By Liam Irwin and Liam Kennedy, first appearing in Ireland of the Welcomes, July-August, 1992
Historically, emigration has been a major feature in the life of the Irish. It’s estimated that 60 to 80 million people worldwide are of Irish origin. It was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the aftermath of English wars and conquests in Ireland, that the pattern of Irish emigration was established. During that period a few individuals came to America, but generally, the Irish would immigrate to other areas of Europe (especially Spain, Portugal and France).
Immigration to America began in earnest in the early eighteenth century and was predominately, but not exclusively, from Ulster. This movement was the result of higher rent cost for farmland, the precarious nature of the Ulster linen industry and the establishment of English Penal Laws in 1704. These laws were primarily aimed against Irish Catholics to prevent the growth of the Catholic faith. Among a number of restrictions, they forced anyone in a position of responsibility to take an oath of loyalty to the established Anglican Church.
Coincidently, Ulster Presbyterians were also affected by these laws. These Ulster Irish, who had been transplanted to Ireland from Scotland in the 1600’s, had little hereditary attachment to the land. Since they were, to some degree, more economically independent than their Catholic neighbors, they began to take flight when these economic and religious troubles developed. The attractions of America began to outweigh the dissatisfactions of home. By 1770 they were emigrating at a rate of 12,000 per year. This Ulster movement formed in the New World those individuals who were later to be called the Scots-Irish or Scotch-Irish.
It has been estimated that about 10% of those who emigrated from Ireland to America during the 1700’s were Catholic. To the typical Irish Catholic of this period, the very notion of emigration went against the old Celtic traditions of extended family and clan relationships. Since most lived-in extreme poverty, the ship passage was unaffordable. In addition, there was little incentive to immigrate to British America. For most Irish Catholic families, emigration was simply not possible.
However, that was soon to change and a much more intense movement of Irish to America was to come. Following the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and the defeat of France, a new era of Irish emigration began.
The demobilization of soldiers and a post war depression meant a surge of widespread unemployment. This, combined with a bloated population of Irish peasant farmers and paupers living on a diet of potatoes, convinced many of the need to abandon their native land. More than a million Irishmen and women crossed the Atlantic for the New World between 1815 and 1845 and half that number moved to neighboring Britain. This amounted to almost 20% of the population leaving during that thirty-year period.
However, a dynamic surge of Irish emigration began with the crushing “Great Famine” of 1845–49. This event, which reshaped Irish society, occurred when the potato crop failed in successive years. It was caused by a blight that destroyed the edible roots of the plant. More than a million people died of malnutrition and related diseases; that was nearly one-eighth of the entire population. The Irish Famine was the worst to occur in Europe in the 19th century and was proportionally much more destructive of human life than the vast majority of famines in modern times.
In the years 1845 to 1855 over two million people escaped the wreckage, with most finding their way to the United States. Ireland lost more of her sons and daughters through emigration in this decade than in the previous two and a half centuries. The year 1851 saw the greatest loss of population with one-quarter of a million people leaving, the most ever, either before or since.
Even when the “Great Hunger” declined, emigration continued, stimulated by such difficulties as agricultural depression and tenant farmer evictions. The famine inaugurated a century of population decline which continued until the 1960’s.
Before and during the famine kinship groups and whole families seemed to be the majority of overseas travelers. In contrast, after the famine the great bulk of those who left for America, both male and female, usually traveled as single individuals. They were usually young, unskilled and Catholic. While they traveled alone, many traveled along family pathways. An older brother or sister might have sent back the cost of the fare to a younger relative and, in time, he or she might help bring another relative out of Ireland. Emigration took on the form of a chain reaction, making it a permanent feature of Irish life.