From: oliver[at]doyle-marshall.demon.co.uk
Subject: English-Speaking Communities Latin America

Pat and irish diaspora people:

Thanks for returning me to the list. This time I'll retain the
instructions regarding how to leave/enter!

And thanks for the earlier notice of _English-Speaking Communities in Latin
America_
Yes, the Irish Diaspora List really ought to know about
the book......

Why? Not least because of the glaring absense of Irish-related
contributions! Of course there's Pat McKenna's "The Formation of
Hiberno-Argentine Society", but otherwise the only references to Ireland
and the Irish are found in the first chapter, "A Community of Purpose:
British Cultural Influence during the Spanish American Wars for
Independence" by Karen Racine. Although this is generally one of the
strongest contributions to the volume, here too there are few specific
_Irish_ references to the discussion of the author's general discussion of
the "manners, morals and material possessions" that the British and Irish
Legions brought at the time of the Spanish American wars of independence.
Perhaps nothing specifically Irish was transferred, but I really doubt it.

One of the many reasons Brian McGinn's bibliography on your Web site
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
is so important is that
it clearly shows how work relating to the Irish in Latin America has mainly
involved tinkering on the edges. This is such a pity as there are so many
subjects crying out for serious attention. For example, the Irish in
Argentina played a truly central role in the development of 19th century
Buenos Aires province and there are many 20th century themes that should be
examined for the benefit of students of diaspora studies generally.
Argentina hasn't been neglected due to the lack of sources - starting with
the Irish-Argentine press, there's a great deal waiting to be looked at.

Anyway, if any irish-diaspora people happen to be near University College
London (South Cloisters, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT) at 7.30pm this
Thursday (23rd November), please feel free to drop by for the launch of the
book and a glass of Chilean wine!

Oliver Marshall

Institute of Latin American Studies
University of London

From: oliver[at]doyle-marshall.demon.co.uk
Subject: Query: Robert Southey and Brazil

Robert Southey, in volume one of his _History of Brazil_ (London, 1810),
wrote:

"The Irish believe that they can see an enchanted Island called _O
Breasil_, or _O Brasil_, from the isles of Arran; - which General
Vallency, in his usual wild way, identifies with the Paradise of Irem."

Can any people explain anything in the passage?

Thanks, in advance, for any ideas.

Oliver Marshall

Institute of Latin American Studies
University of London

From: "joan hugman"
Subject: Video: Irish Empire

Dear Patrick
Does anyone know where I can get hold of a video of the Irish Empire
(as shown on British tv in the early autumn)? I have already ordered a copy
from Blackstar as suggested on the IR-D but they are dragging their
heels (and refusing to give a firm delivery date) and I have already
foolishly) promised my students a marathon showing before the end of
semester...?
Joan

Joan Hugman
Department of History, Armstrong Building,
University of Newcastle NE1 7RU Tel 0191 222 6701

From: "Lundon, James"
Subject: RE: Ir-D Video: Irish Empire

PoS,

I ordered it a few weeks back from BlackStar and received it within
four working days. However, I'm struggling to find the time to
view it though :(.

James.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
> [mailto:irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk]
> Sent: 20 November 2000 11:44
> To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
> Subject: Ir-D Video: Irish Empire
>
>
>
> From: "joan hugman"
> Subject: Video: Irish Empire
>
> Dear Patrick
> Does anyone know where I can get hold of a video of the Irish Empire
> (as shown on British tv in the early autumn)? I have already
> ordered a copy
> from Blackstar as suggested on the IR-D but they are dragging their
> heels (and refusing to give a firm delivery date) and I have already
> foolishly) promised my students a marathon showing before the end of
> semester...?
> Joan
>
> Joan Hugman
> Department of History, Armstrong Building,
> University of Newcastle NE1 7RU Tel 0191 222 6701
>

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

I have been asked for a little more on Radharc...

Radharc
Chronicles of the Glucksman Ireland House, New York University
with Volume 1, November 2000
containing
J.J. Lee
'Millenial Reflections on Irish-American History'
the Ernie O'Malley Lecture Series No. 1.

It is a good read. The Contents will give some idea of the scope...

Contents

Introduction
Ethnicity and American Identity
Stereotyping the Irish
Reality, Rationality, and Stereotype
Testing Stereotypes
Irish Responses to Stereotype
The Famine and Irish-American Identities
Historiographical Revisions
Irish America: Catholic and Protestant
Sustainable Irish-American Identity
Works

For further information I suggest people contact
www.nyu.edu/pages/irelandhouse
Email irelandhouse[at]nyu.edu

Radharc is an Irish word meaning - says my Dineen - vision, sight, scene.
Radharc itself suggest 'range of vision'. There is something of a cult now
throughout the Irish Diaspora of finding an Irish word that English-speakers
can pronounce and use that word to name your new thing. Meanwhile, some
time ago, I noted that the prosaic Dubliners had named their transport
system DART, Dublin Area Rapid Transit. No doubt they were thinking of San
Francisco...

