Full Description
The Irish Potato Famine caused the migration of more than two million individuals who sought refuge in the United States and Canada. In contrast to previous studies, which have tended to focus on only one destination, this collection allows readers to evaluate the experience of transatlantic Famine refugees in a comparative context. Featuring new and innovative scholarship by both established and emerging scholars of Irish America and Irish Canada, it carefully dissects the connection that arose between Ireland and North America during the famine years (1845-1851).
In the more than 150 years since the onset of Ireland's Great Famine, historians have intensely scrutinized the causes, the year-by-year events, and the consequences of his human catastrophe. Who was to blame? Were the hunger and misery inevitable? Did the famine have revolutionary effects on the Irish economy? How did it change the nature of Irish religion? This new study complements the wealth of existing literature on the social, cultural, and political aspects of the Famine and invites the reader to consider the fate of the Irish refugees in their new home lands.
Contents
Preface Introduction Migration Irish Famine Emigrants and the Passage to North America by William A. Spray The Ties that Bind: The Family Networks of Famine Refugees at the du Pont Powder Mills, 1802-1902 by Margaret M. Mulrooney Responses The Spirit of Manifest Destiny: The American Government and Famine Ireland by Timothy J. Sarbaugh An "Unprecedented Influx": Nativism and Irish Famine Immigration to Canada by Scott W. See "Celtic Exodus": The Famine Irish, Ethnic Stereotypes, and the Cultivation of American Racial Nationalism by Dale T. Knobel Irish American Drama of the 1850s: National Identity, "Otherness," and Assimilation by Stephen Watt Memories The Legacy of Irish Emigration to the Canadas in 1847 by Cecil J. Houston and William J. Smyth In the Famine's Shadow: An Irish Immigrant from West Kerry to South Dakota, 1881-1979 by Kerby A. Miller
