Irish Migrants in Modern Britain, 1750-1922 (Social History in Perspective) - Tapa dura

Ireland was unique among European countries in having a smaller population at the beginning of the 20th century than it had 100 years previously. This demographic decline was prompted by a series of social and economic factors, and emigration became so common that by 1891 forty percent of all the world's Irish-born were living outside Ireland. In this book, Donald MacRaild studies the Irish who settled in Britain and the often adverse reactions to them. From 1750, as Ireland became an increasingly full part of the United Kingdom, to the final parting of the ways in 1922 when the Irish Free State was formed, the often troubled relationship between Ireland and Britain meant that the sheer weight of Irish immigration created tensions far more severe than those generated by other immigrants.

Donald M. MacRaild is Lecturer in History at the University of Sunderland.