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

Ir-D List members within the New York area might like to know that there is
a film event on Friday December 8th in NYU. Paul Largan will introduce 'New
from Northern Ireland', a series of short films and documentaries from NI,
screened at the Cantor Film Theater, starting at 6pm. To non-Glucksman House
people I think there is a $5 charge for the films. Then, at 9pm at Glucksman
Ireland House, NYU and Palgrave Publishing will co-host a reception and US
launch of SCREENING IRELAND: FILM AND TELEVISION REPRESENTATION, by Lance
Petitt. Priced: $23.96

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: "NK Killeen"

Subject: Re: Ir-D Video: Irish Empire 2

The distributor is Clarence Pictures Ltd. in Ireland -
www.clarencepix.com (look under 'Irish Classics' section)

Nuala

On 20 Nov 00, at 13:05, irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk wrote:

>
> From: "Lundon, James"
> Subject: RE: Ir-D Video: Irish Empire
>
> PoS,
>
> I ordered it a few weeks back from BlackStar and received it within
> four working days. However, I'm struggling to find the time to
> view it though :(.
>
> James.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
> > [mailto:irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk]
> > Sent: 20 November 2000 11:44
> > To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
> > Subject: Ir-D Video: Irish Empire
> >
> >
> >
> > From: "joan hugman"
> > Subject: Video: Irish Empire
> >
> > Dear Patrick
> > Does anyone know where I can get hold of a video of the Irish Empire
> > (as shown on British tv in the early autumn)? I have already
> > ordered a copy
> > from Blackstar as suggested on the IR-D but they are dragging their
> > heels (and refusing to give a firm delivery date) and I have already
> > foolishly) promised my students a marathon showing before the end of
> > semester...?
> > Joan
> >
> > Joan Hugman
> > Department of History, Armstrong Building,
> > University of Newcastle NE1 7RU Tel 0191 222 6701
> >

From: Ultan Cowley
Subject: Re: Ir-D Video: Irish Empire 2

For what its worth:

I got my copy in Eason's of Dublin. The distribution company are Clarence
Irish Classics & their address is:
www.clarencepix.com

Ultan





At 13:05 20/11/00 +0000, you wrote:
>
>From: "Lundon, James"
>Subject: RE: Ir-D Video: Irish Empire
>
>
>
>I ordered it a few weeks back from BlackStar and received it within
>four working days. However, I'm struggling to find the time to
>view it though :(.
>
>James.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
>> [mailto:irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk]
>> Sent: 20 November 2000 11:44
>> To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
>> Subject: Ir-D Video: Irish Empire
>>
>>
>>
>> From: "joan hugman"
>> Subject: Video: Irish Empire
>>
>> Dear Patrick
>> Does anyone know where I can get hold of a video of the Irish Empire
>> (as shown on British tv in the early autumn)? I have already
>> ordered a copy
>> from Blackstar as suggested on the IR-D but they are dragging their
>> heels (and refusing to give a firm delivery date) and I have already
>> foolishly) promised my students a marathon showing before the end of
>> semester...?
>> Joan
>>
>> Joan Hugman
>> Department of History, Armstrong Building,
>> University of Newcastle NE1 7RU Tel 0191 222 6701
>>
>
>

From: "joan hugman"
Subject: Re: Ir-D Video: Irish Empire 3

Thank you to everyone who has responded. Armed with this
info. Blackstar have been much more helpful and now claim I ordered
the 'American' version which is hard to come. Hopefully, I will be
enjoying this by the weekend, marking permitting...
Joan
Subject: Ir-D Video: Irish Empire 3 Date: Mon 20
Nov 2000 14:50:00 +0000 From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Reply-to: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk To:
irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk


From: "NK Killeen"

Subject: Re: Ir-D Video: Irish Empire 2

The distributor is Clarence Pictures Ltd. in Ireland -
www.clarencepix.com (look under 'Irish Classics' section)

Nuala

On 20 Nov 00, at 13:05, irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk wrote:

>
> From: "Lundon, James"
> Subject: RE: Ir-D Video: Irish Empire
>
> PoS,
>
> I ordered it a few weeks back from BlackStar and received it within
> four working days. However, I'm struggling to find the time to
> view it though :(.
>
> James.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
> > [mailto:irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk]
> > Sent: 20 November 2000 11:44
> > To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
> > Subject: Ir-D Video: Irish Empire
> >
> >
> >
> > From: "joan hugman"
> > Subject: Video: Irish Empire
> >
> > Dear Patrick
> > Does anyone know where I can get hold of a video of the Irish Empire
> > (as shown on British tv in the early autumn)? I have already
> > ordered a copy
> > from Blackstar as suggested on the IR-D but they are dragging their
> > heels (and refusing to give a firm delivery date) and I have already
> > foolishly) promised my students a marathon showing before the end of
> > semester...?
> > Joan
> >
> > Joan Hugman
> > Department of History, Armstrong Building,
> > University of Newcastle NE1 7RU Tel 0191 222 6701
> >


Joan Hugman
Department of History, Armstrong Building,
University of Newcastle NE1 7RU Tel 0191 222 6701

Our attention has been drawn to the following Web site, Jim Lowe's and Nancy
Eaton's homage to George McManus - which will certainly interest all Ir-D
members who study cartoon representations of the Irish...

