Irish People - Irish Diaspora

Irish Diaspora

Main article: Irish diaspora See also: Irish Americans, Irish Argentine, Irish Chilean, Irish Australian, Irish Brazilian, Irish Canadian, Irish Mexicans, Irish people in Jamaica, Irish community in Britain, and Scots-Irish American

The Irish diaspora consists of Irish emigrants and their descendants in countries such as the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and nations of the Caribbean such as Jamaica and Barbados. These countries, known sometimes as the Anglosphere, all have large minorities of Irish descent, who in addition form the core of the Catholic Church in those countries. People of Irish descent also feature strongly in Latin America, especially in Argentina and important minorities in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. In 1995, President Mary Robinson reached out to the "70 million people worldwide who can claim Irish descent." Today the diaspora is believed to contain an estimated 80 million people.

There are also large Irish communities in some mainland European countries, notably in Spain, France and Germany. Between 1585 and 1818, over half a million Irish departed Ireland to serve in the wars on the continent, in a constant emigration romantically styled the "Flight of the Wild Geese". In the early years of the English Civil War, a French traveller remarked that the Irish "are better soldiers abroad than at home". Later, Irish brigades in France and Spain fought in the Wars of the Spanish and Austrian Succession and the Napoleonic Wars. In the words of Arthur Wellesley, the Irish-born "Iron Duke" of Wellington, a notable representative of the Irish military diaspora, "Ireland was an inexhaustible nursery for the finest soldiers".

The most famous cause of emigration was the Great Famine of the late 1840s. A million are thought to have emigrated to Liverpool as a result of the famine. For both the Irish in Ireland and those in the resulting diaspora, the famine entered folk memory and became a rallying point for various nationalist movements.

People of Irish descent are the second largest self-reported ethnic group in the United States, after German Americans. Nine of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence were of Irish origin. Among them was the sole Catholic signatory, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, whose family were the descendants of Ely O'Carroll, an Irish prince who had suffered under Cromwell. At least twenty-five presidents of the United States have some Irish ancestral origins, including George Washington. Since John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, every American President has had some Irish blood. An Irish-American, James Hoban, was the designer of the White House. Commodore John Barry was the father of the United States Navy.

In the mid-19th century, large numbers of Irish immigrants were conscripted into Irish regiments of the United States Army at the time of the Mexican-American War. The vast majority of the 4,811 Irish-born soldiers served in the U.S. Army, but some defected to the Mexican Army, primarily to escape mistreatment by Anglo-Protestant officers and the strong anti-Catholic discrimination in America. These were the San Patricios, or Saint Patrick's Battalion—a group of Irish led by Galway-born John O'Riley, with some German, Scottish and American Catholics. They fought until their surrender at the decisive Battle of Churubusco, and were executed outside Mexico City by the American government on 13 September 1847. The battalion is commemorated in Mexico each year on 12 September.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, 300,000 free emigrants and 45,000 convicts left Ireland to settle in Australia. Today, Australians of Irish descent are one of the largest self-reported ethnic groups in Australia, after English and Australian. In the 2006 Census, 1,803,741 residents identified themselves as having Irish ancestry either alone or in combination with another ancestry. However this figure does not include Australians with an Irish background who chose to nominate themselves as 'Australian' or other ancestries. The Australian embassy in Dublin states that up to 30 percent of the population claim some degree of Irish ancestry.

It is believed that as many as 30,000 Irish people emigrated to Argentina between the 1830s and the 1890s. Today Irish-Argentines number over 1,000,000—about 1.25% of the population. Some famous Argentines of Irish descent include Che Guevara, former president Edelmiro Julián Farrell, and admiral William Brown. There are people of Irish descent all over South America, such as the Chilean liberator Bernardo O'Higgins and the Peruvian photographer Mario Testino. Although some Irish retained their surnames intact, others were assimilated into the Spanish vernacular. The last name O'Brien, for example, became Obregón.

People of Irish descent are also one of the largest self-reported ethnic groups in Canada, after English, French and Scottish Canadians. As of 2006, Irish Canadians number around 4,354,155.