Most Irish people came to the United States between the 17th to mid-19th centuries.[1]
The largest number of Irish people came to the United States between 1820 and 1860. During this time, one out of every three people who immigrated to the United States was Irish.[1] Between 1820 and 1860, 1,956,557 Irish people arrived in the United States.[1] 75% of these immigrants - about 1.5 million Irish people - came after the Great Famine of 1845-1852 (also called The Great Hunger.[1] Many Irish people died while trying to travel to America on coffin ships.[2] Between 1820 and 1930, about 4.5 million Irish people moved to the United States.[1]
Most of the Irish immigrants who came to America in the 1800s were Catholic. At that time, most of the United States was controlled by Protestants who were ethnically English, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic.[4]
Many Irish immigrants were treated badly. For example:
[The Irish] hate our order, our civilization, our enterprising industry, our pure religion. [They are a] wild, reckless, indolent [lazy], uncertain and superstitious race.[10]
In the mid-1950s, a political group called the Know-Nothing Movement tried to get Catholic politicians fired from their jobs.[11]
Stereotypes about Irish Americans did not go away. For example, PresidentRichard Nixon once said:
"the Irish can't drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean. Virtually every Irish I've known gets mean when he drinks. Particularly the real Irish."[12]
Irish Americans today
In 2013, about 33.3 million Americans - about one in every 10 - reported having some Irish ancestry.[13] This is about seven times the number of people who actually live in Ireland.[14]
↑Fried, Rebecca A. (2015) "No Irish Need Deny: Evidence for the Historicity of NINA Restrictions in Advertisements and Signs" Journal of Social History 48. Accessed 17 July 2015. doi: 10.1093/jsh/shv066.
↑"The New York Herald". Vol. XXVIII, no. 186. 7 July 1863. p. 11.
↑Hoeber, Francis W. (2001) "Drama in the Courtroom, Theater in the Streets: Philadelphia's Irish Riot of 1831" Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 125(3): 191–232. ISSN 0031-4587
1 Poles came to the United States legally as Austrians, Germans, Prussians or Russians throughout the 19th century, because from 1772–1795 till 1918, all Polish lands had been partitioned between imperial Austria, Prussia (a protoplast of Germany) and Russia until Poland regained its sovereignty in the wake of World War I.
5 Disputed; Roma have recognized origins and historic ties to Asia (specifically to Northern India), but they experienced at least some distinctive identity development while in diaspora among Europeans.
6Armenia and Cyprus are located entirely in Asia, but historically have stronger tie with Europe.