Forging Identities in the Irish World
Melbourne and Chicago, c.1830-1922
- Provides an in-depth study of the Irish in Melbourne and the ethnic social history of Chicago’s earliest decades
- Based on primary sources from across the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States and Australia
- Brings together religious, urban, and civic society histories to ask new questions of Irish diaspora history
Set within colonial Melbourne and Chicago, this book explores the shifting influences of religious demography, educational provision and club culture to shed new light on what makes a diasporic ethnic community connect and survive over multiple generations.
Sophie Cooper focuses on these Irish populations as they grew alongside their cities establishing the cultural and political institutions of Melbourne and Chicago, and these comparisons allow scholars to explore what happens when an ethnic group – so often considered ‘other’ – have a foundational role in a city instead of entering a society with established hierarchies. Forging Identities in the Irish World places women and children alongside men to explore the varied influences on migrant identity and community life.
Acknowledgements
Figures
Abbreviations
Introduction Melbourne and Chicago: An Introduction Building Bonds: Secular Club Life. Church and Club: Religious Parish Life Sisters and Schooling: Public and Religious Education. Different Fighting Styles: Political Nationalism St Patrick’s Day and the Public Performance of Identity Conclusion
Bibliography
Cooper identifies some very subtle ways in which the communities varied or, in some cases, subtle ways in which their experience was more similar than would initially appear. In part, this is Cooper’s sensitivity to the difference between the Australian experience when for much of the time of the analysis Australia was a colony and then a dominion within the British Empire, while Chicago was part of a fully independent state throughout the period studied. Equally important, as the notes and bibliography show, the research base for the book is extensive. Cooper delved deeply into both the contemporary sources and the historiography of both cities. This will be a useful book for those interested in the Irish diaspora and how the nature of Irishness developed in two of the major destination for Irish, Catholic emigrants.
By provoking new questions and perspectives, particularly about shifting identities across generations, the influence of women in education and the role of middle class immigrants vis-à-vis the working class, it constitutes a significant contribution to Irish diasporic history. Hopefully this work will persuade other scholars of the valuable insights to be gained from such a transnational approach.
Her observations about the integrated Irish world press as well as how religious and political thought in Ireland informed the attitudes of diasporic communities confirm the importance of both comparative and transnational approaches in investigating the diasporic experience. [...] Throughout this excellently researched, eloquently written and methodologically innovative work, Cooper unearths elements of the Irish world experience that adds depth and texture to our understanding of the field. Her interpretation of Irish communities in Chicago and Melbourne is an important contribution because of its comparative focus and elucidation of the nuances and complexities involved in immigrant identity formation.
Was there something inherently "Irish" about the millions of immigrants who left Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth century and spread across the globe? What difference did local, national, and international situations make to the paths followed by the Irish migrants in their new lives overseas? Such questions require a comparative approach, something still rather rare in the field of Irish studies. Sophie Cooper's book on Chicago and Melbourne, two vital but different centers of Irish immigration analyzes this question of similar and divergent paths shaped by conditions in the migrants' new urban homes. In the process, she Illuminates not only the dynamics of the migration itself, but also its impacts on the two cities, on the US and Australia, and on Ireland.
A splendid comparative history of two of the nineteenth century’s great new cities, Forging Identities in the Irish World is a major contribution to the global study of urban Irish migration. Its rich perspectives on the immigrants’ class, gender, identities and community building constitute a major contribution to scholarship on the Irish diaspora.
The cutting-edge comparative approach adopted in this study suggests the methodological innovations – often pioneered by scholars of Ireland beyond the island – which can be usefully integrated into histories of modern Ireland. This book, further, illuminates the conceptual possibilities of writing Irish history to scale. If Irish history is to have a global future, it is to be found in the dialectic between the study of the world and the ‘small spaces’ of the local, the personal, and the private. Cooper’s book takes Irish historiography a step further towards a new ‘Global Irish’ history.
an engaging and thought-provoking contribution to the historiography of the Irish diaspora. ... This book should be a core reading for those interested in or studying the Irish diaspora and for those who want to understand how they maintained an allegiance to their new community whilst being firmly rooted to the Irish identity they had left behind.
Forging Identities in the Irish World is a must-read for numerous disciplines, above all perhaps because of its ability to make the cities of Chicago and Melbourne fully realized historical characters in their own right, sometimes mirroring one another and sometimes not, convincingly underscoring the importance of internal and external identities for the individual immigrant and the community at large.
this book makes a major contribution to Irish diaspora and Pacific World historiography,
and it deserves to be read and re-read within and beyond Irish Studies.