Bringing Up Father:
The Illustrative Style of George McManus
by Jim Lowe and Nancy Eaton

http://www.retroactive.com/jan98/bringfather.html

'"BRINGING UP FATHER" features the everyday lives of Maggie and Jiggs, a
working-class immigrant couple who suddenly find themselves
multi-millionaires after winning the Irish Sweepstakes. Much of the humor in
this early 20th century comic strip comes from Jiggs and Maggie dealing with
their newfound wealth and their attempts to attain a place in high society.
In addition to its amusing story lines, Bringing Up Father is an outstanding
example of art moderne period illustration.'

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

Dan Cassidy and I have been discussing the 'discourse of the Irish slum'...

And he has brought the following item to our attention.

P.O'S.

>
> Bittersweet Memories of the City's Island of Garbage
> http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/07/nyregion/07BARR.html
>
> November 7, 2000
>
> By KIRK JOHNSON
>
> It was a place of the discarded and the dead. There were no roads.
> There was said to be nothing green that could live. The smell could
> sicken at a distance of two miles. In the early years of the 20th
> century, the tiny island off the coast of Brooklyn was a nightmare:
> a dumping ground for most of the trash and animal carcasses of the
> teeming city.
>
> Yet it was also a living community, full of families and children
> and immigrants dreaming of a better life as they sorted, scavaged
> and rendered New York's garbage. They were people like Ignatz and
> Amelia Kishkill, immigrants from Poland whose son Edward, now 80,
> can still remember the wind whipping through the planks of the
> thin-walled cottage where he was born.
>
> The place was called Barren Island, and it is truly a lost piece
> of old New York. Its name cannot be found on modern maps or in most
> history books. Connected to the mainland in the 1930's by
> landfill, appropriately the island became an unnamed extension
> into Jamaica Bay. But from its beginning in the 1850's until its
> last residents were evicted during the Great Depression, Barren
> Island was one of New York's strangest and most isolated places: a
> self-contained colony of trash workers, cut off from the city by
> sea and from mainstream New York by its harsh occupations.
>
> A new book about the rubbish of New York, written by a former City
> Sanitation Department official, Benjamin Miller, has resurrected
> the tale of Barren Island and the other forgotten scandals,
> scoundrels and saints of the city's garbage past. The book, called
> "Fat of the Land: Garbage in New York, the Last 200 Years" (Four
> Walls Eight Windows), is full of stories that seem straight from
> the pages of Dickens or Jacob Riis. The aging survivors of Barren
> Island like Mr. Kishkill, who were tracked down by The New York
> Times through census records, bring the story further to life. The
> combined result is a portal into a forgotten world.
>
> "We raised chickens and ducks for eggs, we did fishing and
> crabbing," Mr. Kishkill recalled. "But the factory was about one
> block away from our house, and if the wind was blowing your way,
> there were horrors."
>
> At its height around World War I, when glycerin from boiled-down
> garbage was used to make nitroglycerin for the battlefields of
> France and Belgium, Barren Island was home to more than 1,500
> people, mostly Polish, Italian and Irish immigrants and a few
> blacks. But for an island of garbage, the best of times were of
> course also the worst for the people who lived there, a searing
> reminder across the years that New York's environmental headaches
> are eternal.
>
> Barren Island (the name was apparently a corruption of an old
> Dutch word indicating the presence of bears, and became aptly
> descriptive as an English name only in later years) was at its
> heart a foul and filthy industrial enterprise requiring a kind of
> labor and an isolation that few Americans would put up with. So its
> jobs fell to immigrants and other people with few choices.
>
> Some people, according to old newspaper accounts, arrived in
> America, proceeded directly to Barren Island for a job and never
> saw anything else of their new country again. School was let out
> early so that children could help their parents sort through what
> the garbage scows had brought that day.
>
> Some families, in a descending order of social status, sorted
> bone, while others specialized in scavenging metal or paper. At the
> bottom were the rag pickers. The bare hand was considered crucial
> for getting what was called "the feel" of the garbage in seeking
> out the desired material, Mr. Miller writes.
>
> For generations, through the Civil War and the Gilded Age and into
> the era of the automobile, the radio and the refrigerator, the
> accumulated daily animal dead of the nation's largest city ended up
> there. (The vestigial name, Dead Horse Inlet, in Jamaica Bay, still
> marks the location of the pier.)
>
> Ton after ton of fish arrived for reduction into fertilizer.
> Considered the worst work of all, it generally fell to the island's
> lowest-status residents, its blacks. And then, on top of all that,
> was the endless stream of garbage, all the household waste of
> Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx combined. (Queens and Staten
> Island had their own disposal sites.)
>
> It was a profitable, capital-intensive industry where factories
> with row upon row of vats boiled garbage day and night a
> precursor to the modern system of recycling but the result was a
> horror.
>
> At the turn of the century, a few years before Mr. Kishkill's
> parents arrived from Poland, Mr. Miller writes, Barren Island had
> no doctor or nurse, no electricity or post office. The church that
> Mr. Kishkill remembers had not yet been built.
>
> It had one store, four saloons, five factories, and a one-room
> schoolhouse that was frequently closed because of diphtheria and
> typhoid epidemics. Lacking proper medical care, residents dosed
> themselves with self-styled medicine. Salt pork wrapped around the
> neck with flannel, for example, was said to be sure protection
> against contagion.
>
> But if lives were blighted, they were also, in unexpected ways,
