The Protestant Irish

Abstract

Despite Akenson’s assertion that ‘from 1815 onwards the migration out of Ireland attracted Protestants and Catholics proportionately, in approximately equal numbers’,¹ we still know very little about Irish Protestant migrants to Britain. This gap becomes even more apparent when the strength of the Scotch Irish traditions in the New World is acknowledged. The Canadians, for example, have long recognised the importance of Protestant migrants in their national past. The American aspect has also attracted much attention from historians. Indeed, the impact of the Protestant Irish on the development of early American culture has been greatly exaggerated. From as early as the nineteenth century, descendants of the colonial Scotch Irish were perpetuating an heroic image of their ancestors as among the foremost founders of white America — ‘rugged frontiersmen’ and ‘Indian fighters’, true Jeffersonian Democrats and the first republicans.² The same descendants also pronounced shared Ulster roots with all manner of famous Americans, including Daniel Boone (who was descended partly from Devon Quakers) and Andrew Jackson.³ This Scotch Irish myth has a clearly sectarian dimension in that these early colonial settlers were especially celebrated for being so different from their Catholic counterparts, the ‘wild Irish’. Furthermore, the myth is said to have gained particular currency as American Irish Protestants reacted against the Home Rule agitation of their Catholic countrymen.