Culture, Conflict and Migration: The Irish in Victorian Cumbria

Piecing together a colorful and at times turbulent picture of Irish settlement in late nineteenth-century Cumbria, Culture, Conflict and Migration uses a broad range of primary materials, the analysis of which is firmly rooted in comparative reference to other writings on the Irish in Victorian Britain. From the 1850s developments in iron-mining, metal manufacture and shipbuilding brought a large increase of migrants who were overwhelmingly from Ulster, with many Protestants among them, and this social and religious make-up had enormous repercussions for the culture of Irishness in these new communities. In this study, Orangeism and nationalism, antipathy and communal violence are seen to have played a key role in defining these communities well into the late Victorian years eschewing the "ethnic fade" conception of so many other studies.
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Examines Cumbria as a non-traditional center of Irish migration in the 19th century. MacRaild (history, U. of Sunderland) considers patterns of settlement and work experiences, evaluates the formations of Cumbrian-Irish migrants and assesses their impact upon the wider community. For his study he used official census records, documents from the Catholic Church, census enumerators' handbooks, and other primary materials. In the concluding chapter MacRaild examines the role of communal violence and sectarianism in Cumbrian social life in the period. Distributed by ISBS. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.