Irish Nationalists in America: The Politics of Exile, 1798-1998 - Tapa dura

[P]rovides ample stimulus for students of Irish as well as American history. ... Kevin Kenny predicted in print, at an early stage of its composition, that Brundage's book 'promises to be one of the most important works in the field'. How right he was. (J. J. Lee, English Historical Review)

In this concise but substantive work, historian David Brundage examines the protean subject of Irish American nationalism in a thorough and judicious manner ... Is a convincing account of the way in which diasporic nationalism could serve as a unifying cause rather than a splintering distraction for those on the margins of American society. As such, Irish Nationalism in America deserves a place of pride on American history bookshelves as well as Irish ones. (Matthew O'Briens, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies)

Brundage succeeds in providing a readable and persuasive analysis that draws on an impressive body of research while addressing the diverse secondary literature on the topic ... This will be the starting point for future studies of Irish nationalism in the US for some time. Brundage ties together a long and complex history by close attention to the people and personal conflicts involved. He is also thoroughly familiar with the secondary literature. The book will work well in courses on Irish history as well as on Irish America and the Irish diaspora generally. The bibliography is a resource in itself. (CHOICE)

This is an ambitious book ... overall this book is an excellent addition to both transnational history and the place of the Irish in American society. (Dr. Gillian O'Brien, Journal of American Studies)

David Brundage's Irish Nationalists in America is an excellent survey of how Irish nationalists within the United States played an important role in developments on both sides of the Atlantic ... Throughout the book, Brundage explores the diversity in Irish American nationalists' views ... An impressive achievement. My students will be reading it for many semesters to come. (John Day Tully, American Historical Review)

a sharp and well-written book, and the narrative that Brundage tells is compelling and neatly contextualised by shorter sections on political developments in Ireland itself. He forces us to appreciate the ways in which nationalism was perceived, not unjustly, as a liberating force by many in the 19th century without himself succumbing to romanticisation. (David Sim, Reviews in History)

Brundage's ambitious focus of two hundred years of complex and nuanced history across two, and at times multiple, transnational arenas, does much to bring renewed analysis to the account of the Irish America diaspora and Irish nationalist progress within it. Yet the work's sheer range of focus also lays the foundation for further study on Irish nationalism's complex history in both America and beyond over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (Catherine Bateson, Irish Studies Review)

This beautifully and concisely written book marks key phases in Irish American history, and Brundage navigates his way through the maze of organisations in a clear and focused manner ... this public act of publishing and remembering history puts different eras in context so that all of the histories fall into place and make sense. (Úna Ní Bhroiméil, History)

In this important work of deep learning and insight, David Brundage gives us the first full-scale history of Irish nationalists in the United States. Beginning with the brief exile of Theobald Wolfe Tone, founder of Irish republican nationalism, in Philadelphia on the eve of the bloody 1798 Irish rebellion, and concluding with the role of Bill Clinton's White House in the historic 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, Brundage tells a story of more two hundred years of Irish American (and American) activism in the cause of Ireland.

The book, though, is far more than a narrative history of the movement. Brundage also effectively weaves into his account a number of the analytical themes and perspectives that have transformed the study of nationalism over the last two decades. The most important of these perspectives is the "imagined" or "invented" character of nationalism. A second theme is the relationship of nationalism to the waves of global migration from the early nineteenth century to the present and, more precisely, the relationship of nationalist politics to the phenomenon of political exile. Finally, the work is concerned with Irish American nationalists' larger social and political vision, which sometimes expanded to embrace causes such as the abolition of slavery, women's rights, or freedom for British colonial subjects in India and Africa, and at other times narrowed, avoiding or rejecting such "extraneous concerns and connections. All of these themes are placed within a thoroughly transnational framework that is one of the book's most important contributions.

Irish nationalism in America emerges from these pages as a movement of great resonance and power. This is a work that will transform our understanding of the experience of one of America's largest immigrant groups and of the phenomenon of diasporic or "long-distance" nationalism more generally.