The Global Dimensions of Irish Identity - by Cian T McMahon (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"[A] valuable contribution to the literature on the Irish diaspora." -- American Historical Review

"A great study of how Irishness was forged in foreign fields." -- Newstalk

"A scholarly, well-researched, and well-written work that raises interesting questions, makes several pertinent observations, and manages to shine some light into a somewhat neglected area of Irish historiography." -- Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies

"A valuable intervention in the debate about nineteenth-century Irish attitudes on race." -- Journal of American History

"Demonstrate[s] how the Young Ireland movement has helped to reinvent the identity of the Irish population at a crucial moment in its history. . . . Rich [and] abundant." -- Cercles

"McMahon has done a masterful job in tracing Irish national ideology across the diaspora." -- Journal of British Studies

"McMahon makes valuable contributions to the historiography of Irish nationalism and the nineteenth century popular press, as well as our ever more complex understandings of Irish and Irish American racial identity." -- Journal of American Ethnic History

"Offers a compelling and persuasive account of the translational evolution of Irish nationalism." -- Irish Literary Supplement

"Well written and meticulously researched." -- CHOICE

"While the Irish diasporic experience has attracted an increasing amount of first-rate research, the range, depth, and intelligence of McMahon's treatment assures The Global Dimensions of Irish Identity a place in the very front rank of even so burgeoning a historiography. Indeed it deserves to become a landmark work not only in Irish migration studies but also in migration studies more generally." -- Joe Lee, New York University