-
5. New Worlds Converge: Immigrants, Nationalisms, and Sectarian Cultures
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
New Worlds Converge Immigrants, Nationalisms, and Sectarian Cultures T A C W lenged Irish immigrants and those of Irish descent to demonstrate their overriding loyalty and commitment to their new society. The rallying call was answered on both sides of the terrible divide, and Irish soldiers fought with valor and distinction in the armies of the Union and the Confederacy. Through their display of heroism on the battlefield, the Irish won a shortterm reprieve from the extreme nativist hostility of the s, though wartime sacrifice did little to ameliorate the unfavorable economic position of Irish immigrants across the nation. Indeed, in the next two decades, antagonism toward the Irish continued to be a feature of American life, and many within the immigrant group remained mired in positions of acute material disadvantage. Confronted with this predicament, America’s Irish entered the era of Reconstruction eager to establish once and for all their right and proper standing as full participants in American life and to secure a greater measure of economic well-being. They were roused and fortified in these objectives by a new and popular version of Ireland’s recent history , a narrative of their homeland’s brutal subordination and genocidal treatment at the hands of a merciless Great Britain. This account of Ireland’s history, widely disseminated and increasingly accessible in print, took root and flourished in America in the two decades after the Civil War, endowing the Irish with a fierce desire to achieve vindication in their new society and a determination to bring to its knees the implacable enemy of the Old. In contrast, in the s and s Australia continued to provide barren ground for such pointed nationalist sentiments or vituperative attacks on the British administration of Ireland. As in previous decades, the colonial 5 context continued to provide the framework for the actions and reactions of the Irish in Australia, and the vast distances and remoteness in time between the Old World and the New continued to prove near insurmountable obstacles to the generation of any militant Irish national consciousness. Yet despite these constant factors, the prevailing mood of Irish Australia began to shift markedly in the mid-s, becoming much more cautious and uncertain. A volatile sectarian environment emerged in the colonies to disrupt the placid atmosphere of the s, the shift fuelled by controversies over education, fears over the threat posed by militant Irish nationalism, the imposition of a more rigorous version of Roman Catholicism on Australian soil, but most importantly, by the commencement of a process of sweeping economic change. Irish Australia was transformed under the weight of these factors into a more insular and defensive immigrant group, and its experiences came more closely to resemble those of the American Irish than had been the case before. This chapter examines these changing contours of the immigrants’ experiences in Ireland’s two new worlds from the s to the s, emphasizing the significant convergence in the experience of the Irish in each society as wider economic and social transformations affected the United States and the Australian colonies. * When John Mitchel prepared to depart from Greytown for New York City on November , he reflected upon his expulsion from Ireland, his detention in Australia, and the prospect of life in America. “How can I expect to find men in New York, though they be banished Irishmen, too; or in Ireland, though they be unhappy in not being banished—so full of these thoughts as I am? Six years, that have been ages and centuries of bitterness to me, have been to them six years of work and of common life. I know that, let exile be as long as it will, the returning wanderer is apt to take up his life again, as it were, at the very point where he quitted it, just as if the interval were a hasheesh dream, wherein men spend years, and lead weary lives in a second of time.”1 Mitchel’s question was soon answered; his ruminations put to the test. Despite the anguish of his forced exile in Tasmania, John Mitchel arrived in the United States ready and eager to take up life where it had been interrupted in —in the bitter denunciation of Great Britain and British influence in Irish life. Like other fervent advocates of an independent Ireland, he understood very clearly that the United States constituted the most fertile ground for the resumption of the Immigrants, Nationalisms, and Sectarian Cultures [3.236.214.123] Project...