The Global Dimensions of Irish Identity: Race, Nation, and the Popular Press, 1840–1880 by Cian T. McMahon (review)

The Irish have unquestionably left a global footprint on the world. McMahon’s book takes an international and transnational approach to studying their histories, drawing out the complexities of post-Famine migration that saw new identities emerge, alongside, and sometimes in contrast to, deeply cherished notions of authentic “Irishness.” One of McMahon’s key arguments is that a comparative perspective is essential to understanding individual and collective responses to migration, thus sources from Ireland, the United States and Australia are used to explore the tricky issues of identity, ethnicity, whiteness, and belonging. His arguments are convincing, and the book contains rich detail, superb analysis, and some enchanting illustrative material. McMahon attempts to create a global perspective on the ideas of nation and colour, which he asserts are connected but separate.

The book particularly focuses on print culture as a way to study interactions between the Irish worldwide, from the postal circulation of weekly newspapers, to the groups gathered in public houses to hear the latest news from Ireland, to the actual transcribing of news and events in personal letters. McMahon argues that ideas about race and nation were formed and exchanged through these processes, but they were also mediated, refuted or altered in this process also. Particularly fascinating is the exploration of the complexity of Irish people’s attitudes to imperialism and slavery, illuminating as it does contradictory (and often hypocritical or bigoted) arguments that posed Irish political freedom as akin to abolitionism, in some circles, or as completely different in others.

Many will be pleased to see that the rebellious Young Irelanders, made famous by their disastrous attempt at insurrection in the midst of Famine in Ireland in the 1840s, feature prominently in McMahon’s book. Developing the narrative beyond hagiographic accounts of the leaders, and beyond accounts that solely focus on their contributions within Ireland (as so many accounts of modern Ireland do), this book draws upon their newspapers, speeches, political cartoons and personal writings to trace their impact upon a dispersed, disaffected Irish diaspora that now had the means and energy to join their cause. From Australia to North America, the ideology of the Young Irelanders became a political force to be reckoned with, having an impact on domestic politics in their new “home” countries and on the Irish political scene, where their thinking — and money — continued to influence nationalist and republican activists well into the twentieth century. The idea that there was an Irish identity that could unite across religious and class lines was part of the romanticism of this group and was continuously challenged throughout the nineteenth century by the emerging power of the Catholic Church. The idea of essential difference, that Celtic Ireland was distinctly, culturally separate from Saxon England, was an enduring one, and McMahon’s book traces how this idea manifested itself in different global concentrations of Irish people in the politically fraught post-Famine period.

The interactions between nationhood and capitalism are explored throughout, as McMahon locates the agency of the Irish who migrated throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century in the maelstrom of modernity. This is an interesting angle and one that offers something new to the field. For while nationalism and its iterations among the diasporic Irish have been explored in various studies, simultaneously linking this to the market, and therefore analyzing how Irish migrants blended “ethnic solidarity and civic pluralism” (180) in their new cities offers a different perspective.

McMahon has woven together an impressive range of sources and perspectives in this complex narrative of how the Irish worldwide engaged with and shaped notions of identity in Ireland and their new host countries. This is intellectually impressive, drawing as it does on different disciplines and sources. As such, this is a specialist study rather than a broad or general history of the Irish worldwide. It delves into...