Beyond the American Pale

Beyond the American Pale
Author :
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages : 482
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780806184531
ISBN-13 : 0806184531
Rating : 4/5 (531 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Beyond the American Pale by : David M. Emmons

Download or read book Beyond the American Pale written by David M. Emmons and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-10-11 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Convention has it that Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century confined themselves mainly to industrial cities of the East and Midwest. The truth is that Irish Catholics went everywhere in America and often had as much of a presence in the West as in the East. In Beyond the American Pale, David M. Emmons examines this multifaceted experience of westering Irish and, in doing so, offers a fresh and discerning account of America's westward expansion. "Irish in the West" is not a historical contradiction, but it is — and was — a historical problem. Irish Catholics were not supposed to be in the West—that was where Protestant Americans went to reinvent themselves. For many of the same reasons that the spread of southern slavery was thought to profane the West, a Catholic presence there was thought to contradict it — to contradict America's Protestant individualism and freedom. The Catholic Irish were condemned as the clannish, backward remnants of an old cultural world that Americans self-consciously sought to leave behind. The sons and daughters of Erin were not assimilated, and because they were not assimilable, they should be kept beyond the American pale. As Emmons amply demonstrates, however, western reality was far more complicated. Irish Catholicism may have outraged Protestant-inspired American republicanism, but Irish Catholics were a necessary component of America's equally Protestant-inspired foray into industrial capitalism. They were also necessary to the successive conquests of the "frontier," wherever it might be found. It was the Irish who helped build the railroads, dig the hard rocks, man the army posts, and do the other arduous, dangerous, and unattractive toiling required by an industrializing society. With vigor and panache, Emmons describes how the West was not so much won as continually contested and reshaped. He probes the self-fulfilling mythology of the American West, along with the far different mythology of the Irish pioneers. The product of three decades of research and thought, Beyond the American Pale is a masterful yet accessible recasting of American history, the culminating work of a singular thinker willing to take a wholly new perspective on the past.


Beyond the American Pale Related Books

Beyond the American Pale
Language: en
Pages: 482
Authors: David M. Emmons
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-10-11 - Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Convention has it that Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century confined themselves mainly to industrial cities of the East and Midwest. The truth is that Iri
Beyond the Pale
Language: en
Pages: 277
Authors: Ken Grossman
Categories: Business & Economics
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-08-26 - Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Personal tales of perseverance and beer making from the founder of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. Beyond the Pale chronicles Ken Grossman's journey from hobbyist hom
Beyond the Pale
Language: en
Pages: 488
Authors: Elana Dykewomon
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-06-18 - Publisher: Open Road Media

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award: “A page-turner that brings to life turn-of-the-century New York’s Lower East Side.” —Library Journal Born in a Russ
Beyond the Pale
Language: en
Pages: 274
Authors: Miguel A. De La Torre
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-01-01 - Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How should Augustine, Aquinas, Bonhoeffer, Kant, Nietzsche, and Plato be read today, in light of postcolonial theory and twenty-first-century understandings? Th
Procol Harum
Language: en
Pages: 204
Authors: Claes Johansen
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2000 - Publisher: SAF Publishing Ltd

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The one-hit wonders who weren't. Nine classic albums that redefined the rock/classical interface.