> enriched, especially after 1918, when a crusading schoolteacher
> named Jane F. Shaw, called the Angel of Barren Island and Lady Jane
> by the press of the day, arrived, taking an assignment that 91
> teachers before her had refused.
>
> Miss Shaw, a 5-foot-2-inch ball of fire, became a symbol of hope
> for many residents. She taught her students to play the piano and
> to dance. She taught families how to decorate their homes, to paint
> and to hang curtains, and every year she brought the eighth-grade
> graduating class to her home in downtown Brooklyn for a proper tea.
>
>
> Every Sunday night, she and the school's four other teachers would
> arrive by boat a police launch in the early days, later by
> passenger ferry and spend the week in a house next to the school
> before heading back to their homes on Friday.
>
> "She was like an angel to all of us," said Julie Gilligan, 80, who
> was a classmate of Mr. Kishkill's, and once played a princess to
> his prince in a school play. "She was just unreal, out of a book.
> She wasn't just a principal, she was a mother to everyone."
>
> Ms. Shaw's zeal was also an aberration. The more common attitude
> in New York City toward Barren Island in those years, according to
> Mr. Miller, was a sort of shrugging condescension, often mixed with
> amusement at the expense of people who could live in such a place.
> Newspaper features usually took a tone of voyeuristic horror about
> the lives of the lower classes. The Anti-Barren Island League,
> which briefly became a force in city politics, was mainly concerned
> about the smell.
>
> "All the feature writers would come to the island and say at first
> just how gagging the smell was, then how you get used it," Mr.
> Miller said. "Then you'd get get this condescending tone about how
> the people there just love it."
>
> In 1918, two years before Mr. Kishkill and Ms. Gilligan were born,
> the city stopped delivering garbage to the island. What was left
> was a single employer where both their fathers worked until it,
> too, closed in the early 1930's: a horse factory for dismembering
> and boiling down animal carcasses for glue.
>
> And then in a wink of an eye, the island and its old industries
> were gone and almost as quickly forgotten. In 1936, the city's
> legendary parks commissioner, Robert Moses, condemned Barren Island
> to build the Marine Park Bridge, and he gave residents 30 days to
> leave. Their cottages were bulldozed and the colony was
> unceremoniously dismissed.
>
> Mr. Kishkill's family moved to Brooklyn's Flatlands neighborhood.
> Ms. Gilligan, whose name then was Pokowitz, moved to Flatbush.
>
> "Everybody was scattered and that was it," she said.
>
> Today, the
> spit of land that Mr. Miller has identified as the core of the
> island is part of Gateway National Recreation Area, overgrown and
> green with dense, wild vegetation. The old Barren Island lives on
> only in filtered, bittersweet memory.
>
> Mr. Kishkill can still recall how the maggots would swarm through
> the piles of ordure dumped by the factory's walls.
>
> But he also remembers with deep fondness the final days of a
> community that had learned over the years to seek its strength from
> within. Weddings were weeklong celebrations in which every
> household cooked dishes. And always, it seemed, the week was capped
> by a party at the one building suitable for it, a tavern where a
> man named Mooney Zemzitzky banged on the piano, though he could not
> play a lick, while his brother played the clarinet.
>
> "Barren Island has a lot of pleasant memories, things to think
> about," Mr. Kishkill said. "But, you know, you go on."
>
> Mr. Miller, who focuses on politics and policy in his book,
> asserts that in some ways residents of Barren Island were probably
> better off than people in other parts of immigrant New York in
> those years. Each family had its own cottage, an unheard- of luxury
> in places like the overcrowded Lower East Side. Laborers' wages
> were also comparable, and perhaps even slightly higher, he said, if
> scavenging income is counted.
>
> But when the island was closed, a community was lost. Mr.
> Kishkill's parents, who had never learned English, were both in
> their 60's when they left Barren Island. He said he could still see
> his father, Ignatz, a quiet man trapped in a culture to which he
> never really adapted, sitting alone and aimless at the billiard
> hall after they moved to Flatlands.
>
> Ms. Gilligan, who later raised a family in Freeport, on Long
> Island, before retiring to Florida, also has mixed memories. Barren
> Island, she said, was a wonderful place to grow up, but she can
> still remember just as well how uncomfortable she felt at Erasmus
> High School, which she left the island to attend. She'd sink down
> into her chair whenever she had to announce to the class where she
> lived.
>
> "They'd look at me like I was from Mars," she said.
>
> But life did go on. Mr. Kishkill, who also graduated from Erasmus,
> learned enough Spanish and French there, in addition to the Polish
> and Russian he spoke at home, to land a career after an early
> stint handling props for live radio shows at NBC as a translator.
> He met and married a woman from New Jersey, moved to Hillsdale and,
> for the next 34 years, commuted by bus to a job at Rockefeller
> Center in Manhattan.
>
> Maybe the lesson of Barren Island, historians say, is along the
> same lines: life moves on. What was one era's nightmare merged back
> into the mainstream. The island was forgotten, they say, because
> its function was so abruptly terminated. The emerging chemical
> industry was replacing the old organic compounds, like glycerin,
> that could be derived from garbage, and the automobile all but
> eliminated the horse.
>
> "What we have to remember is that within New York City, urban
> space use changes over time," said Steven H. Corey, an associate
> professor of urban studies at Worcester State College in
> Massachusetts, who wrote his doctoral dissertation about New York
> City trash. "Areas that were undesirable for one generation become
> prized property for the next," Professor Corey said. "I wouldn't
> write off Fresh Kills just yet, either."
>
>
>
>
> The New York Times on the Web
> http://www.nytimes.com
>

