The American Irish A History

THE AMERICAN IRISH: A HISTORY The story of the Irish in North America reverberates through the modern period. As many as seven million Irish men, women and children have crossed the Atlantic for North America since 1700. Almost five million of them went to the US between 1820 and 1920 alone. This vast movement of people was of great historical significance on both sides of the Atlantic: it played a fundamental role in the shaping of modern Ireland, and it determined in mnay respects the economic, political and cultural development of the United States, where 45 million people today claim some degree of Irish ancestry. The American Irish: A History offers an extended analysis of the conditions in Ireland that led to mass migration and examines the Irish immigrant experience in the United States in terms of patterns of settlement, labour, race, gender, politics and nationalism. The first concise, general history of the subject in a generation, it covers the entire period from 1700-2,000 and it is augmented by full illustration and textual aids.