The subtitle is The Making and Remaking of the Irish World, and the author is Sean Connolly. Excerpt:
Seven out of every ten emigrants entering the United States between 1900 and 1909 were men. The female minority, moreover, came mainly as members of family groups. Emigration from Ireland initially followed much the same pattern. After 1850, however, Ireland became the only European country to send almost as many women as men across the Atlantic, the great majority as single women rather than as wives or daughters. This pattern of independent female migration was of central importance, giving Irish diasporic communities a stability they would not otherwise have had. In particular it helps to explain why Irish rates of return migration were so low: there was no need to return home to find a bride form one's own ethnic background.
And from a bit later in the text:
There were good economic reasons why Irish women were more ready than others to take to the migrant ship. the replacement of the cottage spinning wheel by the giant water-and-steam-driven machinery of Belfast and the surrounding area, and the failure of factory-based manufacturing to thrive in other parts of the country, sharply reduced the opportunity for women to find employment, and with it their prospect of marriage.
Quite a good book.
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