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Dissertation Information for Edward Matthew Shoemaker

NAME:
- Edward Matthew Shoemaker

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (1990)

ADVISORS:
- Jonathan Prude

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Inspected

Title: Strangers and citizens: The Irish immigrant community of Savannah, 1837-1861

Abstract: Historians have traditionally held that European immigrants avoided the antebellum South, and that the white population of the region was therefore ethnically homogeneous. Savannah, an international port, was an enclave for the foreign-born in mid-nineteenth century Georgia, and the Irish predominated in its immigrant population. Entering the United States in the northeastern ports, the Irish migrants made a second decision to relocate in Savannah. Their choice was shaped by contractors recruiting canal and railway labor during the 1830's when the first substantial movement of Irish to Savannah began. By the 1840's, the immigrant press reported on Irish social institutions that formed a welfare network for new arrivals in Savannah. Continuing economic expansion in Savannah created jobs for which there were not enough slave or free black hands. By the 1850's information about the social and economic opportunities available passed among the immigrants along informal channels of family and acquaintanceship, as suggested by the fact that most of the Irish residents of Savannah by 1860 came from six of the 32 Irish counties.

In Savannah the immigrants carved out a community in the less expensive, less desirable neighborhoods. They lived near and socialized with the free black and slave population, the same group most likely to find itself in competition with the Irish for unskilled or low-prestige work. The Irish challenged the existing social order by their shoulder-to-shoulder relationships with African Americans, just as the drinking and ritual violence characteristic of Irish rural live troubled native-born Savannah. Firm support for the political system built on slavery made the immigrants fundamentally acceptable to the community, and no successful nativist backlash developed in Savannah before the movement of migrants was terminated by the outbreak of war in 1861.

MPACT Scores for Edward Matthew Shoemaker

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-06-01 12:08:14

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Students under Edward Matthew Shoemaker

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None