MIGRANT VICTORY: 5/8: Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York Hardcover – March 12, 2024 by Tyler Anbinder (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 3 September 2024
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Plentiful-Country-Potato-Famine-Making/dp/031656480X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
In 1845, a fungus began to destroy Ireland’s potato crop, triggering a famine that would kill one million Irish men, women, and children—and drive over one million more to flee for America. Ten years later, the United States had been transformed by this stupendous migration, nowhere more than New York: by 1855, roughly a third of all adults living in Manhattan were immigrants who had escaped the hunger in Ireland. These so-called “Famine Irish” were the forebears of four U.S. presidents (including Joe Biden) yet when they arrived in America they were consigned to the lowest-paying jobs and subjected to discrimination and ridicule by their new countrymen. Even today, the popular perception of these immigrants is one of destitution and despair. But when we let the Famine Irish narrate their own stories, they paint a far different picture.
In this magisterial work of storytelling and scholarship, acclaimed historian Tyler Anbinder presents for the first time the Famine generation’s individual and collective tales of struggle, perseverance, and triumph. Drawing on newly available records and a ten-year research initiative, Anbinder reclaims the narratives of the refugees who settled in New York City and helped reshape the entire nation. Plentiful Country is a tour de force—a book that rescues the Famine immigrants from the margins of history and restores them to their rightful place at the center of the American story.
1900 Eviction
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS I on the world with John Bachelor. |
| 0:10.0 | Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:12.0 | Continuing with Professor Tyler Anbinder, |
| 0:15.0 | his new book, Pleniful Country, |
| 0:18.0 | The Great Potato Famine and The Making of Irish New York. |
| 0:22.0 | The famine Irish arriving after the potato famine of 45 46 to 50 are now in New York |
| 0:30.2 | and ambitious saving money the Imm savings bank tells the story of |
| 0:34.4 | success and less than success people climbing up the ladder of success from |
| 0:41.4 | unskilled labor to professionals and in between our business owners. |
| 0:46.0 | And along comes the civil war and the breakdown of order in the United States of America |
| 0:52.0 | which here to four has been seen as nirvana. |
| 0:55.0 | However, in New York there is the Irish Brigade, the 69th, |
| 1:01.0 | and a number of these famine Irish have joined it already. Timothy Carr is one name and James Kavanaugh is another name. |
| 1:10.0 | Professor, thank you very much for this. The 69th Regiment. It's a |
| 1:16.2 | volunteer regiment. They join, they meet on weekends, but suddenly there's a war |
| 1:21.5 | and they're called to the front line, they're called to Washington. |
| 1:25.3 | What made up the Irish Brigade? |
| 1:26.8 | Why did the Irish participate in what appears to be a war to, existential war for a country they've just arrived in. |
| 1:37.0 | Well, so Irish immigrants initially joined the 69th Regiment of the New York State Militia, what today would be the equivalent to the National Guard. |
| 1:48.0 | It was the kind of thing, as you mentioned, where you would spend maybe one weekend a month training doing military training, which mostly was just |
| 1:57.7 | target shooting out in the park. |
| 2:00.1 | Most of the Irish join organizations like that initially because they want military training because they are hoping to go back to Ireland and free Ireland from British rule. |
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