Irish Migration, Networks and Ethnic Identities since 1750

Donald Macraild, Enda Delaney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781136776656
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This collection of essays demonstrates in vivid detail how a range of formal and informal networks shaped the Irish experience of emigration, settlement and the construction of ethnic identity in a variety of geographical contexts since 1750. It examines topics as diverse as the associational culture of the Orange Order in the nineteenth century to

‘Women of the Wild Geese’: Irish Women, Exile and Identity in Spain, 1750–1775

Andrea Knox

In Spain, during the eighteenth century, the influence of long-established communities of Irish migrants saw their influence crystallise. Such migrants, like Ireland herself, had enjoyed long associations with Spain, as with other parts of continental Europe. The migrations to Spain in the early modern period, which followed repeated English invasion, violence and settlement in Ireland, were again part of a continent-wide reaction to the tumultuous relations between England and Ireland. The majority of these early modern emigrants were Catholics, driven to leave Ireland because of their political and religious loyalties. Among them were chieftains, their families and septs (an indigenous term for a group of people bound by a common name). At the close of the sixteenth century, such peoples migrated to many places, including Austria, Belgium, France, Portugal and Spain.

For a long time, the historiography of Irish migration to Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries lagged behind studies of the creation of the Irish diaspora in the modern period.¹ Monographs, conference collections and edited books tended to stress the importance of the Great Famine (1845–52) in creating a culture of migration. Works reappraising the character and chronology of the migrations from Ireland were, until recently, more likely to examine the post-Famine period than to bring the story backwards into the early modern period.² The recent flowering of scholarship on the earlier is, therefore, welcome. Such work stresses the commercial, military and religious connections between these migrants and their places of destination, noting the wider linkages between sender and receiver nations.³ Two recent collected surveys of early modern Irish migration to Europe have widened the perspective to include networks of geographical and thematic diversity.⁴ They also explore the location of Irish migration within a broader series of imperatives created by the religious pressures associated with early-modern state formation. In his introductory essay to the first of these volumes, Thomas O'Connor, for example, explains how ‘State-building and confessionalisation acted as the motors for early- modern Irish continental migrations’.⁵ Seen in this light, the political struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – the impulses of Reformation, Counter-Reformation and religious wars – offered more than mere background colour to the process and nature of emigration from Ireland.

The migrations, like their contexts, were complex, changing over time. Each crisis or opportunity resulted in further departures and arrivals, settlements and developments. In this respect, early-modern migrations were like other migrations: their tenor might have been of their time, as surely they must have been; but the human dimension remains apparent throughout. What also seems to be in evidence is an engagement between migrants and other migrants, and migrants and hosts. The major studies of this period stress the developmental character of migration-host relations; they examine and explain the emergence of different sorts of networks: trading and diplomatic connections; linkages between types of religious and educational institutions; connections between rebels in flight from authorities; and military bonds. Such networks demonstrate co-operation, patronage and collective self-help; but they also evinced, at times, conflicts between the groups.

The networks established by Irish communities in Spain appear to be particularly successful in a variety of ways. Spain had offered a safe haven for Irish Catholic migrants throughout the early modern period and continued to welcome Irish migrants during the intensification of Cromwellian and Williamite colonisation. However, dispossession and other push factors were not the only reasons for Irish migration to Spain. Economic links between Ireland and Spain had flourished since the Middle Ages. Irish communities in Spain networked to maintain trading links and pilgrimage routes, like that of Santiago de Compostela. The experience of the Irish in Spain appears on the whole to have been successful in terms of religious and professional acceptance and broader cultural assimilation. The gendered aspects of Irish assimilation into Spanish society have received limited scholarly attention and offer an important analysis of the experience of Irish communities in Spain.

This study will deal with the experiences of two groups of Irish women living in Spain. First, Irish nuns and beatas (as lay sisters were known) living in convent communities will be examined. Secondly, the daughters of Ignatius White will be used to show how a large family of noble Irish women at the centre of the Spanish court crystallised the ambitions of many Irish from the first and second generation to be born in Spain. The relationship between these women, their kinship groups and their networks of power and influence is central to this essay.

