An Agnostic View of the Historiography of the Irish-Americans

THIS ARTICLE SUMMARIZES the accepted view of the Irish in America, notably that they have always been a The author then surveys the sources of data on which the agreed interpretation is based. He demonstrates that for the crucial years of the Irish-American experience, the period 1815-75: (1) that the data base certainly is inadequate to prove the 'city people hypothesis and (2) he speculates (and his speculations are clearly labelled as such) that a more realistic interpretation of the ambiguous data is that the Irish indeed were not a city people. The importance of this argument for historians of social class in North America is that it implies that Irish immigrants and their off-spring cannot necessarily be assumed to have formed a part of the urban working class. L'ARTICLE ReSUME L'INTERPRETATION generalement acceptee que les Irlandais emigres en Amerique se sont etablis dans les villes. L'auteur fait une analyse critique des sources sur lesquelles est basee cette interpretation. Pour les annees 1815-75, periode decisive de l'immigration irlandaise en Amerique, il montre: (1) que les donnees se revelent inadequates pour soutenir l'hypothese de l'immigration urbaine, at (2) qu'une analyse plus juste des donnees demographiques montre le caractere non-urbain de l'immigration irlandaise. Pour l'historien des classes sociales in Amerique du Nord, cette conclusion est importante, car il en decoule qu'on ne peut necessairement accepter l'interpretation que les immigrants irlandais et leurs descendants ont forme une partie de la classe ouvriere urbaine

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