On the NY slum, and its discourses, the following will be of interest...

Item no. 2, key texts from the late C19th and early C20th, will allow
anyone, anywhere to develop a comparative study of representations and
discourses. Kate Holladay Claghorn is astonishingly sane...

P.O'S.

1.
http://www.unimelb.edu.au/infoserv/urban/hma/hurban/1997q4/0006.html

2.
On the Lower East Side:
Observations of Life in Lower Manhattan at the Turn of the Century

http://tenant.net/Community/LES/contents.html

Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
William Dean Howells "An East-Side Ramble"
Ida M. Van Etten "Russian Jews as Desirable Immigrants"
Jacob Riis "The Jews of New York"
Robert Alston Stevenson, "The Poor in Summer"
Abraham Cahan "The Russian Jew in America"
Mayor's Pushcart Commission "The New York Pushcart: Recommendations of the
Mayor's Commission"
Annie S. Daniel "The Wreck of the Home: How Wearing Apparel is Fashioned in
the Tenements"
Elizabeth C. Watson "Home Work in the Tenements"
Mary Van Kleeck "Child Labor in New York City Tenements"
Mary Van Kleeck "Working Hours of Women in Factories"
Lillian Brandt "The Causes of Poverty"
Mary Sherman "Manufacturing of Foods in the Tenements"
"Introduction, The Lower East Side: The Tenement Problem and the Tenement
Exhibit of 1900"
E. R. L. Gould "The Housing Problem in Great Cities"
Lawrence Veiller "The Tenement-House Exhibit of 1899"
Lawrence Veiller "New York's New Building Code"
Lewis E. Palmer "The Day's Work of a "New Law" Tenement Inspector"
"Report of the Tenement House Committee, Working Women's Society"
Appendix: "The Foreign Immigrant in New York City"
Kate Holladay Claghorn "The Foreign Immigrant in New York City" Part 1 of 2
Kate Holladay Claghorn "The Foreign Immigrant in New York City" Part 2 of 2


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

Congratulations to Enda Delaney, on the publication of his book about Irish
migration to Britain, 1921-71...

P.O'S.

Press Release:

Demography state and society: Irish migration to Britain, 1921-1971
by Enda Delaney

Liverpool University Press, 2000, 345 pp + xvi
ISBN 0 85323 732 (hb) £32.00/ 0 8532374X 5 (pb) £12.95

Published in North America by
McGill-Queen's University Press (Studies in Ethnic History)
ISBN 0-7735-2212-3 (hb) 0-7735-2213-1 (pb)

The process of migration is associated with feelings of longing,
homesickness, the shock of an exposure to a new culture and, in
other instances, with escape and freedom. Between the foundation
of the new Irish state in 1921-2 and the early 1970s
approximately one and half million people left independent
Ireland, the vast majority travelling to Britain. Demography,
State and Society is the first comprehensive analysis of the
twentieth-century Irish exodus to Britain. Meticulously
researched, using an exhaustive range of previously unused
source materials, this book provides a detailed examination of
the many ways in which migration shaped twentieth-century Irish
society.

Enda Delaney argues that migration to Britain was qualitatively
different from the transatlantic journey to the United States;
indeed, it is argued that, if anything, transience was the
leitmotiv of the migrant experience. This book examines in
detail the patterns of Irish migration to Britain; it also
offers an analysis of the reasons for large-scale migration. In
the process, an important question is answered: why did so many
people leave? Particular attention is paid to the Second World
War and its aftermath. The period of the forties and fifties is
etched in the popular memory of ordinary Irish people; these
represent the peak years of Irish migration to Britain when so
many Irish families saw members leave.

