Defying Empire: Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York (Yale University Press, 2008) is Thomas M. Truxes’ third book. Defying Empire tells the story of New York City’s illicit wartime trade with the French enemy during the Seven Years' War (best known in the United States as “the French and Indian War,” 1754-1763). In Defying Empire, readers will be treated to forward-moving action, vivid settings, and memorable characters in a story built entirely from archival sources. New York's trade with the enemy involved the city's most powerful families in activities that brought prosperity to the city and made fortunes for the participants, among whom were signers of the Declaration of independence and other Founding Fathers of the United States.  But there were consequences.  The events associated with the British crackdown played a critical role in the early phase of the American Revolution. Truxes’ first book—Irish-American Trade, 1660-1783 (Cambridge University Press, 1988)—explores the long-standing mutually beneficial economic relationship between Ireland and colonial America in the decades before the Revolution.  The author’s edition of the Letterbook of Greg and Cunningham, 1756-1757: Merchants of New York and Belfast (the British Academy and Oxford University Press, 2001) led to his discovery of New York City’s deep involvement in illicit wartime trade.          

Ph.D. (Modern History), Trinity College, Dublin