Who were the Irish in Australia? Where did they come from? How did they fare in Australia and how did their experience differ from those of other emigrant groups, if at all? Does ethnicity matter or does the migrant army transcend nationality? These and other questions are addressed by a distinguished group of international scholars in this collection of essays which represents major contribution to our understanding of Irish and Australian history. By investigating the Irish origins and Australian outcomes of Irish emigration to the antipodes since the departure of the first Irish convict ship from Cork in 1791, this book vividly illustrates the way in which emigration responded to circumstances at both ends of the emigrant chain. It also demonstrates more clearly than before the heterogeneity of Irish emigration and the diversity of the emigrant experience.

Australia is one of the most ethnically diverse societies in the world today. From its ancient indigenous origins to British colonisation followed by waves of European then international migration in the twentieth century, the island continent is home to people from all over the globe. Each new wave of settlers has had a profound impact on Australian society and culture. The Australian People documents the dramatic history of Australian settlement and describes the rich ethnic and cultural inheritance of the nation through the contributions of its people. It is one of the largest reference works of its kind, with approximately 250 expert contributors and almost one million words. Illustrated in colour and black and white, the book is both a comprehensive encyclopedia and a survey of the controversial debates about citizenship and multiculturalism now that Australia has attained the centenary of its federation.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Over seven million people left Ireland over the course of the nineteenth century. This book is the first to put that huge population change in its religious context, by asking how the Irish Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian churches responded to mass emigration. Did they facilitate it, object to it, or limit it? Were the three Irish churches themelves changed by this demographic upheaval? Focusing on the effects of emigration on Ireland rather than its diaspora, and merging two of the most important phenomena in the story of modern Ireland – mass emigration and religious change – this study offers new insights into both nineteenth-century Irish history and historical migration studies in general. Its five thematic chapters lead to a conclusion that, on balance, emigration determined the churches’ fates to a far greater extent than the churches determined emigrants’ fates.

This book tells the story of Irish migration to New Zealand in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In a series of essays written by leading scholars in the field, it offers a glimpse into the lives and experiences of these newcomers as they left post-Famine Ireland and made their way to a destination 'half the world from home'. It uses many sources, including letters from migrants to their families in Ireland, and also looks at the history of Irish organisations in New Zealand, both Catholic and Protestant.

Migration - people moving in as immigrants, around as migrants, and out as emigrants - is a major theme of Irish history. This is the first book to offer both a survey of the last four centuries and an integrated analysis of migration, reflecting a more inclusive definition of the 'people of Ireland'.