Demography, State and Society focuses on number of vital themes,
many of them rarely mentioned by previous studies: state policy
in Ireland; official responses in Britain; gender dimensions;
individual migrant experience; patterns of settlement in
Britain; and the crucial phenomenon of return migration. A major
study of Irish migration, this book also offers much that will
be of interest to scholars, students and general readers in the
wider fields of modern British and Irish history and migration
studies more broadly.

Copyright 1999 Times Newspapers Limited
Sunday Times (London)


July 11, 1999, Sunday

SECTION: Home news

LENGTH: 641 words

HEADLINE: Britain drew up plans to deport Irish

BYLINE: Chris Ryder

BODY:


THE government considered deporting Irish people from Britain in the
1930s, in an effort to discourage Eamon de Valera from declaring a
republic after he came to power in Dublin.

The impetus for the plan came from Sir Godfrey Collins, then Scottish
secretary, who told the cabinet he had received several representations
from the Scottish Presbyterian Church about the "low-living" Irish
intermarrying, forming "colonies" and fomenting sectarian disorder in
Scotland. The prolific breeding of Irish immigrants was said to be driving
native Scots to emigrate, and imposing undue burdens on British police and
prisons.

Details of the deportation plan, considered by Ramsay MacDonald's
government, were not intended to be released by the Public Records Office
until well into the next century. As a result of the open government
initiative, they were released recently.

Whitehall began drawing up counter-measures soon after de Valera came to
power in Ireland in 1932 and announced his intention to remove British
trappings, such as the oath of allegiance and the powers of the governor
general. This cleared the way for de Valera to pursue his aim of a new
constitution and the declaration of a republic. His ambitions prompted the
Home Office to launch a study of the Irish population in Britain.

Sir John Gilmour, the home secretary, reported to the cabinet on November
8, 1933, and ministers discussed the position of Irish residents in
Britain and the suggestion that those who became dependent on the state
should be deported.

The cabinet heard that there were numerous complaints about the concentrati
on of Irish immigrants in Scotland. At the time there were 122,194 people
of Irish origin living there. Of that, 54,000 of them came from the Free
State, and their numbers were increasing by about 2,000 a year.

What caused particular concern was that 7% of paupers were of Irish
origin. An inter- departmental memo recorded that "in Scotland a very
considerable proportion of the convicted prisoners, borstal inmates and
criminal lunatics are either Irish-born or the children of Irish-born
fathers".

A cabinet memo also referred to numerous representations from the Scottish
Presbyterian Church complaining that the "low standard of living" of the
Irish "enables them to accept employment at low wages thereby undercutting
Scotsmen who are being driven to emigrate from Scotland".

The church also complained of a strong tendency "towards intermarriage of
Irish immigrants and the formation of Irish colonies in certain dis
tricts". It was said that this caused frequent and sometimes serious
outbreaks of sectarian disorder with the local Protestant community.

Collins demanded action, telling the cabinet: "I am strongly of the
opinion that the time has now come when the government would be fully
justified in taking powers, similar to that taken by many of the dominions,
to prohibit admission of people from any dominion including the Irish
Free State in cases where the person has a criminal record or is
insane."

The matter continued to exercise the British cabinet into the early months
of 1934. Further documents contain a warning that drastic action could
provoke de Valera into further undesirable moves and would be resisted
hotly in the Irish Free State. "Our policy has been not to give Mr de
Valera's government any excuse for resorting to extreme measures such as
the declaration of a republic," an official memo said.

The plans were eventually dropped and in 1937 de Valera introduced a new
constitution, followed in 1949 by the declaration of a republic. Clement
Attlee's Labour government then passed legislation giving citizens of the
Irish Republic the same rights and privileges, including the franchise and
unrestricted travel, as was the right of native-born citizens.



LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: July 16, 1999

Copyright 1999 Scottish Daily Record & Sunday Mail Ltd. =20
Sunday Mail=20


July 18, 1999, Sunday=20

SECTION: Page 8=20

LENGTH: 707 words=20

HEADLINE: HOW A BRITISH PRIME MINISTER INVENTED ETHNIC CLEANSING...;=20
REVEALED AT LAST... shameful secret plan to expel Irish Catholics=20

BYLINE: Lindsay Mcgarvie=20

BODY:=20


SECRET British Government papers will shock every reasonable Scot.=20

For the Sunday Mail can reveal a secret scheme hatched by the first Labour =
Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald - the ethnic cleansing of Scotland's =
"undesirable" Irish Catholics.=20

The terrible secret of the Scottish-born PM has been safely locked away in =
a vault in Whitehall for over 60 years.=20

But now it has surfaced to shame a government that considered the ethnic =
cleansing of our land on a scale similar to that carried out in Kosovo.=20

The shameful plot to kick Irish immigrants out of Scotland is all the more =
shocking given the holocaust that was to be visited on Jews by German =
Nazis just a few years later.=20

