The Boston Irish: A Political History Book

A very well-written piece that really manages to remain interesting and engaging throughout its narrative in comparison to many dry works of Academic History. O'Connor begins by giving the reader a greater historical background about the City of Boston and Eastern Massachusetts prior to the large-scale arrival of Irish Catholics in the early 19th Century--namely, that for two centuries prior, the area had been one of the most homogenously Anglo-Saxon/English-descended and Protestant (and of that, largely Congregationalist and Episcopal) places than anywhere outside of England itself. Although there was a sprinkling of Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics, both kept a low profile, and the city was vehemently anti-Irish and anti-Catholic. With the onset of the Irish Famine in the 1840s, Boston was inundated with a wave of Irish Catholic immigrants that would quickly alter its demographics such that by 1870 the population was over one-third Irish. From poverty and discrimination, the Boston Irish soon became a strong political force in Boston challenging the City's traditional Yankee elite through the leadership of titans such as Martin Lomasney, Patrick Collins, Hugh O'Brien, James Michael Curley, and John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald. By the Post-Second World War Period, Boston's Irish community was thoroughly integrated and Americanized--however a rift developed between more upwardly mobile Irish-Americans who moved to the Suburbs and those who remained in the old ethnic neighborhoods such as South Boston, Charlestown, and Dorchester, who increasingly began to resent and resist what they felt like encroachments on their neighborhoods from outside elites in terms of busing, school integration, and housing. This a very informative and interesting read for anyone who has lived in Boston or is interested in its history.