Emigrant responses to war and revolution, 1914–21: Irish opinion in the United States and Australia

Abstract

Throughout the course of the nineteenth century North America and Australasia were profoundly affected by the large-scale emigration of Irish men and women. However, by the eve of the First World War that great torrent of nineteenth-century emigration had slowed. The returns of the registrar general, though deeply and systematically flawed, suggest that in the period 1901–10 the level of decennial emigration from Ireland fell below half a million for only the second time since 1840. According to these figures, the United States continued to be the preferred destination for the new century’s Irish emigrants — 86 per cent of those who left between 1901 and 1910 journeyed to America. In contrast, Australia now attracted few Irish-born, with only 2 per cent of emigrants in this decade choosing to settle in Australasia. As the number of Irish emigrants declined from the peaks of the mid-nineteenth century, so the proportion of Irish-born in the populations of the United States and Australia also fell. By 1910 less than 1.5 per cent of the United States population were of Irish birth; in Australia in 1911 only 3 per cent of the nation’s population were Irish-born men or women. But, although the influence of the Irish-born was diminished, there remained in both societies large numbers of native-born men and women of Irish descent, New World citizens who retained strong bonds of affection for Ireland and maintained a keen level of interest in its affairs.Concern with Irish affairs reached new levels of intensity in the United States and Australia between 1914 and 1921. In particular, from the Easter Rising of 1916 until the signing of the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 Irish immigrants and their descendants in both New World societies observed Ireland’s moves towards self-rule with keen anticipation. They publicly asserted the need for an immediate and just resolution to Ireland’s grievances and sought to obtain the support of their own governments for the attainment of that goal. However, this vocal support for Ireland was not without its own cost.