The blueprints outlined plans to deport the destitute, lunatics and =
criminals among the Irish immigrants.=20

The documents, penned in 1933 in reaction to an influx of Irish immigrants =
to Scotland, were intended to remain secret for 100 years. But under an =
"open government" initiative, they have been released 34 years early - to =
controversy.=20

They contain anti-Irish allegations, such as an inability to assimilate =
with Scots, a low standard of living, that they were prolific breeders and =
were responsible for a high proportion of crime and a disproportionate =
burden on public funds.=20

Under the disturbing title, Crime and Lunacy, a memo to premier MacDonald's=
Cabinet said: "In Scotland, a very considerable proportion of prisoners, =
Borstal inmates and criminal lunatics are Irish-born or the children of =
Irish fathers."=20

And a Home Office memo continued: "Account must be taken of the frequent =
and sometimes serious outbreak of sectarian disorder caused by the =
existence of Catholic colonies of Irish extraction in the midst of =
Protestant colonies, which impose a heavy strain on the police forces."=20

And a minute of the Cabinet meeting of November 8, 1933 reinforced the =
anti- Irish sentiments of the Government. It said: "These proposals should =
deal with the suggestion that persons from the Irish Free State who fall =
on poor relief should be sent back and the machinery to be set up to =
restrict the entry of persons from southernIreland as aliens in the event =
of a republic being established."=20

And the report states that, while Irish-born people accounted for 2.5 per =
cent of the Scottish population, they made up 7 per cent of the paupers.=20=


Ramsay MacDonald was the illegitimate son of a ploughman and a washerwoman,=
who went to become Prime Minister. But he continually shocked the =
nation.=20

He wore hob-nailed boots to Parliament and on visits to the King. He went =
mad and his Parliamentary speeches declined into senseless rants.=20

The overtly anti-Irish plans of his cabinet fitted in with the mood of the =
time, which was whipped-up by certain newspapers. One of the catchphrases =
of the day which was used to create that atmosphere was "the Irish =
Invasion".=20

But while some sections of the population lived in a state of anxiety, and =
prejudice against the Irish, academics such as the poets Hugh MacDiarmid =
and Edwin Muir, defended them.=20

On Irish immigration at the time, the Church of Scotland's Committee on =
Church and Nation said: "The outlook is extremely grave.=20

"Our race and culture are faced with a peril which, though silent and =
unosten- tatious, is the gravest with which the Scottish people has ever =
been confronted."=20

Professor Tom Devine of Aberdeen University said: "Basically, the problem =
was that there were forces which wished to consider the deportation of =
first-generation Irish immigrations, and in particular those who were a =
burden on public services such as hospitals.=20

"And there was a number of other suggestions, mainly emanating from the =
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, who passed motions to restrict =
the flow of Irish entirely."=20

A spokesman for the Church of Scotland said: "Today, the Church is well =
ahead of the position in 1933, and is working alongside the Roman Catholic =
and other churches."=20

Monsignor Tom Connelly, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Church in =
Scotland, said: "Thank the Lord that we've moved on a long way.=20

"We're blessed today that the Irish are integrated into the country now, =
and we live happily alongside all other people."=20

The review by Ir-D member Alex Peach of the new Swift & Gilley volume can
now be found at the Reviews in History Web site...

Reviews in History

The Irish in Victorian Britain: The Local Dimension

Dublin Four Courts Press (1999)
ISBN 1 85182 403 0, £39.50
(HB) ISBN 1 85182 444 8

Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley

Reviewed by: Alexander Peach
Department of Historical and International Studies
DeMontfort University, Leicester

http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/peach.html

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

Alex Peach's review of Swift & Gilley - see earlier Ir-D message - spends
some time looking at Mary Hickman's contribution.

It is worth reminding Ir-D members that there is an earlier essay by Mary
Hickman, freely available at the ZoneZero Web site...

Differences, Boundaries, Community:
The Irish in Britain
Dr. Mary J. Hickman
http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/essays/distant/zdife2.html

(...Also of interest at ZoneZero is
http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/essays/distant/ingles.html
'This is a new and Unusual Dialogue between Chicano, Irish and Mexican
artists, writers and composers addressing themes which their divergent
cultures share in common: Identity, Discrimination, Exile, Hybridity and
Multiculturalism, among others.')

And Alex Peach mentions the work of Lynn Hollen Lees, on the Irish in
London. Lynn Lees work has taken her in different directions since then,
but it is worth noting her latest book - since one of the tasks given to the
Irish poor in the nineteenth century was that of negotiating the vagaries of
the Irish and the English Poor Law systems... See the review at...

English Poor Laws
Lynn Hollen Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and
the People, 1700-1948. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xii +
373 pp. $64.95 (cloth), ISBN: 0-521-57261-4.

