Book Review:
Beyond the American Pale: The Irish in the West, 1845-1910

  • Posted 5/14/2011
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 9822

By David Emmons
University of Oklahoma Press, 2007
Hardcover, 472 pages
Appendix, bibliography, index
ISBN: 978-0-8061-4128-2
$34.95

Beyond the American Pale: The Irish in the West, 1845-1910, written by University of Montana historian David Emmons, takes a fresh approach to the written history of the West by focusing on the heretofore little-explored role of the Irish in the American West and particularly in Butte, Montana, where many Irish and their descendants settled in the nineteenth century to work in the local mines.  

The book’s focus is not so much on specific historical events but is instead a more scholarly discussion and analysis on the role that Irish-Americans -- and their Catholicism -- played in the West between 1845 and 1910.  Emmons presents detailed historical data in his work (one example is the total of Irish-born population of selected Western states and the Irish percentage of the total foreign-born populations in these states in 1900), and analyses this data in a first-person context, which is unusual for history books that are not intended to be first-person histories. 

In some ways, Emmon’s book almost reads like Ph.D. thesis, and its technical approach and analysis might not be for the causal reader. But its careful and exhaustive research makes the book an excellent reference for historians and those seeking specific information on the history of the Irish in the West. 

By Phil Dougherty, May 15, 2011


Submitted: 5/14/2011

Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You