After the Famine

Of the four principal waves of Irish emigration to America — colonial, pre-famine, famine and post-famine (1855–1921) — the last was by far the largest, accounting for almost half of all the Irish emigrants to North America since 1700, and for 60 per cent of the emigration to the United States in the century after 1820. The Irish-born population of the United States reached its historical peak in 1890 at 1,871,509, in which year there were also 2,924,172 second-generation Irish Americans (native-born with one or both parents born in Ireland), for a total of 4.8 million. The second generation reached its highest level in 1900 at 3,375,546, though the Irish-born population had fallen to 1,615,459 by this time, for a total of just under 5 million. These five million first and second generation Irish Americans in 1900 exceeded the entire population of Ireland by more than 500,000. Irish-America by the late nineteenth century had assumed the form of a large, diverse and durable ethnic community. Its chief characteristics emerge, once again, through an examination of patterns of migration and settlement, labour and social mobility, politics, religion and nationalism. ¹