"Riotous Assemblies"—Why "Nativists" Were Skeptical Of 19th Century Irish Immigration
02/12/2014
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One of the knocks against "nativists"is that they were "prejudiced" against the 19th Century Irish. Comes now, as Pat Buchanan likes to say, a book about why they were worried:

Riotous Assemblies: Rebels, Riots & Revolts in Ireland,

By William Sheehan & Maura Cronin

" Riotous Assemblies"—Why "Nativists" Were Skeptical Of 19th Century Irish Immigration

The chaotic history of riots and public disorder in Ireland since 1570. A collection of papers presented by historians at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick on riots and public violence across 16th, 17th 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st Century Ireland. Including:

  • The Dublin Parliamentary Elections 1613
  • Urban Riots and Popular Protest in Ireland, 1540 to 1640.
  • Riot at Cook Street, 1629
  • Recovering the freight of the Julia: Conflict on a Connemara Island
  • The political mobilisation of the Irish poor, 1851-1878
  • 'The Irish and the English criminal justice system in London
  • 'Conditioned Constitutionalists': The reaction of Fianna Fail grass-roots to the IRA Border Campaign, 1956 - 1962
  • 'Notorious Anarchists': The Irish Smallholder and the State during the Emergency (1939-45)
  • Government responses to gang violence in pre-Famine Munster. A Riot at Glenosheen, 1822
  • The Great Protestant Meeting: 19 December 1834
  • 'The one remarkable fact': Belfast, August, 1969.
  • The 1830's Tithe Slaughters
  • The Tactical Repertoire of the Whitefeet Movement
  • 'A Centre of Turbulence and Rioting': Limerick between the Easter Rising and the Conscription Crisis

Not mentioned (because they didn't happen in Ireland) the Draft Riots of 1863, and the Orange Riots of 1870.

Those happened in New York,  where in 1860, an astonishing one in four residents had been born on the Emerald Isle. That's why the nativists were  a little bit skeptical of mass immigration from Ireland.

Mass immigration from Ireland has its good points, as I defensively protest here, but it took a lot of assimilation for things to calm down.

The anti-busing riots in South Boston were, by the standards of the time (1974) practically not riots at all.

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