism in other colonies. Akenson reveals that the Irish proved to be as effective and as unfeeling colonists as the English and the Scottish, despite the long history of oppression in Ireland. He debunks the myth of the "nice" slave holder and the view that indentured labour prevailed in the West Indies in the seventeenth century. He also shows that the long-held habit of ignoring ethnic strife within the white ruling classes in the West Indies is misconceived. If the Irish Ran the World provides interesting insights into whether ethnicity was central to the making of the colonial world and the usefulness of studies of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English imperialism in the Americas. It will be the basis of the Joanne Goodman Lectures at the University of Western Ontario in 1997.

Donald Harman Akenson, Professor of History at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, is one of the -world's leading authorities on Irish history. He received his bachelor's degree from Yale and his Ph.D from Harvard. The author of twenty books, including five novels, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society (Canada) and of the Royal Historical Society (U.K.). He has held both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a writing fellowship at Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Como. In 1993 he received the prestigious Grawmeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, for his book God's People: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel and Ulster (1992). In 1996 he was named Molson Prize Laureate; this is Canada's highest cultural award.

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"If the Irish Ran the World will become the essential work on the island and period. A most interesting and well-done work of scholarship, it will appeal to scholars of Ireland, Britain, and the Caribbean, as well as those concerned with the settlement of