A Land of Dreams: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Irish in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Maine 1880–1923 by Patrick Mannion (review)

A comparison of Irish communities in St. John's, Newfoundland, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Portland, Maine, near the turn of the twentieth century, Patrick Mannion's first book builds upon the example of excellent comparative works by William Jenkins and Malcolm Campbell. Importantly, it also continues the recent historiographical trend of amending what was once nearly universally thought to be the "typical experience" of Irish migrants throughout the Irish diaspora, but especially in North America. Irish Catholics, particularly scarred by the famine experience, had certain characteristics or so the story went. Foremost among them was a hatred of Britain and the British Empire. Unwilling exiles from their homeland, they were natural republicans and hated empire and would not willingly associate with it.

However, even between the somewhat similar northeastern port cities of St. John's, Halifax, and Portland, Mannion demonstrates that Irish Catholic communities there differed significantly, even regarding their relationship with or attitude towards Britain. In Portland, Maine, for instance, the Irish community was filled with later arrivals. Many were Irish born, and many of those experienced the Great Famine. Fiercely anti-British, the Portland Irish were very much like the stereotype. Not so their equally Catholic and Irish counterparts in Halifax and St. John's, where Mannion offers compelling evidence of staunch loyalism within the Irish Catholic populations. The loyalism in St. John's is particularly notable for St. John's is often considered to be quintessentially Irish. For example, Tim Pat Coogan wrote of Newfoundland: "[O]utside of Ireland itself, there is probably no more Irish place in the world than Newfoundland" (Wherever the Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora [2000]). Yet Mannion's research clearly demonstrates that in St. John's, the undisputed capital of the Newfoundland Irish, the community was proudly Irish and also thoroughly loyal to Britain and the British Empire. Mannion's conclusions on this point strongly reinforce the controversial findings of Mark McGowan's recent The Imperial Irish (2017). Loyalty to the British Empire and Irish Catholicism were not mutually exclusive. The Irish Catholic diaspora in North America, it turns out, was much more varied than previously thought, even regarding the twin shibboleths of nationalism and republicanism.

This is not to say that there were not general similarities, and Mannion's conclusions simultaneously reinforce the idea that the Irish diaspora was also interconnected. Through newspapers, the minutes and publications of Irish associations like the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and the Irish Catholic clergy, Mannion demonstrates that Irish Catholics in each city remained in contact with the old homeland and with Irish migrants throughout the diaspora, even as they "re-invented" their Irish identities abroad. Because every individual and communal diasporic identity is shaped by both local events, attitudes, and mores and by those in the homeland, Irish identity and ethnicity in each of the communities Mannion examines was varied, but the continued connection with Ireland united those three communities with each other and with the communities of Irish migrants scattered to the ends of the earth.

Mannion's use of association publications also allows him access to class and gender distinctions within the Irish communities of Halifax, St. John's, and Portland. He finds that, while most written expressions of Irish identity were masculine, there was an important female presence, not least because several females were leaders in the larger Irish communities and because women were actively involved in Irish associations like the Ladies' Land League in Portland. Similarly, class distinctions are also discernable. Mannion found that public engagement with Ireland and Irish issues in Halifax and Nova Scotia was largely middle class. Only in Portland did an Irish Catholic association exist that primarily served the labouring class: the Portland Longshoreman's Benevolent Society, which actively worked to maintain the occupational niche of the longshoremen for Irish Catholics.

This is a bold and...