The Irish Conquered the World With Plentiful Cheap Labor and Pints of Guinness

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When people think of Irish emigration, they often think of the Great Famine of the 1840s, which caused many to flee Ireland for the United States. But the real history of the Irish diaspora is much longer, more complicated, and more global. Today’s guest, Sean Connolly, author of “On Every Tide: The Making and Remaking of the Irish World,” argues that the Irish exodus helped make the modern world.

Starting in the eighteenth century, the Irish fled limited opportunity at home and fanned out across America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These emigrants helped settle new frontiers, industrialize the West, and spread Catholicism globally. This led to the commodification of Irish culture, best exemplified by the ubiquity of the Irish Pub and Guinness, the popularity of River Dance, and annual Saint Patrick’s Day parades.

As the Irish built vibrant communities abroad, they leveraged their newfound power—sometimes becoming oppressors themselves.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Scott here with another episode of the History and Plug podcast.
0:08.0	Immigration probably never happened on a more massive scale than the outflow from Ireland
0:12.5	during the 19th and 20th centuries.
0:15.1	Between 1821 and 1901, around 6 million men and women moved permanently to another country.
0:20.4	By 1961, another 2 million followed.
0:22.9	By the end of the 19th century, two out of every five people born on the island were living
0:26.8	beyond its shores.
0:28.5	Many in the United States dislike the Irish when they arrived, not allowing them to have
0:32.6	certain jobs, forming political groups like the No Not In Party to keep them out of higher
0:37.0	levels of American society, but because the Irish provided an essential source of cheap
0:41.1	labor that fueled industrialization, they became a dominant group in labor movements and
0:46.1	urban politics.
0:47.5	Irish culture spread and it became commodified, leading to the universalization of the Irish
0:52.7	pub and Guinness and annual St. Patrick's Days and cities throughout the world.
0:57.2	To talk about the global impact of Ireland is today's guest Sean Connelly, author of
1:01.7	the new book on every tide, the making and remaking of the Irish world.
1:05.3	To talk about the social and political impact of Irish immigrants, in addition to spreading
1:09.5	the Catholic Church, the Irish were also a dominant reform group, it held a story of Irish
1:13.6	immigration can help contextualize the current migrant crisis because Irish settlers often
1:18.2	face similar hostilities to what immigrants experience today.
1:20.8	This discussion adds a lot of context and nuance to the story that many of us know well,
1:24.5	a Tito famine and takes it much deeper.
	...

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