The Irish diaspora is the outworking of two forms of colonialism, those of Mother England and Mother Church. I have been interested since boyhood in what was then known not as the diaspora, but as emigration. Like nearly every other Irish person of my generation, some of my closest relatives were forced into unwilling emigration. I have always lived near Dun Laoghaire, where "the mailboat" left for Holyhead, in Wales, and the sight of the shabby, set-faced horde pouring down Marine Road and on to those uncomfortable, vomit-producing ferries for dead-end jobs, punctuated by pub and prejudice, was one of the haunting memories of childhood. Nobody talked about those people, nobody did anything for them. Theirs was a fate that did not speak its name - except, from time to time, when drunkenness or fighting caught the attention of the papers. As I grew older and travelled, my imagination was seized by the extent of Irish emigration. As Mary Robinson never tired of pointing out, 70 million people on the planet are entitled to call themselves Irish.
Much of the the Irish diaspora's view of itself and of its nationality is coloured by the happenings in Northern Ireland. Many ideas of Irish identity have been formed by, with, or from, Britain. Particularly in England, so much of the good or bad the Irish do is viewed, often unconsciously, against a horrific historical backdrop. In America, much of the consciousness of being Irish was awakened by the Troubles. The same is true, although with less political effect, of the Irish in other parts of the globe.
Abroad, the history of Irish emigration is one of the success stories of the world. Dispossessed and ravaged by war, famine and centuries of economic decline, the Irish nevertheless managed to battle their way to pinnacles of political and economic success, epitomised by the entry to the White House of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the descendant of a Famine emigrant from Co Wexford. Success was not achieved without great suffering and loss, both in terms of life and human happiness.
At home, the performance of the so-called Celtic Tiger has resulted in a situation where there is net immigration into Ireland and Irish officials go abroad seeking to persuade Irish emigrants, or the descendants of Irish emigrants, to return to Ireland to take up the increasing number of jobs available. AS, attracted 5,000 applicants. The next census is due in 2001, and is expected to show a small but significant increase in the population of the Irish Republic - literally, a historic turnaround.
Sadly, however, economic and political conditions in Northern Ireland have dictated that the troubled six north-eastern counties of contention are still haemorrhaging their best asset - their young people. Young Protestants in particular are taking the emigrant route . . . Today the results of the great scattering of the centuries are chiefly located in North America and in the United Kingdom. From the 1920s onward, Britain became the prime destination for Irish emigrants. Perhaps as many as eight out of 10 Irish people who left the country in the immediate post second World War years headed for the UK. However, very sizeable proportions of the Irish or Irish descendants can be found in the populations of Australia, Canada and New Zealand, largely as a result of 19th- and 20th-century emigration. Of course, pockets of Irish can also be found anywhere that man has inhabited the globe - there is still a significant Irish population in Argentina for example.
Wars and famines were not the only reasons the Irish arrived in places far from home. The cod fish brought them to Newfoundland; a good priest, Father Fahey, brought them to Argentina. However, in general, the pattern of Irish emigration was laid down in the 16th century. The Irish had been emigrating to England from the time of the Norman dislocations, nearly four centuries earlier, since the influence of an English pope and his English advisers first introduced a military and political aspect to the manner in which the Christian inhabitants of the two islands worshipped the same God.
The British began passing laws to contain Irish "vagrants" shortly after the Normans arrived in Ireland in the 12th century. The irritation of the British with "the Irish question" had begun. As it began, so it would continue. The larger island never saw the problem of the Irish within its shores as having anything to do with the fact that it had invaded the smaller isle.
When invasion began in earnest under Elizabeth I, and the Anglican Reformation was superimposed on Ireland, Catholic Irish emigration may be said to have begun in a major way. In the 16th and 17th centuries there were four separate waves of emigration stemming from wars in Ireland.
IN the 1580s, the Munster chieftains set sail for Spain and Portugal. Because the Navigation Acts and the Penal Laws crippled seafaring enterprise, as they did land-based commerce, Ireland failed to become generally regarded as a maritime country, but these emigrants made a particular impact on the Spanish navy.
The success of the conquest in 1603 made for a further outpouring from Ireland, to Spain and Brittany. Cromwell's wars drove regiments and their camp-followers to France and Spain in 1652 and 1653, and Cromwell transported several thousands from Ireland to the West Indies and to Virginia. Later in the 17th century, after the Protestant victory which resulted in the Treaty of Limerick in 1691, the celebrated flight of the "Wild Geese" took place. In this exodus, well in excess of 20,000 men set sail for the regiments of Catholic France, accompanied by their wives and children.
From this time, Irish Brigades operated not only in France but also for the Catholic powers of Spain and Austria. Even the Russians were eager to recruit Irish soldiers. Along with the military emigration, a certain mercantile tradition grew up, as the Irish established communities in the ports of western Europe. The influence of some of these merchants, some of whom became known as "wine geese", is indicated even today by businesses such as the brandy-producing firm of Hennessy, founded by an Irish emigrant from Cork in the 18th century, Richard Hennessy.
The 18th century also saw the beginning of the Irish presence in a substantial way in the Canadas and in America. The first waves of emigrants were largely composed of Ulster Presbyterians, who left for a combination of reasons: rising rents, falling trade in the linen industry and discrimination against them by the Anglicans. Presbyterian Ulstermen and their families established the Scots/Irish tradition in America.
Then the great cataclysm of the Famine occurred in the 1840s. A huge shoaling outward of panic-stricken people occurred, and Ireland suffered a physical and psychological shock from which it is probably true to say that the country and its people are only recovering in our time. A million died and probably as many as 2.5 million people left Ireland in the decade 1845-1855.
Emigration became the Irish leitmotiv. It is calculated that from 1855 to the outbreak of the first World War in 1914, over and above the Famine departures, a further four million left Ireland. Their impact on the world was so colossal that in America, for example, it is estimated that some 38 million of the 43 million who at census time give their ethnic origin as Irish, are of Catholic origin. This sector, the Green tradition, succeeded in launching the contemporary Irish Peace Process.
The coming of native government to a part of Ireland in 1921 did little to stem the flow of emigration. Over a million left the country in the years 1951-1961, for example. When modern Ireland gained its independence in the early 1920s, the 26 counties affected, economically speaking, consisted of little more than Guinness's Brewery and a large farm . . .
The unacknowledged reality of the State was that it subsisted largely because the safety valve of emigration drew off the social upheaval . . . In his seven years in office, Sean Lemass revolutionised Irish government . . . and introduced two new departures . . . Firstly he set Ireland on the path to Europe . . . Then he tackled the Irish educational system, which, at the time, was very much an instrument for the perpetuation of Roman Catholic clerical power . . .
Against a background of such colossal upheaval [over the succeeding decades] the stereotype of the Irish emigrant began to change from that of a young labourer with no skills save the strength of his arm, and weaknesses such as homesickness, the bottle and mental illness, to someone with a university-level qualification, a bent for one of the newer sciences, a knowledge of the US and European job markets, and, consequentially, increased confidence and psychological strength . . .
Compared with the shabby days of emigration and unemployment in my boyhood, the transformation is immense. Of course problems remain. Ireland still needs to have a care for her less fortunate. For some, the boom has come too late. To be yesterday's man is one thing. To be yesterday's broken, ageing, unemployed emigrant is tragic.