Famine Irish and the American Racial State (Routledge Advances in American History) - Hardcover

O'Neill, Peter D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1138228133 ISBN 13: 9781138228139

Publisher: Routledge, 2017

Synopsis

Accounts of Irish racialization in the United States have tended to stress Irish difference. Famine Irish and the American Racial State takes a different stance. This interdisciplinary, transnational work uses an array of cultural artifacts, including novels, plays, songs, cartoons, government reports, laws, sermons, memoirs, and how-to manuals, to make its case. It challenges the claim that the Irish "became white" in the United States, showing that the claim fails to take into full account the legal position of the Irish in the nineteenth-century US state – a state that deemed the Irish "white" upon arrival. The Irish thus not only fitted into the US racial state; they helped to form it. Till now, little heed has been paid to the state’s role in the Americanization of the Irish or to the Irish role in the development of US state institutions. Distinguishing American citizenship from American nationality, this volume journeys to California to analyze the means by which the Irish gained acceptance in both categories, at the expense of the Chinese. Along the way, it contests ideas that have taken hold within American studies. One is the notion that the Roman Catholic Church operated outside of the power structure of the nineteenth-century United States. On the contrary, Famine Irish and the American Racial State argues, the Irish-led corporate Catholic Church became deeply imbricated in US state structures. Its final chapter discusses a radical, transnational, Irish tradition that offers a glimpse at a postnational future.

About this title

About the Author

Peter D. O’Neill is Assistant Professor in the Comparative Literature Department at the University of Georgia.

Review

"O’Neill has produced an incisive work, well researched and theoretically informed. This is a book that raises important questions about the nature of Irish migration to, and assimilation in, the American racial state."

– Aidan Beatty, Wayne State University

"...a valuable contribution to the fields of Irish and American studies. It addresses important issues and offers new insights. Moreover, it is impressive in its scope: O’Neill discusses a wide variety of primary sources, including newspaper articles, illustrations, legislative texts, plays, poetry and literature. Each chapter is supported by a substantial amount of references and an ample bibliography and O’Neill succeeds in tying all these sources together in a coherent and astute manner."

– Lindsay Janssen, English Studies

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1138228133
• ISBN 13: 9781138228139
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 294