Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan: Letters and Memoirs from Colonial and Revolutionary America

Abstract

This important book fills a huge gap in our understanding of early Irish immigration to the United States. The authors drew upon research that began thirty years ago and formalized their collaboration in the late 1980s. Specifically, they did so because they wereintrigued … by [the] complexity and diversity [of this immigration], by the inherent fascination of the first emigrants’ few surviving letters and memoirs, and by our growing conviction that some of those documents shed new light on the crucial, formative stages of modern Protestant and Catholic Irish and Irish-American societies and identities. (p. vii) The letters and memories cover an expansive period: until the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, which profoundly affected the patterns, type, and rationale for migration. To paint this picture, the authors developed each chapter as a historical essay, focusing on one or a handful of emigrants and their writings. The authors’ prodigious research has drawn together historic manuscripts that they believed were “historically representative and inherently interesting” (ibid.). They organized the chapters by themes, examining the background and causes of emigration, the process of Irish emigration to the New World, work (farming, skilled and unskilled labor, commerce, and the professions), and the complex and varied relationship to American politics and ideals. The documents are verbatim, or nearly so, in an effort to allow the writers to speak for themselves and illustrate through words and nuances the evolution of their development and thinking. Given the format, poor immigrants, Irish Catholics and women are underrepresented in these accounts.