  The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries have long been considered
as a formative period for modern Irish political traditions such as
nationalism, republicanism and unionism. For Europe it was the time of a turn
over in science moving from observation to experiment and from speculation to
fact. Richard Kirwan was a well known natural philosopher in Europe and a
respected man of science in his time. Throughout all the wars, he was connected
with his colleagues in a network reaching across Europe and even to America.
Using a few examples, this article is intended to provide an insight how the
network worked in a time that was marked by political conflicts and
revolutionary events in both science and social life.
