Description: Irish, Catholic and Scouse highlights the complex interplay of cultural and structural factors experienced by the most significant ethnic group in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century pre-multicultural Britain: the Irish in Liverpool. Drawing upon new approaches to our understanding of diasporas, this study emphasises the role of ethnic agency as Catholic migrants and their descendants made Irishness their own. Belchem looks in detail at those who remained in Liverpool, the hub of the Irish diaspora, and contrasts them with their compatriots who continued on their trans-national travels. This path-breaking study will be required reading for those who wish to understand the Irish diaspora and the cultural melting pot of nineteenth-century Liverpool.
Brief description: John Belchem, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Liverpool, is acknowledged as Liverpool's leading historian, whose many publications include editing the Liverpool 800 book, published on the city's 800th anniversary. He recently contributed to the Peterloo Massacre bicentenary programme.
Review Quotes: The book is a coherent new analysis that introduces some new areas of discussion into the way we understand the Irish in Liverpool. It is an important contribution to Irish migration studies and is a valuable case-study in British social, economic and political history of the period. It includes some evocative photographs that, in themselves, illustrate the multi-faced nature of Liverpool Irish history.-- "Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire Volume 157,"