Hist328 Thomas Gluck #781479 29th April 2014
Growth v. Renewal: Irish Migrations to Australia and the United States.
The experiences of Irish migrants in the 19th and early 20th century were defined not simply
by the social features of their destination, but also the timing of their migration, the
composition of their fellow migrants, and the composite populations of their destinations. I
will look at the experiences Irish migrants had when travelling to the United States, and to
Australia, to compare and examine the differences in migrant experiences to show how these
many different factors shaped them, and how migrant’s experiences, shaped the cultures of
these new nations. The different destinations were chosen for examination due to the
comparability of them. Australia and the United States share similar size are both British
originated colonies; both had continual relations with through trade with Britain and shared
the English language.1 Their periods of economic note, such as busts, booms and industrial
growth coincide, and their growing populations drew equally, if not more, from settler’s own
offspring than from new migrants by 1900.2 The experiences of the migrants leaving Ireland,
and their reasons for doing so, are largely similar, but the draw of either destination was
unique.
As is known the scale Irish migration during the 19th century was huge: in total over eight
million emigrated.3 The scale of Irish migration can be attributed to economic factors of the
time. These include the consequences of the 1800 Act of Union, which brought Ireland into
Britain’s free trade area, where it was a weak competitor; this led to the deindustrialisation of
most of Ireland during the period widely experienced as the Industrial Revolution, and so
most of the Irish labour force was reliant on the farming sector. The agricultural industry was
based on the feudal system, with much of the agricultural land belonged to an Anglo-Irish
1
David Noel Doyle. "The Irish in Australia and the United States: some comparisons, 1800-1939." Irish
Economic and Social History 16 (1989): 74.
2
Ibid.
3
Angela McCarthy. "Ireland." Lecture, Irish and Scottish Migrations in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
from the University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ, March 5, 2014.
Hist328 Thomas Gluck #781479 29th April 2014
class of landlords, who owned most of the land and dispossessed much of the workforce from
their own ability to own land.4 The introduction of potatoes and potato farming in the 18th
century doubled the population from 1780 to 1840, and allowed farmers to divide and
subdivide their land, providing plenty of land to work on and to inherit, sustaining the grown
population. Then the famine hit and subsequently the nation became less dependent on
potatoes, this left many young Irishmen without work in Ireland, and they chose to immigrate
to find new work.5 To find what makes the destinations different, one needs to look at the
personal experiences of the settlers following their migration.
In Australia, many of the Irish who migrated were forced to as convicts. Andrew Byrne was
taken to Australia aboard the Minerva in 1799 and 1800.6 He had been convicted as a
participant in the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and chose forced migration as his punishment over
the death penalty.7 The Minerva departed in August 1799 and arrived in Sydney in January
1800, and it’s Captain Salked was praised upon their arrival for his care of the prisoners, as
only three prisoners had died on the voyage (1 for every 64 convicts) when an average of 1 in
10 was expected to die on such a voyage.8 So, while the convicts were prisoners and treated
as such, some regard was given to their wellbeing and their survival was considered
preferable, showing a higher standard of care than one might have believed occurred to the
Australian convict migrants. Byrne and the other convicts initially found themselves
unwelcome. In fact when they first arrived, the Governor wanted the Minerva to take the
convicts on to Norfolk Island, but could not afford to pay the crew of the Minerva.9 This was
not simply because of the nature of the convicts, but also because Sydney was low on
4
Michael Doorley. Irish-American diaspora nationalism: the Friends of Irish Freedom, 1916-1935. Dublin,
Ireland: Four Courts, 2005. 9-10.
5
Doorley, 10-11.
6
Larry Turner, "Andrew Byrne: 'intelligent, honest, sober and industrious'." In Bob Reece, ed., Irish convict lives
(Sydney.: Crossing Press, 1993), 83.
7
Ibid, 81.
8
Turner, 84.
9
Ibid, 86.
Hist328 Thomas Gluck #781479 29th April 2014
supplies, food being rationed out at the time of the Minerva’s arrival, so the influx of a whole
new group of mouths to feed was not encouraging.
