A Land of Dreams :
ethnicity, nationalism, and the Irish in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Maine, 1880-1923 /
Patrick Mannion.
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Summary: | "Wherever they settled, immigrants from Ireland and their descendants shaped and reshaped their understanding of being Irish in response to circumstances in both the old and new worlds. In A Land of Dreams, Patrick Mannion analyzes and compares the evolution of Irish identity in three communities on the prow of northeastern North America: St John's, Newfoundland, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Portland, Maine, in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. These three port cities, home to diverse Irish populations in different stages of development and in different national contexts, provide a fascinating setting for a study of intergenerational ethnicity. Mannion traces how Irishness could, at certain points, form the basis of a strong, cohesive identity among Catholics of Irish descent, while at other times it faded into the background. Although there was a consistent, often romantic gaze across the Atlantic to the old land, many of the organizations that helped mediate large-scale public engagement with the affairs of Ireland - especially Irish nationalist associations - spread from further west on the North American mainland. Irish ethnicity did not, therefore, develop in isolation, but rather as a result of a complex interplay of local, regional, national, and transnational networks. This volume shows that despite a growing generational distance, Ireland remained "a land of dreams" for many immigrants and their descendants. They were connected to a transnational Irish diaspora well into the twentieth century."-- Patrick Mannion is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at Boston College. |
Format: | Book |
Language: | English Text in English. |
Published / Created: |
Montréal :
McGill-Queen's University Press,
2018.
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Series: | McGill-Queen's studies in ethnic history.
46. |
Subjects: | |
Notes: | Includes bibliographical references and index (pages 293-332). Physical description: xv, 332 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm. more |
Contained in: |
Land of dreams. |
ISBN: | 0773553606 9780773553606 0773553614 9780773553613 |