Reviewed for EH.NET by George R. Boyer Department of Labor Economics, School
of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University.
Published by EH.Net, May 2000.

http://www.iisg.nl/~ialhi/news/i0005_12.html

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

Forwarded on behalf of
Michael Böss
engmb[at]mail.hum.au.dk

Sent: 22 November 2000 12:52
To: Irish StudiesConference
Subject: Irish Studies Conference


EFACIS CONFERENCE, DECEMBER 2001

6 - 8 December 2001

"Ireland and Europe in Times of Re-Orientation and Re-Imagining".

The Third Conference of EFACIS (The European Federation of
Associations and Centres for Irish Studies). The conference is hosted
by the Nordic Irish Studies Network (NISN) and the Centre for Irish
Studies, Department of English, Aarhus University,
Denmark.

First call for papers within or across the fields of literature,
cultural studies, art, history, sociology and politics.

Deadline for submission of proposals: 1 June, 2001. Deadline for
abstracts: 1 September, 2001.

Further information to be announced at the second call and at the NISN
website: www.hum.au.dk/engelsk/nisn/efacis2001.

For queries, panel proposals, and abstracts contact
Michael Böss, Department of English, Aarhus University,
DK-8000 Aarhus, Denmark.
E-mail: engmb[at]hum.au.dk.
Fax: (45) 8942 6540.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Oliver,

I will assume you know about Southey, and about Brazil.

Charles Vallencey, 1721-1812, was an English military engineer who became an
enthusiast for Irish antiquities, including the language. There is an entry
in the Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, and Vallencey is discussed in
Joep Leersson, Mere Irish and Fior Ghael, 1986.

Peter O'Neill in Rio , in his booklet on Links between
Ireland & Brazil, notes the appearance of the name 'Brasil' on a map of
1324, the Celtic origins of the word (apparently the root, bres, means
noble, lucky, happy), and Irish legends about O'Brasil, Hy Brasil, an island
to the west of the Aran Islands. His immediate source for this is a popular
book, Peadar O'Dowd & Brendan Lawlor, Galway, Heart of the West.

P.O'S.


- -----Original Message-----


From: oliver[at]doyle-marshall.demon.co.uk
Subject: Query: Robert Southey and Brazil

Robert Southey, in volume one of his _History of Brazil_ (London, 1810),
wrote:

"The Irish believe that they can see an enchanted Island called _O
Breasil_, or _O Brasil_, from the isles of Arran; - which General
Vallency, in his usual wild way, identifies with the Paradise of Irem."

Can any people explain anything in the passage?

Thanks, in advance, for any ideas.

Oliver Marshall

Institute of Latin American Studies
University of London

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

Danny Cassidy, in San Francisco, has forwarded to us this copy of a letter
he has written to The Irish Times, Dublin...


Forwarded on behalf of
DanCas1[at]aol.com

Anti-Refugee Racism in Irish "Republic" Unclear On the
Concept


> Re: Unclear on the concept
>
> To The Editors of The Irish Times:
>
> Vincent Browne's recent article on the racist reaction to the "trickle"
of a
> few thousand refugees to The Republic of Ireland is both a concise
exegesis
> of the problem and an essential part of its solution. But, unfortunately,
> there is a problem. I call it: "unclear on the concept."
>
> Conventional wisdom holds that Ireland's own colonial history of
domination
> and mass emigration should serve as an antidote to outbreaks of
> anti-immigrant prejudice. And that, unlike the old imperial powers of
> Britain, France, and Spain, its status as a former colony should somehow
> ideologically and culturally inoculate its people against the more
virulent
> strains of racism and xenophobia.
>
> As an Irish-American, my own experience leads me to believe that the
degree
> of a people's past oppression is neither a reliable indicator of future
> enlightenment nor a guarantee of empathetic responses to the oppression
of
> others. Certainly, that seems to be the case in both the old Ireland of
> Exodus and Eamonn de Valera and the new Ireland of Haughey, Tony O, and
the
> Celtic Cat.
>
> Born-again PC revisionists and Children of Article 31 like Fintan O'Toole
> condemn the crass "racism" of an individualistic consumer-driven Ireland,
> while at the same time turning their narrowbacks on the anti-imperialist
> struggle of their Irish "cousins" in the northeastern counties of
Ireland.
>
> Indeed, among the revisionist elite that dominate Ireland's academia,
media,
> and cultural institutions, even the word "racism" is verboten north of
the
> border. Ironically, it is in the south of Ireland, where the political
> discourse is more policed than a South Armagh GAA pitch, that the
"victims"
> are sorted and selected by a not-so-hidden agenda that has more to do
with
> Catch 22 anti-republicanism than principled anti racism.
>
> At the end of the night, until the Rosemary Nelsons and Patrick Finucanes
of
> the north of Ireland are recognized as victims of a racism as toxic as
that
> which effects the refugees of color in the south of Ireland, there can be
no
> real moral power behind the fight against racism in land of the Celtic
> Neo-Tammany Tiger.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Daniel Cassidy
> Director
> The Irish Studies Program
> An Leann Eireannach
> New College of California
> 777 Valencia Street,
> San Francisco, Ca. 94131, USA
>
>