The Global Dimensions of Irish Identity: Race, Nation, and the Popular Press, 1840-1880

by Cian T. McMahon

Though Ireland is a relatively small island on the northeastern fringe of the Atlantic, 70 million people worldwide--including some 45 million in the United States--claim it as their ancestral home. In this wide-ranging, ambitious book, Cian T. McMahon explores the nineteenth-century roots of this transnational identity. Between 1840 and 1880, 4.5 million people left Ireland to start new lives abroad. Using primary sources from Ireland, Australia, and the United States, McMahon demonstrates how this exodus shaped a distinctive sense of nationalism. By doggedly remaining loyal to both their old and new homes, he argues, the Irish helped broaden the modern parameters of citizenship and identity.

From insurrection in Ireland to exile in Australia to military service during the American Civil War, McMahon's narrative revolves around a group of rebels known as Young Ireland. They and their fellow Irish used weekly newspapers to construct and express an international identity tailored to the fluctuating world in which they found themselves. Understanding their experience sheds light on our contemporary debates over immigration, race, and globalization.

254 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2015

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Makes some interesting arguments, about the weakness of "How the Irish Became White" argument. McMahon argued that the Irish had always been considered white, since they could become voting citizens almost immediately upon entering the country, even if they were still considered second-class citizens. He also argues that part of the anti-black racism of Irish-American communities was their inclusion in the Democratic Party's politics of the 19th and much of the 20th century, which was both the party of white immigrants (in the North) and the party of slavery and then Jim Crow segregation in the South.
McMahon also has chapters on the Irish experience in Australia, and the dichotomy of Irish nationalism that sought to unite Protestants and Catholics, yet embraced Catholicism as being central to the Celt identity, as opposed to Protestant Saxons.