On Every Tide is an immensely impressive, authoritative history of the Irish diaspora. Calling on thirty years of research, Sean Connolly broadens out the conventional stereotypes of the downtrodden masses fleeing oppression and starvation, and looks at the individual stories and local forces that propelled individuals and families and communities of Irish to come over to England, or cross the Atlantic, or go much further afield to South Africa, Australia and elsewhere.
Irish migration happened so far in advance of the other mass migrations from Europe, and in such great numbers, that they had dug in to the local economies, planted themselves at the centre of politics and policing, and stamped their identities indelibly on New York, Boston, Sydney and elsewhere before all those other nationalities turned up en masse. Inevitably they took with them all the divisions - religion, class, status - from their homeland and in many cases replicated them where they arrived. But
