Cian T. McMahon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469620107
- eISBN:
- 9781469620121
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469620107.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
This introductory chapter argues that mid-nineteenth-century Irish migrants mainly felt threatened by the notion that New World countries such as the United States and Australia were Anglo-Saxon ...
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This introductory chapter argues that mid-nineteenth-century Irish migrants mainly felt threatened by the notion that New World countries such as the United States and Australia were Anglo-Saxon nations with no room for Catholic Celts. Unwilling to renounce their Celtic self-image and “become Saxon,” however, the Irish developed a diasporic identity that the author calls “global nationalism.” Constantly adapting to the practical exigencies of given times and places—by vacillating between ethnic solidarity and civic pluralism—global nationalism portrayed the Irish as an international community capable of simultaneous loyalty to their old and new worlds. This was a complicated discourse often marked by paradox and contradiction, yet by laying claim to this multivalent identity, the Irish joined other migrant groups in expanding the modern parameters of citizenship and mobility.Less
This introductory chapter argues that mid-nineteenth-century Irish migrants mainly felt threatened by the notion that New World countries such as the United States and Australia were Anglo-Saxon nations with no room for Catholic Celts. Unwilling to renounce their Celtic self-image and “become Saxon,” however, the Irish developed a diasporic identity that the author calls “global nationalism.” Constantly adapting to the practical exigencies of given times and places—by vacillating between ethnic solidarity and civic pluralism—global nationalism portrayed the Irish as an international community capable of simultaneous loyalty to their old and new worlds. This was a complicated discourse often marked by paradox and contradiction, yet by laying claim to this multivalent identity, the Irish joined other migrant groups in expanding the modern parameters of citizenship and mobility.
Jean M. O'Brien
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816665778
- eISBN:
- 9781452946672
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816665778.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
Across nineteenth-century New England, antiquarians and community leaders wrote hundreds of local histories about the founding and growth of their cities and towns. Ranging from pamphlets to ...
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Across nineteenth-century New England, antiquarians and community leaders wrote hundreds of local histories about the founding and growth of their cities and towns. Ranging from pamphlets to multivolume treatments, these narratives shared a preoccupation with establishing the region as the cradle of an Anglo-Saxon nation and the center of a modern American culture. They also insisted, often in mournful tones, that New England’s original inhabitants, the Indians, had become extinct, even though many Indians still lived in the very towns being chronicled. This book argues that local histories became a primary means by which European Americans asserted their own modernity while denying it to Indian peoples. Erasing and then memorializing Indian peoples also served a more pragmatic colonial goal: refuting Indian claims to land and rights. Drawing on more than six hundred local histories from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island written between 1820 and 1880, as well as censuses, monuments, and accounts of historical pageants and commemorations, the book explores how these narratives inculcated the myth of Indian extinction, a myth that has stubbornly remained in the American consciousness.Less
Across nineteenth-century New England, antiquarians and community leaders wrote hundreds of local histories about the founding and growth of their cities and towns. Ranging from pamphlets to multivolume treatments, these narratives shared a preoccupation with establishing the region as the cradle of an Anglo-Saxon nation and the center of a modern American culture. They also insisted, often in mournful tones, that New England’s original inhabitants, the Indians, had become extinct, even though many Indians still lived in the very towns being chronicled. This book argues that local histories became a primary means by which European Americans asserted their own modernity while denying it to Indian peoples. Erasing and then memorializing Indian peoples also served a more pragmatic colonial goal: refuting Indian claims to land and rights. Drawing on more than six hundred local histories from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island written between 1820 and 1880, as well as censuses, monuments, and accounts of historical pageants and commemorations, the book explores how these narratives inculcated the myth of Indian extinction, a myth that has stubbornly remained in the American consciousness.
