| Summary: | Whether they settled in Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, or elsewhere, there was no common experience for the Irish abroad. Emigrants from Ireland and their descendants reshaped their ethnic identities in response to circumstances in both the old world and the new. A comparative study of three Irish-Catholic communities in different stages of development reveals the extent to which Irish ethnicity varied over time and space. In St. John’s, Newfoundland, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, immigration from Ireland was a largely early-nineteenth century, pre-famine phenomenon, so by the 1880s the Irish-Catholic communities were long-established, overwhelmingly native-born, and had achieved relative political and economic independence. Those of Irish descent in St. John’s formed a majority of the city’s population, while in Halifax they were a strong minority. The Irish in Portland, Maine, by contrast, arrived during and after the potato famine of the 1840s, and were a smaller minority in a mostly Yankee-Protestant milieu. This comparative study of three port cities tests how varying new world contexts affected expressions of Irish ethnicity over several generations. Was a sense of “Irishness” transmitted generationally? How, and to what extent, could a sense of ethnic community be maintained? How did relations with other ethnoreligious groups influence identity? What was the role of religion, gender, and class? How did local and external forces combine to influence expressions and understandings of Irishness? By examining associational life, the Catholic Church, education, politics, and Irish nationalism, this study argues that Irish-Catholic communities cannot be understood in isolation. Identities were created and sustained by the complex interaction of local, regional, national, and transnational networks. Through such mechanisms as ethnic, benevolent, and nationalist associations, for example, Catholics of Irish birth or descent constructed their understandings of Irishness from outside sources, but the day-to-day expression of these identities was inherently local. At the same time, religion, class, and gender influenced how ethnicity was conceived and articulated, and these processes varied considerably both within and between these three cities. Together, the comparative study reveals how Irish ethnic identity varied from place to place and over time, and how three different Catholic communities on the prow of northeastern North America remained part of an interconnected, transnational Irish diaspora until well into the twentieth century. PhD
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