Fleeing the Famine: North America and Irish Refugees, 1845-1851

(Hardback)

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The Irish Potato Famine caused the migration of more than two million individuals who sought refuge in the United States and Canada. In contrast to previous studies, which have tended to focus on only one destination, this collection allows readers to evaluate the experience of transatlantic Famine refugees in a comparative context. Featuring new and innovative scholarship by both established and emerging scholars of Irish America and Irish Canada, it carefully dissects the connection that arose between Ireland and North America during the famine years (1845-1851). In the more than 150 years since the onset of Ireland's Great Famine, historians have intensely scrutinized the causes, the year-by-year events, and the consequences of his human catastrophe. Who was to blame Were the hunger and misery inevitable Did the famine have revolutionary effects on the Irish economy How did it change the nature of Irish religion This new study complements the wealth of existing literature on the social, cultural, and political aspects of the Famine and invites the reader to consider the fate of the Irish refugees in their new home lands.

Reviews

"This is a very useful and informative collection of essays....This comparative approach is a refreshing change from the more usual exclusively United States Irish perspective in most studies of the Irish Famine in North America....[w]ell worth reading for its original and at times very divergent interpretations of the meaning of the Famine migrations in North America."-Journal of American Ethnic History
This is a very useful and informative collection of essays....This comparative approach is a refreshing change from the more usual exclusively United States Irish perspective in most studies of the Irish Famine in North America....[w]ell worth reading for its original and at times very divergent interpretations of the meaning of the Famine migrations in North America.-Journal of American Ethnic History
This study is an interesting and, at times, provactive compilation of articles that reexamines the questions raised by Irish immigration to North America during and after the "Great Potato Famine" of the late 1840s. In it, Margaret M. Mulrooney brings together the work of authors grounded not only in the history of the United States but also in British, Irish, and Canadian history....The contributors in Fleeing the Famine fill a gap in the study of this phenomenon by providing a perspective from the view of the Atlantic rim that engages cause and effect, rather than from a single place and time.-The Historian
"This study is an interesting and, at times, provactive compilation of articles that reexamines the questions raised by Irish immigration to North America during and after the "Great Potato Famine" of the late 1840s. In it, Margaret M. Mulrooney brings together the work of authors grounded not only in the history of the United States but also in British, Irish, and Canadian history....The contributors in Fleeing the Famine fill a gap in the study of this phenomenon by providing a perspective from the view of the Atlantic rim that engages cause and effect, rather than from a single place and time."-The Historian

Author Bio

MARGARET M. MULROONEY is Associate Professor of American History at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. She is also the author of Black Powder, White Lace: The du Pont Irish and Cultural Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (2002).