I

The military networks between Ireland and Spain can be traced back to 1588 and the Armada conflict between England and Spain. Silke has recorded the crossover of Irishmen serving in the Spanish navy and Spaniards joining Irish regiments.⁶ Schuller has calculated the number of Irish serving in Spanish regiments in the early seventeenth century as 22,000.⁷ Records of military orders reveal that Irish communities joined the military companies of Alcantara, Calatrava and Santiago.⁸ One crucial feature which perhaps distinguishes the reception Spain gave to its Irish migrants in contrast to other European states is that the Spanish council of state passed a resolution in 1608 acknowledging all Irish as equal citizens.⁹ Further royal decrees passed in 1680 and 1701 confirmed equality between the Irish and Spanish in regard to civil and military employment. In addition, the Irish nobility and chieftains' families had their social rank recognised, with revenues assigned to the ‘Women of the Wild Geese’ nobility and with the continued practice of enrolling the Irish nobility into the military companies.¹⁰ This combination of equality as citizens and in employment, and confirmation of noble status afforded the continuation of elite status for many Irish families. A preoccupation with status and lineage was something that was shared by Irish and Spanish societies. Major studies by Casey and Kamen pinpoint Spanish pride in ancestry as a central feature not just of nobility but of loyalty.¹¹ Casey maintains that pride in ancestry in Spain amounted to a clan network that stretched across the entire Spanish empire.¹² Ancestry was embodied in the concept of ‘solar’, a base, or domain of a particular family. Spanish lineages were headed by a chief kinsman, not necessarily the most powerful man within it. The clan functioned as a network of patronage and honour in Spain. Irish septs functioned in a very similar way. As mentioned earlier, the term sept was an indigenous term for a group of people bound by a common name. This did not always mean that they were bound only by kinship or blood tie. They were made up by identification of a common ancestor, although this was often a person who was greatly admired rather than a biological ancestor. Septs were dynastic lineages, and until English colonisation in the sixteenth century, they were landowners. They were united by a common language, culture and legal system. Each sept had a chief, although this position was not always inherited, and could be nominated. The dynamics of a sept covered ties of voluntary alliances as well as blood kin. The bonds of influence as well as the granting of lands or protection were exchanged for loyalty and armed service. Irish migrants in Spain recognised the ethos of loyalty to their new nation. In Spain, loyalty ennobled a person.¹³ Many Irish serving in the Spanish army and navy had deferred payment and rewards, just as many Spaniards did on the basis of loyalty. This reveals a thorough attempt to assimilate.

II

Trade between Ireland and Spain had a lengthy history.¹⁴ By the eighteenth century greater trading links existed between Ireland and Spain than between Ireland and England. Fannin has noted that the Irish had a longestablished trading link importing wines from Spain, whilst the Spanish purchased hides, hawks, hounds and horses from Ireland.¹⁵ One of the consequent effects of the subjugation of the Irish and the great cattle act of 1667 prohibiting the export of Irish cattle, sheep, beef and pork to England forced Irish farmers to seek new markets in Spain, France and America. This created trading networks between the ports of Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Waterford with Barcelona, Bilbao, Cadiz, Ferrol, La Coruña and Lisbon. Irish communities in Spain worked to manage th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Irish Migration, Networks and Ethnic Identities Since 1750: An Introduction
• 1 ‘Women of the Wild Geese’: Irish Women, Exile and Identity in Spain, 1750–1775
• 2 Metropole and Colony: Irish Networks and Patronage in the Eighteenth-Century Empire
• 3 ‘We are Irish Everywhere’: Irish Immigrant Networks in Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia
• 4 Priests, Publicans and the Irish Poor: Ethnic Enterprise and Migrant Networks in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Liverpool
• 5 ‘Operating in the Ethnic Sphere’: Irish Migrant Networks and the Question of Respectability in Nineteenth-Century South Wales
• 6 Networking Respectability: Class, Gender and Ethnicity among the Irish in South Wales, 1845–1914
• 7 Exporting Brotherhood: Orangeism in South Australia
• 8 Networks, Communication and the Irish Protestant Diaspora in Northern England, c. 1860–1914
• 9 ‘Bands of Fellowship’: The Role of Personal Relationships and Social Networks among Irish Migrants in New Zealand, 1861–1911
• 10 Deconstructing Diasporas: Networks and Identities among the Irish in Buffalo and Toronto, 1870–1910
• 11 Imagined Irish Communities: Networks of Social Communication of the Irish Diaspora in the United States and Britain in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
• 12 Transnationalism, Networks and Emigration from Post-War Ireland
• Notes on Contributors
• Index