Byrne’s new life picked up rather quickly, from the underclass being an exported convict
made him. He received several stages of pardons in 1804 and 1809, and after having an
impeccable record of good behaviour, his pardon was reissued immediately after the colonywide cancellation of such pardons.10 Byrne had difficulty attaining his first marriage, as a
convict and a catholic he respectively required permission from the Governor to marry, and
had no ordained Catholic priest to perform the marriage.11 One priest arrived in Sydney
alongside Byrne on the Minerva in 1800, but he left in 1808 without establishing a parish or
catholic clergy, and another came in 1817, but was deported the following year. The Catholic
community in Sydney eventually convinced the Governor, through a petition which Byrne
supported, to allow them the freedom of worship, and allowed for an established clergy in
1820.12 Byrne became a successful landowner in his lifetime in Australia, never returning to
Ireland. He began buying land in 1805, and owned that first piece of land for thirty years,
developing it an investing it.13 During this time he purchased a lot more land around the
Sydney and Botany Bay area, as well as around New South Wales. He invested several
endeavours including dairy, potato and green vegetable farming, and firewood, lime and
meat, which he was able to sell to the government and hospital,14 and he invested in taverns,
which were a central aspect to Sydney life, with over forty five on George St alone.15 Byrne
had thirteen children, and his sons were themselves successful businessmen in their lifetimes,
some following his footsteps and becoming publicans, others being clerks and grocers.16
10
Ibid.
Ibid, 88,101.
12
Ibid, 88.
13
Turner, 87.
14
Ibid, 91.
15
Ibid, 95.
16
Ibid, 99-101.
11
Hist328 Thomas Gluck #781479 29th April 2014
Byrne left Ireland a prisoner and died a wealthy man, an example of the successes that Irish
immigrants could expect travelling to Australia.
Of course, a very public example of Irish success in Ireland would be the gold rushes. During
the 1850s rush, word did not initially reach Ireland, or if it did there is not any evidence of it
affecting Migration.17 Migration advertising in the media at the time was still focused on the
Americas as the destination of choice for Irish migrants. Reports began coming in through
letters and news reports, changing the image of the Australian colonist from the “selfless
male rebel” to the “rich young Irish girl” as featured in the November 1852 Cork Examiner,
which featured Irish orphan girls who had struck it so well the shops could not stock
garments expensive enough for them. These girls had migrated under one of the British
government’s indentured migration schemes,18 and so, the transformation of the poor
bedraggled orphan girl to the rich young Irishwoman was a compelling argument for
Australia, putting in ton the map in the minds of Irish migrants. McConville shows that, at
least in terms of Irish migration to Australia, the potato famine had little to do with the
number of migrants, and in fact the patterns of migration increased more due to successive
gold rushes in Australia, than due to events at home.19 This take on Irish migration is in
opposition with much of the work done on it by American historians, such as Doorley and
Doyle, who take the opinion that politics in Ireland were far more relevant to the experiences
and numbers of migrants.20/21
Looking at a later group of migrants to Australia, the Maxwell family exemplify what is
known as chain migration, where the family of the initial migrant follow them to the nnew
17
Chris McConville. Croppies, Celts, and Catholics: the Irish in Australia. (Caulfield, East Victoria.: E. Arnold
Australia, 1987): 29.
18
Ibid, 30.
19
Ibid
20
Doyle, 74.
21
Doorley, 9-10.
Hist328 Thomas Gluck #781479 29th April 2014
country, often first the siblings, then sometimes cousins or spouses, and finally the parents
(who do not always follow the children and sometimes return to the old country).22 Hugh and
John Maxwell, Presbyterian brothers, travelled to Australia together on third class in the
1880s.23 Hugh’s reasons for travelling were the standard for a migrant of his age at the time,
little opportunity and coming from a large family small chance of inheritance, but John’s
were more interesting. John Maxwell was travelling to Australia for his health. He as
suffering from consumption, and his doctor and he had decided that the warmer climate and
sea voyage, if it did not kill him, would be good for John. Travelling eighty years after Byrne,
the population of the colonies in Australia were much larger, and the brothers were sailing
alongside many “old collonians” formers migrants who lived and were returning to Australia,
who were able to give them advice about how to find work and where to find it.24 Along with
this help, the brothers were also travelling alongside friends from the same region of Ireland,
and who had contacts already in Australia,25 making the Maxwell brothers already part of a
migration chain themselves. These contacts meant that there was a community of friendly
faces already existent within the colony, people who would support and help the young men
find work, which they easily did. A friend of the family was able to get both men work, and
in a letter John noted that in contrast with Ireland, Australia was a land where work was
easier to find, pay was better, and “a man could sit down with his master”.26 Overall, the
Maxwells found that in comparison with Ireland, Australia was generally a more egalitarian
land.
The United States, as a colony, was much older than Australia in the 19th Century. While the
country was less than twenty five years old in 1800, the population and developing culture of
22
Patrick O’Farell. Letters from Irish Australia, 1825-1929. (Sydney, Australia.: New South Wales University
Press, 1984).1.
23
Ibid, 126.
24
Ibid.
25
O’Farell, 127.
26
Ibid, 128.
