"Our Greater Ireland beyond the Seas"

Diaspora 1:3 1991 "Our Greater Ireland beyond the Seas" Paul Arthur University of Ulster at Jordanstown, Northern Ireland Occasional Papers on the Irish in South Africa. Donald H. Akenson. Gananoque, ON, Canada: Langdale, 1991. Half the World From Home: Perspectives on the Irish in New Zealand 1860-1950. Donald H. Akenson. Gananoque, ON, Canada: Langdale, 1990. The concerns of both these books are wider than their titles suggest . Professor Akenson's work on the Irish diasporas of New Zealand and South Africa also deals with the historiography of Irish America, Irish Canada, and, either directly or obliquely, Ireland. Given this scope, his work adds up to a shrewd and highly literate analysis of British historiography as well as the Irish diaspora. At the same time, it emphatically addresses and criticizes the "filiopietistic excesses" of Irish-American historiography—much of which, he informs us, "has become a massive baroque structure built on quicksand" (Occasional Papers 12). Finally, these books contribute to his larger attempt to construct a new concept ofAnglo-Celtic culture. These important exploratory exercises in the comparative method are rich in style, method, and detail. In the conclusion to his New Zealand study, he enumerates some of the sources and methods he has employed to illuminate ethnic history: "demographic analysis, institutional history, community studies, biographical sketches, and the reading ofworks ofart for their evidentiary value" (Half the World 196). All are indeed contained within these pages and enhance our understanding ofthe Irish diaspora since the nineteenth century. First and foremost, Akenson is an expert in demolition, which he has turned into an art form. He writes elegantly when criticizing English cultural imperialism or theoretical Marxism's inadequacies in the field of ethnicity. Above all, he employs his considerable forensic skills to challenge the classical view of Irish-American history : The historical myth holds that the reason that the Irish-Americans were stuck in cities and were not able to reap the boun365 Diaspora 1:3 1991 ties of the American heartland, was that the bastard British forged shackles in the form of cultural and economic limitations that could not be shaken off, even in the New World. . . . It must have been a great comfort to have been able to blame the old enemy rather than either the discriminatory structure of the American republic or one's own self. ("Data" 17) Conscious of an Irish tendency toward myth-making and self-deception , Akenson suggests that a suitable subtitle for his South African volume should be An Inoculation Against Primitive Beliefs. Bracingly , he reminds us of a primary rule of ethnic historical scholarship : "Ifthe historical evidence that you are assaying confirms what your grandmother told you, then check, and check again" (Occasional Papers 11). As a result of his own rechecking, he refines and challenges the accepted wisdom about the Irish diaspora in two important respects. He writes that the diaspora consists of both Catholics and Protestants —a conclusion that may not surprise the ordinary layperson but that will come as a shock to some Irish-American academics and activists. And by highlighting Irish-American mythologies, he allows us to be more sensitive in our handling of the Irish elsewhere. Drawing on what he calls "two reputable and highly sophisticated studies" conducted in the 1970s and 1980s1, he concludes that the majority of Americans who claimed, in that period, to be of Irish descent were Protestant and that the Irish ethnic group was polarized between Protestants and Catholics who did not necessarily fit into received stereotypes. For example, the Catholics who identified themselves in these studies as being of Irish descent had a significantly higher family income and were less likely to be working class than the Protestants; they were also twice as likely to be university graduates. Akenson draws on these studies to illustrate that what are assumed to be the "facts" simply need not be so. Armed with that stricture, he examines the South African-Irish diaspora. It must be said that the two studies under review here are not precisely analogous, something which Akenson readily admits (Occasional Papers 94). The Irish in South Africa make up no more than 3 or 4% of the white population. They...