Irish-American nationalism

Abstract

During the four decades that followed the great famine, over three million people born in Ireland emigrated to the U.S.A. In the seventies and eighties these Irish-Americans and their descendants played a distinct role in Irish politics. The period was a critical era in the history of Ireland. It was marked by the beginnings of Gladstone’s ‘mission to pacify Ireland’ and of the home-rule movement under Butt; by the ‘land war’ of 1879–82, when the tenant farmers, under the leadership of Parnell and Davitt, offered a successful massresistance to the landlords; by the unchallenged ascendancy of Parnell and his party in national politics for the next eight years; and by the transformation of the conditions of the Anglo-Irish conflict through the conversion of Gladstone and the British liberal party to home rule.

‘The People's Advocate, Champion and Friend’: the transatlantic career of Citizen John De Morgan (1848-1926)

“…From early 1880, the League had taken its activities across the Atlantic, with ‘massive Irish‐American support, moral and financial’. The combination of both Irish and land issues was inevitably of considerable interest to De Morgan and he briefly became a paid lecturer for them. …”

“…From early 1880, the League had taken its activities across the Atlantic, with 'massive Irish-American support, moral and financial'. 107 The combination of both Irish and land issues was inevitably of considerable interest to De Morgan and he briefly became a paid lecturer for them. 108 The range of political opportunities open to him was probably best demonstrated in his involvement throughout 1881 with the slightly mysterious and ephemeral Brooklyn Spread the Light Club, which appears to have had its origins in both the Land League and the Knights of Labor.…”