Ireland, Sweden, and the Great European Migration, 1815-1914

Akenson's book parts company with the great bulk of recent emigration research by employing sharp transnational comparisons and by situating the two case studies in the larger context of the Great European Migration and of what determines the physics of a diaspora: no small matter, as the concept of diaspora has become central to twenty-first-century transnational studies. He argues (against the increasing refusal of mainstream historians to use empirical databases) that the history community still has a lot to learn from economic historians; and, simultaneously, that (despite the self-confidence of their proponents) narrow, economically based explanations of the Great European Migration leave out many of the most important aspects of the whole complex transaction. Akenson believes that culture and economic matters both count, and that leaving either one on the margins of explanation yields no valid explanation at all.

Donald Harman Akenson is currently Douglas Professor of Canadian and Colonial History at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. He was also Beamish Research Professor of Migration Studies at the University of Liverpool from 1997 to 2004 and Honorary Professor at the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. Akenson has received six honorary doctorates for his scholarly work.