Hist328 Thomas Gluck #781479 29th April 2014
those colonies that made it up had two hundred years of history defining it, in fact the same
length of time that Australia has had to develop its present day culture. Therefore, we can see
a significant difference when looking at 19th and 20th century Irish migrations to the U.S.
from looking at migration to Australia. While in Australia the migrants were part of a whole,
all the settlers and Europeans in Australia were migrants or recently descended from
migrants, but in America, the European population had existed for some time, and emigration
was not from one part of an empire to another, it was emigration to a wholly different
sovereign state, with a history and culture unto its own. Along with this we also have two
hundred years of Irish migration prior to the period we are examining to affect the
experiences of migrants in the 19th century.
The idea that instead of being pioneers in a wholly new culture, that these migrants were
travelling to an established country had effects on the outlook people had on travel to the
USA. For example, John O’Raw, a man who migrated from Belfast, travelled to the US in
twenty two weeks in 1709, rather than the six month journey of Andrew Byrne to Australia,
and O’Raw still considered this to be lengthy, with the average trip taking only nine weeks. 27
O’Raw, had to attain citizenship in this new country to gain full rights in the U.S., and fought
in the American army against Britain in the War of 1812.28 One would think that these acts
showed patriotism to O’Raw’s new nation, but he returned to Ireland in the 1820s, where he
died twenty years after that.29 This is a major difference to migration in Australia, where
permanent remigration back to Ireland was far rarer, as these people were travelling around
the world to make fresh starts but in America, Ireland seemed, and was, far closer. Another
odd pattern of Irish migration to the United States was via Canada. While Irish immigration
27
Kerby A. Miller. Irish immigrants in the land of Canaan letters and memoirs from colonial and revolutionary
America, 1675-1815. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 94.
28
29
Ibid, 101.
Ibid.
Hist328 Thomas Gluck #781479 29th April 2014
to the USA was significant (about a third of all immigration to the U.S. between 1840 and
1920 was Irish)30 Irish immigration to Canada seemed only temporary. While over nine
hundred thousand Irish had travelled to Canada, less than three hundred were recorded living
there in censuses. Other re-migration occurred from Irish in England, Wales and Scotland
travelling across the Atlantic to the USA.31
The Irish immigrants to the United States, similarly to in Australia, came predominantly as
casual labourers,32 and their destinations were largely urban, unlike in Australia.33 While
America had jobs for these incoming Irish labourers to fill and unemployment was therefore
low34 the roles they filled in America’s cities led to them being ghettoised, and were
stereotyped alongside other members of the poor and disenfranchised of the East Coast
cities35. The Irish of this time, arriving after the 1830s, were also increasingly nationalist
Catholics36 who were becoming more politic after the Act of Union (1800) and so were also
less welcome to the protestant dominant culture in the United States. This created the violent,
drunken stereotype of the Irish as seen in the United States, rather than the acceptance that
protestant and catholic Irish had both seen in earlier years.37 Protestant Irish, especially those
from the province of Ulster, to distance themselves from this drunken boor stereotype, began
to term themselves as Scotch-Irish, a term that has carried into modern times to reference
Protestant or Northern Irish in the United States, while Irish Americans is used to describe
specifically catholic Irish.38 These Irish Americans who faced prejudice from protestant
culture in America as much as in Ireland and Britain, formed a tighter knit community than
30
Joseph Lee and Marion R. Casey. Making the Irish American: history and heritage of the Irish in the United
States. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 171.
31
Ibid, 172.
32
Doorley, 12.
33
Doyle, 82.
34
Lee, 172.
35
Doorley, 12.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
Hist328 Thomas Gluck #781479 29th April 2014
elsewhere, and kept up political relations as well as social, with their fellow nationalists in
Ireland.39
In both the United States and in Australia, the Irish would re-cluster upon arrival and recreate
their communities of old, unlike the lonesome figures that migrants from other nations often
imposed.40 According to Doyle, while both in the U.S. and in Australia the Irish would live
near or within settlements,41 The Irish Americans would more than often take up work within
the city, mostly white collar, semi-skilled work,42 the Irish Australians were more than happy
to work in the agricultural sector, which impressed Americans like Michael Davitt coming
into Australia and comparing the two groups,43 Doyle thinks there may be another reason.
Doyle explains that Americans treated and though only the new immigrants as Irish
Americans,44 later thinking them as Irish-born Americans or simply Americans, while the
Irish Australians continued to visibly be Irish migrants for over fifty years after their arrival,
and their continued community meant that while the migrants to America might have been
achieving similar goals, they were considered as doing so only as Americans. In other words,
while Irish America was an ever-new group of people to the country, a renewing minority,
the other Irish Australia was a growing community, where every new member became a part
of the group, rather than replacing those who had assimilated.
39
Doorley, 13.
Doyle, 77.
41
Ibid, 80.
42
Ibid, 81.
43
Ibid.
44
Ibid.
40
Hist328 Thomas Gluck #781479 29th April 2014
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Wales University Press ;, 1984.
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