ABSTRACT
John Burke's (1818 or 1819-1891) unpublished 'Reminiscences' or 'Migration of seven brothers' (dated August 11, 1891), describe his migration along with his six brothers from Ireland to New York during the Famine migration of 1847, after which he established a shoe business in New York City. The manuscript is held in the New York Historical Society Library (MS 2958.1483). Little is known about John Burke, but his 'Reminiscences' offer a compressed version of the genre of the Irish Famine migration narrative that attests to his experiences of an ocean storm, sense of deliverance at the end of his voyage, and complex motives for emigration. Thus, he recollects how in '1847 [I] made up my mind to Emigrate to America . . . and try [my] fortunes in the Grand Republic, ... as the thinking portion of the country gave up hope of any improvement in their condition'. 'I left the country in disgust,' he stresses, for 'after the year of the famine I came to the conclusion the country had the day of [reckoning?] . . . and the sooner she was left to her own fate the better for those who had enterprise enough to leave'. 1 In this short passage, Burke contends that he left Ireland for reasons of economic opportunity and of his personal volition yet nevertheless regards himself as an exile. In his own words: "if population is wealth' than England must have cost a good [deal of it?], in oppressing her Irish subjects and forcing them to migrate [,] and losing her part of pesantry their national pride where ever distress can never be supplied.' 2 Like many Famine emigrants. Burke conflates notions of personal agency, economic opportunity, political banishment, and enforced expulsion into a highly over-determined self-image of the emigrant as exile.
