Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Providing a comprehensive survey of the Irish Diaspora from a global perspective, this text contains a collection of articles by historians, demographers, economists, sociologists and geographers.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements (p. vii)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• Part 1 Great Britain (p. 17)
• Chapter 1 The Irish in Britain, 1815-1939 (p. 19)
• Chapter 2 Revising the Irish in Scotland: The Irish in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Scotland (p. 37)
• Chapter 3 Emigration from Ireland to Britain During the Second World War (p. 51)
• Chapter 4 From 'Ethnicity' to 'Diaspora': 1980s Emigration and 'Multicultural' London (p. 65)
• Chapter 5 Who are the Irish in Britain? Evidence from Large-scale Surveys (p. 89)
• Part 2 The Americas (p. 109)
• Chapter 6 Irish Migration to North America, 1800-1920 (p. 111)
• Chapter 7 'Scotch-Irish', 'Black Irish' and 'Real Irish': Emigrants and Identities in the Old South (p. 139)
• Chapter 8 Searching for Missing Friends in the Boston Pilot Newspaper, 1831-1863 (p. 158)
• Chapter 9 Immigrants on the Land: A Comparative Study of Irish Rural Settlement in Nineteenth-Century Minnesota and New South Wales (p. 176)
• Chapter 10 Irish Emigration to Argentina: A Different Model (p. 195)
• Part 3 The Empire (p. 213)
• Chapter 11 Irish Emigration to the British Empire, 1700-1914 (p. 215)
• Chapter 12 The Irish and India: Imperialism, Nationalism and Internationalism (p. 235)
• Chapter 13 Odd Man Out: The South African Experience (p. 251)
• Chapter 14 'The Desired Haven'? Impressions of New Zealand in Letters to and from Ireland, 1840-1925 (p. 272)
• Part 4 General Studies (p. 285)
• Chapter 15 A Quantification of Irish Migration with Particular Emphasis on the 1980s and 1990s (p. 287)
• Chapter 16 Changing Attitudes to 'New Wave' Emigration? Structuralism versus Voluntarism in the Study of Irish Emigration (p. 317)
• Chapter 17 Placing Postwar Irish Migration to Britain in a Comparative European Perspective, 1945-1981 (p. 331)
• Index (p. 357)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Everyone thinks he or she knows the myth of how poor, urban-bound, unskilled Irish were driven from their homeland on the Emerald Isle during the Great Famine by poverty and British policy and came to the cities of the United States and Canada. The experience of the Irish turns out to be far more complex, as Bielenberg's volume on the Irish diaspora shows. The papers, presented at a 1997 conference at University College, Cork, explore new geographic areas (New Zealand), look at the host community's policies and attitudes (1880s London), use a comparative approach (Minnesota and New South Wales), employ as yet unused sources (advertisements for lost relatives in the Boston Pilot), and challenge Irish "exceptionalism" (Irish emigration as part of a larger European pattern). All conference publications have a certain unevenness and this one is no exception, but The Irish Diaspora is well organized, its papers are indicative of the lively and rapidly changing field of migration studies, and it fits into the revisionist (postnationalist) interpretive school of Irish history. Undergraduates and up. C. M. McGovern; Frostburg State University