Irish Migration to North America - From the 1810s until the 1850s

Before the Irish became White

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, Dresden Technical University (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Multicultural America, 11 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The paper deals with the immigration of primarily Catholic Irish to America between the late 1810s and the late 1850s. The circumstances and reasons that stimulated emigration from Ireland are to be considered in this paper as well as the development of an Irish-American culture in the roughly fifty years comprising this period. Furthermore, the interaction between Irish immigrants and native-stock Americans is outlined in order to delineate the conditions Irish found in America. The period considered in this paper can approximately be divided into two stages: the era of pre-Famine migration and the decade of the Great Famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1855. The regional focus lies primarily on the cities in the industrial areas in the northeast of America where most of the immigrants arrived. In cities like New York or Boston the impact of Irish immigration to the New World can easily be seen; the steady influx of Irish newcomers made the effects of massive immigration on the society visible.