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The Irish in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Problems of Integration
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
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Unlike their American cousins, the Irish immigrants in nineteenth-century Britain have, until recently, received comparatively little scholarly attention from historians. This is not to say that their presence in Victorian Britain has gone unnoticed; far from it. Throughout the nineteenth century the doings and, much more often, the mis-doings of the immigrant Irish were logged in massive detail by an army of social investigators, philanthropists, clergymen, royal commissions and parliamentary committees. But, with very few exceptions, the scholarly analysis of the data has only begun in earnest during the last two decades, and especially during the past few years. In a growing body of local and regional studies, and in studies of particular aspects of the Irish presence, the literature on the Irish immigrants is becoming not only more plentiful but also conceptually more sophisticated.
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References
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