The Irish Buddhist is the biography of an extraordinary Irish emigrant, sailor, and migrant worker who became a Buddhist monk and anti-colonial activist in early twentieth-century Asia. Born Laurence Carroll in 1856, U Dhammaloka energetically challenged the values and power of the British Empire and scandalized the colonial establishment of the 1900s. He rallied Buddhists across Asia, set up schools, and argued down Christian missionaries - often using western atheist arguments. He was tried for sedition, tracked by police and intelligence services, and was thought to have died at least twice. His story illuminates the forgotten margins and interstices of imperial power, the complexities of class, ethnicity and religious belonging in colonial Asia, and the fluidity of identity in the high Victorian period.

Too often, the story of the pan-Asian Buddhist revival movement and Buddhism's remaking as a world religion has been told "from above," highlighting scholarly writers, middle-class reformers and ecclesiastical hierarchies. By turns fraught, hilarious, pioneering, and improbable, Dhammaloka's adventures "from below" highlight the changing and contested meanings of Buddhism in colonial Asia. Through his story, authors Alicia Turner, Brian Bocking, and Laurence Cox offer a window into the worlds of ethnic minorities and diasporas, transnational networks, poor whites, and social movements. Dhammaloka's dramatic life rewrites the previously accepted story of how Buddhism became a modern global religion.

Alicia Turner's profile page

Laurence Cox's profile page

Brian Bocking's profile page

The three authors came together around their fascination with this many-sided Irish Buddhist. Alicia Turner, Associate Professor of Humanities and Religious studies, York University Toronto is a Religious Studies scholar specializing in modern Burmese Buddhism, nationalism and secularism. Laurence Cox is Associate Professor of Sociology, National University of Ireland Maynooth, a specialist in social movements and a historian of Buddhism in Europe, especially Ireland. Brian Bocking is Emeritus Professor of the Study of Religions, University College Cork, and previously Professor of the Study of Religions at SOAS, University of London. He has written widely on the academic study of religions and East Asian religions. Together with colleagues around the world they have spent the past ten years tracking down Dhammaloka's life.