MIGRANT VICTORY: 6/8: 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
⏱️ 6 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.
1907 Famine
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Baster with Tyler Anbinder. |
| 0:07.0 | We're telling the story of plentiful country, the great potato famine and the |
| 0:10.4 | Irish, the famine Irish and the making of New York. |
| 0:15.0 | The immigrants are arriving at first just into the east side, the north river it was called the Hudson now, and the east side, the east river. |
| 0:25.8 | They arrive on both sides, but there's no collection point. |
| 0:29.4 | That changes in the 1850s with the choice of Castle Garden and one particular |
| 0:35.4 | famine Irish, Hubert Glenn, gets an important post at the Castle Garden. Who was Hubert Glyn and what did he do for many years? |
| 0:48.0 | Hubert Glyn comes to America from the west coast of Ireland. He's not your typical Irish immigrant. He had actually begun college before coming to America in 1851. |
| 0:59.0 | Also being from the West, he spoke both English and Irish and when he gets to New York he |
| 1:06.0 | looks for a job that he feels is commensurate with his educational level he |
| 1:10.4 | wants a white collar job. And he finds that the New York City Commissioners of Immigration |
| 1:16.8 | or New York State Commissioners of Immigration. |
| 1:18.6 | In those days, immigration was regulated by the states, not by the federal government. |
| 1:24.1 | It's only after the Civil War that the Supreme Court rules that only the federal government |
| 1:28.4 | can regulate immigration. |
| 1:30.8 | And so the state officials who regulate immigration into New York City need someone to work for them who speaks Irish also because they have people speaking only Irish coming into their facilities and looking for work. So they hire Hubert |
| 1:45.2 | Glyn as a clerk and someone who can talk to the Irish immigrants and eventually in the middle of the 1850s at the very end of the famine |
| 1:55.5 | migration the New York state officials decide that they want to create one |
| 2:00.0 | central place where all immigrants will land. |
| 2:03.8 | So they can take down information about each immigrant who comes to the United States |
| 2:07.3 | and protect the immigrants from swindlers who would hang out at the docks |
| 2:10.6 | and try to swindle the immigrants when they first arrived. |
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