Adjunct Associate Professor of Irish Studies
Glucksman Ireland House, New York University
Areas of Research/Interest
• Ireland and the Atlantic World before 1800
• Early-modern maritime history
• The overseas trade of British America
• The Seven Years’ War in the Atlantic
• 18th-century urban life, particularly New York City
Education
Ph.D., Trinity College, Dublin
M.A., Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut)
M.B.A., Syracuse University
B.S., Boston College
Background
Thomas M. Truxes earned a doctorate in modern history at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1985. His thesis, under the supervision of Professor L. M. Cullen, is a comprehensive study of Irish-colonial commerce from the mid-seventeenth century through the conclusion of the American Revolution.
Beginning in 1990, Professor Truxes taught in the History Department at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. His courses in Irish and Atlantic history included an undergraduate survey of Irish history (“Modern Ireland, 1485-1972”), a freshman seminar (“Pirates and Buccaneers: Seaborne Terrorism in the Early Modern Period”), and a variety of graduate seminars on the early-modern history of both Ireland and the Atlantic World.
In November 2007, he presented the ninth annual Ernie O’Malley Lecture at New York University, and he has been teaching in the Master of Arts in Irish and Irish-American Studies program at Glucksman Ireland House since the spring of 2009.
He is interested in all aspects of early-modern Irish history and the history of the Atlantic World prior to 1800, especially the role played by overseas trading enterprises linking Ireland to the larger Atlantic economy and society. The impact of war on early-modern commerce and the role of Irish communities in London and pre-Revolutionary New York City are topics explored in recent work.
His offerings at Ireland House include “History of Modern Ireland I” seminar (Elizabethan Ireland to the Act of Union) and “Ireland in the Atlantic World,” a course featuring the publication of seminar papers in a student-centered journal, Atlantic Ireland.
Professor Truxes is the author of Irish-American Trade, 1660-1783 (Cambridge University Press, 1988) and Letterbook of Greg & Cunningham, 1756-57: Merchants of New York and Belfast (Oxford University Press for The British Academy, 2001), the correspondence of the most successful Irish-American trading firm of the colonial period.
His most recent book, Defying Empire: Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York (Yale University Press, 2008) was a finalist for the 2009 Francis Parkman Prize presented by the Society of American Historians and was named “Best Book of 2008” by the American Revolution Round Table of New York.
He is now at work on a comprehensive history of the overseas trade of British America (1607-1775) for Yale University Press.
