Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America by Kerby A. Miller (review)

408 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW groups of Italian•migr•s toToronto;athoughtfulandstimulating analysis by BrunoRamirez oftheposition ofItalianlabourers inMontreal's working class; auseful examination byAntonioPucci ofthemilitancy of Italianworkers inthe violent climate of industrialrelations in FortWilliamat thebeginning of this century; anda perceptive interpretation byJohnPotestio of thememoirs of Giovanni Veltri,anavvy whoprospered asasubcontractor inCanadian railway construction. Together,thesefivestudies suggest something of thevarietyof nichesfilled by Italian immigrantsin the developmentof the Canadian economy in theearlydecades of thiscentury. Thevolume concludes withabriefreportbyRoberto Perin,pastdirector of theCanadian AcademicCentrein Italy (Rome),on theinternationalconference which itsponsored inMay•984on'TheExperience ofItalianImmigrants in Canada.' Sevenof theeightscholars notedin thisreview,andmanyothers froma varietyof disciplines, participated in theconference. Bothit, andthis volume,illustratethe vitalityof an importantbranchof Canadianethnic studies. C•,BRZv. I•V. SC•,RDV. LL•,TOUniversity ofBritishColumbia Emigrants andExiles: Irelandand theIrishExodus toNorthAmerica. KERBY A. S•ILLV. R.NewYork:OxfordUniversity Press •985. Pp.684.$35.oo Oneof the highercompliments a reviewercanpaya scholarly bookisthat although he disagrees withitsargument, thevolumenevertheless ishighly recommended. And that isthe casehere.Professor KerbyA. Miller of the University of Missouri, Columbia, hasdoneyeoman service bycollecting and analysing hundreds of 'emigrantletters'sentfrom North AmericatoIreland. Fromthese andassociated demographic data,heprovides aninterpretation of Irishmigration toNorthAmericafromtheearliest times untiltheearlyx92os. Thereareseveral flaws inthebookthatmanifestly arenottheauthor's fault. Hispublisher hasnotfoundroomforabibliography ofprintedsources; hehas beenallowed onlyonefootnote for eachparagraph, withtheresults thatthe source ofquotations isnotadequately specified andit isoftendifficult,indeed impossible, todeterminein whichof ascore ofbooks andlettersmentioned in eachfootnote a particularfactisto be found;andthe statistical appendix, which contains agooddealofdatathatisproblematical, lacks allintroductory comments, sothatthereaderhasnoideaof theassumptions underlying the various data-sets. Considering thatthefirsthundredpages of thebookarean unnecessary summary of Irishhistory, wewonderwhythescholarly integrity ofthebook was permitted tobecompromised bysuch penny-shaving methods. The editorialtechniques exercisedon this volumeprovideyet another indication of the saddeclineof OxfordUniversity Press from an esteemed scholarly publisher to merelyanothergeneralnon-fictionhouse. Professor Miller's book is recommended because, first, it is based on the REVIEWS 409 principle - toorarelyrecognized byNorthAmericanhistorians - thatif oneis to writecompetently aboutthe first generationof any groupin nineteenthcenturyNorth America,then one becomes not merelyacquaintedwith, but expertin thehistoryof theBritishIslesor, in othercases, of Europe.Second, one must searchoverseas archives,becausemuch of the most revealing material aboutthefirstgeneration intheNewWorldwassenthome,andnowis foundinregional archives inthehomeland. Third, unlikemoststudies of Irish migrants, thisbookdealsnotonlywiththeUnitedStates butwithCanadaas well,andif hisgraspoftheCanadian situation isshaky, atleast Professor Miller tries. The thesis of thisbookiscomplex(and,occasionally, contradictory), butit maybecompressed asfollows: the Irish Catholicmigrantsto North America by-and-large felt not that theyweregoingto a finer land and by their own choice, butthattheywerebeingforcedintoexile;Protestants are mentioned quitefrequently in thebook,but,since theydonotfit withthemainthesis, are ignored asfarasanysignificant generalizations areconcerned; thereason that theIrishCatholics perceived themselves asexiles isthattheyexperienced 'the moderncommercial and industrialrevolutions with certainpsychological, as well as politicaland economicdisadvantages' (8). These disadvantages stemmed inlargepartfromtheemphasis upontraditionandcommunalism in Irish Catholicism; from the hierarchical, communal, familial, and traditional qualityof IrishCatholicsecular life;andfrom theIrish language itself,which inculcated a worldviewthatemphasized dependence andpassivity. Whatwe havehereisa richandtexturedexplanation for theIrish Catholics' failureto adaptwelltothemoderncommercial andindustrial worldof NorthAmerica, and thus to feel exiled. Atthispoint,Professor Miller'sexpository trainrunsfullspeed intoastone wall:thebodyofdataonethnicity, religion, andeconomic behaviour compiled byProfessor A. GordonDarrochand MichaelOrnsteinof York University. Theirworkdeserves tobemuchmorewidelyknownamongst NorthAmerican historians, becauseit representsby far the largestsamplingof data on nineteenth-century immigrantand ethnicbehaviouryet conducted in the English-speaking world. And it is the only studyon whichthe mattersof religionandethnicity arehandledatanacceptably highevidentiary standard. OneofDarrochandOrnstein's studies, a 1o,ooo-case nationalsample drawn fromthe 187• census, showed thatIrishCatholics wereaslikelyasanyoneelse tobefoundinbourgeois occupations andincommercial agriculture; •another, a 1o,ooo-case linkage of central-Ontariocensusdata for 1861 and 1871, showed thatin patterns of occupational mobility,theexperience of theIrish A. GordonDarrochandMichaelD. Ornstein,'EthnicityandOccupational Structure in Canada in •87•: The VerticalMosaic in Historical Perspective,' Canadian HistoricalReview, LXI, 3, •98ø, 3O5--33 410 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW Catholics wasonlytoa degree differentfromthatof othergroups. • In other words, Miller's complex cultural explanation ofIrishCatholic inability tocope with the modern world of North Americanlife is an explanationof a phenomenon thatdid notexist. In thefaceof DarrochandOrnstein's data,theonlypossible defence of Miller'spositionwouldbe to suggest that the more able Irish Catholics somehow were filtered to Canada, and the less able to the United States. However,asProfessor Miller pointsout, from thebeginning of the Famine onward,vs regulationswere more strict than were Canadian,so that, if anything, Canada received theless vigorous, less competitive, andpresumably, less able. Andyet,eventhey,whenconsidered asagroup,didverywellindeed. Thatmanyof theIrishfeltbadlyaboutleavingtheirhomeland isundeniable buttheorigins, depth,andmeaning of thatpainawaitadequate assessment. r•o•A•.r• Ara•NSON Queen's University Being Had:Historians, Evidence, andtheIrishinNorthAmerica. r)OSALr...