Ireland and Irish Emigration to the New World, from 1815 to the Famine; by William Forbes Adams; Paperback; viii + 444 pp; Published: 1932, Reprinted: 2008 ; ISBN: 9780806308685; Item # CF45D

Mass immigration to the U.S. was nowhere more apparent than in the immigration of the Irish between 1815 and the failure of the potato crop in 1845/1846, during which time a million Irish men and women crossed the seas to take up permanent residence in America. This work is concerned with the roots of that immigration, and it provides a detailed account of the economic, social, and political factors underlying the early migrations, an examination of the emigrant trade and its links with American shipping interests, and a history of government policy regarding assisted and unassisted emigration. Professor Adams here succeeds in treating a complex subject in both an exhaustive and engaging manner, placing the history of Irish emigration on a firm, scholarly basis, dispelling myths, marshalling facts, weighing cause and effect. His work is both a monument to painstaking research and a testament to the determination of a great people in the vanguard of an epoch-making emigration.