Skip to Main Content

Irish Nationalists in America: The Politics of Exile, 1798–1998

Online ISBN:
9780199378166
Print ISBN:
9780195331776
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Irish Nationalists in America: The Politics of Exile, 1798–1998

David Brundage
David Brundage

Professor of History

Professor of History, University of California, Santa Cruz
Find on
Published online:
21 April 2016
Published in print:
1 April 2016
Online ISBN:
9780199378166
Print ISBN:
9780195331776
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book is a full-scale history of Irish nationalists in the United States from the brief exile of Theobald Wolfe Tone, founder of Irish republican nationalism, in Philadelphia on the eve of the 1798 Irish rebellion to the role of Bill Clinton’s White House in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. Irish American nationalism is seen as an example of a larger phenomenon, sometimes called diasporic or “long-distance” nationalism. Into the narrative are woven a number of the analytical perspectives that have recently transformed the study of nationalism, including its “imagined” or “invented” character and its relationship to the waves of global migration from the early nineteenth century to the present (and especially the relationship of nationalist politics to the phenomenon of political exile). The book focuses also on Irish American nationalists’ larger social and political vision, which sometimes expanded to embrace causes such as the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, or freedom for British colonial subjects in India and Africa, and at other times narrowed, avoiding or rejecting such “extraneous” concerns and connections. All of these themes are placed within a thoroughly transnational framework, with attention to events in Ireland, the United States, and the wider Irish diaspora.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close