Coarse cloth and clerical tailoring: negotiating Boston-Irish cultural imperatives in the Famine era

Abstract

Recent calls for updated approaches to the Irish-American historical experience recommend more systematic attention to complexities inherent in Irish immigration and settlement. They also seek further contextualisation of the history of the Irish in the USA within broader North American, transatlantic and global frameworks. The need to review and potentially reappraise longstanding, essentialist perspectives on Irish arrival and assimilation is equally evident. This article expands on foundational narrative histories of the Boston Irish to re-examine Famine-era settlement and contending agendas within spheres of religious affiliation and political activism. The character and evolution of Irish-American ethnic identity, and the tragic imprint of the Famine under consideration here pave the way for new readings of traditional orthodoxies. Collectively, they reveal Boston's Irish historical terrain to be more complex than the record currently suggests.