Books by Cian T. McMahon

Cian T. McMahon, 2021

The Coffin Ship offers a vivid, new portrait of Irish migration through the letters and diaries of those who fled their homeland during the Great Famine. The standard story of the exodus during Ireland’s Great Famine is one of tired clichés, half-truths, and dry statistics. In this groundbreaking book, I provide a vibrant, fresh perspective on an oft-ignored but vital component of the migration experience: the journey itself.

Cian T McMahon, Kathleen P Costello-Sullivan, 2024

This volume, which I co-edited with a colleague, gathers over 40 world-class scholars to explore the dynamics that have shaped the Irish experience in America from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. From the early 1600s to the present, over 10 million Irish people emigrated to various points around the globe. Of them, more than six million settled in what we now call the United States of America. Some were emigrants, some were exiles, and some were refugees―but they all brought with them habits, ideas, and beliefs from Ireland, which played a role in shaping their new home.

Cian T. McMahon, 2015

Though Ireland is a relatively small island on the northeastern fringe of the Atlantic, 70 million people worldwide--including some 30 million in the United States--claim it as their ancestral home. In this wide-ranging, ambitious book, I explore the nineteenth-century roots of this transnational identity. Between 1840 and 1880, 4.5 million people left Ireland to start new lives abroad. Using primary sources from Ireland, Australia, and the United States, the book demonstrates how this exodus shaped a distinctive sense of nationalism. By doggedly remaining loyal to both their old and new homes, I argue, the Irish helped broaden the modern parameters of citizenship and identity.