Images of Irish immigration often bring to mind Ellis Island and crowded Eastern ports. If Eugene Macnamara's planned Irish Colony in California had succeeded, however, we might have a very different view of the Irish in America. In 1844, Eugene Macnamara, an Irish priest with a shadowy history, began promoting his plan to create an Irish colony in California. With the first of the Potato Famines a year later, many Irish farmers had to seek a new life, and California seemed to be the answer. In both Washington and Mexico, Macnamara and his plan were viewed as suspicious, even dangerous, yet once the U.S. war with Mexico gained California for the United States, the priest and his plan were largely forgotten. Both period documents and new discoveries are used to flesh out the story of the California colonization project and the mysterious figure behind it. With illustrations, maps, and index, this book is a valuable resource for understanding American, Mexican, and Irish history--and a fascinating glimpse of the ways in which the past might have been different.

This is the story of Eugene Macnamara, a maverick young priest from Ennis, County Clare who sought to establish a colony for Irish families in the 1840s in Alta California, Mexico s far north-western territory. Had the 10,000 ready volunteers from Limerick, Clare and Cork of whom he boasted, actually arrived, a New Ennis , New Clare or New Ireland could have been born. His scheme failed when the US seized California in 1846. Macnamara life spanned half the globe and was dramatic: expulsion from a Paris seminary, a dash to Rome from Guiana to expose a convulsing mission, a year in revolutionary Mexico, two months in threatened California (backed by the Royal Navy) and asylum in Mexico City during the Mexican War, 1846-8. He followed it all with a Macnamara Scheme II in Chile. His arrival in Mexico, 1844, was at a time of tension between North America s landlords, Mexico, the US and Britain. His 1846 licence to settle 20,000 square miles with 15,000 settlers, was formalised by Mexico in 1847 and even qualified for a US hearing in 1852, but it was not appealed. British diplomats, merchants and bondholders supported him. When US President Polk learned of El Proyecto Macnamara he acted immediately to stop any British colonising in North America. In Washington, Macnamara personified at the highest levels a political and commercial conspiracy between Britain and Mexico against the US. This biography is the compelling story of this international Irishman and his lingering aftermath.