A Land of Dreams
Subtitle: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Irish in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Maine, 1880-1923
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: Jul 24, 2018
Language: eng
Format: paperback
Number of pages: 360
ISBN-13: 9780773553613
Description: "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."--
Notes: Source title: A Land of Dreams: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Irish in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Maine, 1880-1923 (McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History)