Famine Irish and the American Racial State

295 Pages·2017·3.033 MB·English

by  Peter D. O’Neill

Famine Irish and the American
Racial State
Accounts of Irish racialization in the United States have tended to stress
Irish difference. Famine Irish and the American Racial State takes a differ-
ent stance. This interdisciplinary, transnational work uses an array of cul-
tural artifacts, including novels, plays, songs, cartoons, government reports,
laws, sermons, memoirs, and how-to manuals to make its case. It challenges
the claim that the Irish “became white” in the United States, showing that
the claim fails to take into full account the legal position of the Irish in the
nineteenth-century US state—a state that deemed the Irish “white” upon
arrival. The Irish thus not only fitted into the US racial state; they helped
to form it. Till now, little heed has been paid to the state’s role in the Amer-
icanization of the Irish or to the Irish role in the development of US state
institutions. Distinguishing American citizenship from American national-
ity, this volume journeys to California to analyze the means by which the
Irish gained acceptance in both categories at the expense of the Chinese.
Along the way, it contests ideas that have taken hold within American stud-
ies. One is the notion that the Roman Catholic Church operated outside of
the power structure of the nineteenth-century United States. On the con-
trary, F amine Irish and the American Racial State argues that the Irish-led
corporate Catholic Church became deeply imbricated in US state structures.
Its final chapter discusses a radical, transnational Irish tradition that offers
a glimpse at a post-national future.
Peter D. O’Neill is an assistant professor in the Comparative Literature
Department at the University of Georgia.
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4 Exploring the Next Frontier
Vietnam, NASA, Star Trek and Utopia in 1960s and 70s
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5 America’s Vietnam War and Its French Connection
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6 Famine Irish and the American Racial State
Peter D. O’Neill
Famine Irish and the
American Racial State
Peter D. O’Neill
First published 2017
by Routledge
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© 2017 Taylor & Francis
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has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
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ISBN: 978-1-138-22813-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-39346-9 (ebk)
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Contents
List of Figures and Table ix
Acknowledgments xi
Permissions xiii
Introduction: Famine Irish and the American Racial State 1
1 Black and Green Atlantic Crossings in the Famine Era 32
2 Irish Catholic Empire Building in America 55
3 The Writin’ Irish; o r , Catholic Irish America’s
Famine-Era Authors 91
4 A Code for the True American Catholic Man or Woman 117
5 Gender Laundering Irish Women and Chinese Men
in San Francisco 147
6 In California, Workers Divided 184
7 An Irish Worker’s Post-national Horizon 224
Conclusion 253
Appendix 267
Index 271

Figures and Table
Figures
0.1 The Cunard liner S/S Africa. Illustrated London News , 1851. 4
0.2 Foucault’s Governmentality Triangle . 9
1.1 “Emigration Vessel.—Between Decks,” Illustrated London
News, 10 May 1851: 387. 36
1.2 “Frederick Douglass.” 1845. 41
1.3 “The Ignorant Vote—Honors Are Easy.” Cover of Harper’s
Weekly , December 9, 1876. 49
2.1 “Archbishop John Hughes.” Currier & Ives. Circa 1864 . 56
3.1 “Mary Anne Sadlier.” Undated photo. 102
4.1 “Dr. Maurice Francis Egan.” 1923. 135
5.1 “The Marriage of Loo Foh to Miss Mahoney in St. Patrick’s
Catholic Church.” Page 320 of T histleton’s Illustrated Jolly
Giant , February 12, 1876. 148
5.2 “The Great Fear of the Period.” Lithograph by White &
Bauer, San Francisco, made between 1860 and 1869. 152
5.3 “Immigration East and West.” Pages 136–37 of The Wasp ,
August 26, 1881 . 153
5.4 Cover of T histleton’s Illustrated Jolly Giant , December 26,
1874 . 157
5.5 “A Distinction.” Page 165 of T he Wasp , October 16, 1880 . 158
5.6 “Another Bar Down.” Back cover of The Wasp , March 3,
1887. 163
5.7 “The Servant Question.” T he Wasp , Volume 9 (July–Dec.
1882; Call No. 311:440–41). 167
5.8 “The Consequences of Coolieism.” The Wasp , November 7,
1887 . 169
6.1 “The East and the West. The Orient and the Occident
Shaking Hands after Driving the Last Spike,” in Crofutt,
George A., Crofutt’s Trans-Continental Tourist’s Guide .
New York: George A. Crofutt, 1873: 118. 185
6.2 “Denis Kearney,” undated photo. Call No. 2 cop. 1;
filename I0045251a.tif. 194
7.1 James Connolly, 1868–1916. 231
Table
6.1 Irish and Chinese Population in Late Nineteenth-Century
San Francisco 190