The Irish in the South, 1815-1877 (review)

David T. Gleeson's The Irish in the South is a welcome addition to the literature on the Irish in the United States. Gleeson explores the history of Irish immigrant communities in six Southern cities: Charleston, South Carolina; Memphis; Mobile; New Orleans; Richmond; and Savannah, Georgia. The South has previously received little attention from scholars of the Irish in America; by exploring a number of large and active Irish immigrant communities, The Irish in the South helps to correct the view that Irish immigrants were concentrated in the northeast. In this regard, Gleeson's work is part of what can be called a New Irish-American History that studies regions and aspects of the Irish experience in America not previously addressed. By using cities as his focus—in most cases, seaports or river towns—Gleeson is somewhat traditional, as most studies of Irish immigrants in the United States have focused on urban populations.

Though Donald Akenson has argued that the neglect of studying the Irish in rural environments is a serious lacuna in studies of the Irish in the United States, the evidence of many recent studies, including The Irish in the South, suggests that the traditional focus on urban populations is, in fact, appropriate. Kevin Kenny's recent important article in the Journal of American History also stresses the generally urban character of the Irish-American population. Gleeson more than justifies the paucity of discussion of the Irish in the rural South in this book by presenting census data that convincingly shows the urban concentration of the Irish-born population in the region.

If the urban focus of the book is somewhat traditional, the manner in which Gleeson compares the experience of Irish immigrants in different communities is innovative and extremely well done. Gleeson demonstrates the value of comparison throughout the book, showing it to be especially valuable when there is a limited scholarly literature to provide context for the experience of specific communities. The comparative nature of the study richly helps to set the experiences of the different communities in a broader perspective. Though the breadth of this work precludes a detailed investigation of any of the individual communities, Gleeson leaves no doubt that each community could be more thoroughly understood with additional research. He establishes definitively that Irish immigrants were a significant and visible part of economic, political, and cultural life of each city, and also succeeds in bringing each community to life. He is especially successful in including Protestant as well as Catholic individuals and organizations. In this, The Irish in the South is also innovative, as relatively few community studies include both Protestant and Catholic immigrants. The period covered includes the closing years of what many see as the "early" phase of emigration from Ireland when the majority of emigrants were Protestants from the northern part of Ireland, as well as the more southern and Catholic emigration after 1830, and on through the famine migration. Gleeson might have explored the relationships between the generally earlier arriving Protestants and the later arriving Catholics, more than he does; but he has already done more than most.