O'Leary, Paul

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O'Leary, Paul

PERSONAL:

Education: University of Wales, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History and Welsh History, University of Wales Aberystwyth, Hugh Owen Bldg., Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3DY, Wales. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Wales, Aberystwyth, professor of history.

MEMBER:

Royal Historical Society.

WRITINGS:

(With R. Iestyn Hughes) Wales of One Hundred Years Ago, Sutton Publishing (Stroud, Gloucestershire, England), 1999.

Immigration and Integration: The Irish in Wales, 1798-1922, University of Wales Press (Cardiff, Wales), 2000.

(Editor, with Charlotte Williams and Neil Evans) A Tolerant Nation? Exploring Ethnic Diversity in Wales, University of Wales Press (Cardiff, Wales), 2003.

(Editor) Irish Migrants in Modern Wales, Liverpool University Press (Liverpool, England), 2004.

(Author of introduction) Joseph Keating, My Struggle for Life, University College of Dublin Press (Dublin, Ireland), 2005.

Editor of journal Llafur, 1994-2000.

SIDELIGHTS:

Paul O'Leary is a professor of history whose work focuses on the relationship between the Welsh and the Irish. In Immigration and Integration: The Irish in Wales, 1798-1922, O'Leary examines primary archival documents and parliamentary papers to find why the Irish moved in large numbers to Wales at the end of the eighteenth century, and why they settled mainly in the southern counties. He found that in the years before the Great Famine of 1845, the Irish were drawn by the promise of agricultural and industrial jobs for unskilled workers; skilled workers—mainly businessmen and craftsmen—also migrated and became leaders among the transplanted Irish. After the famine began, people were drawn to the country out of necessity. Unlike in England and Scotland, the Irish became more assimilated into Welsh society and were not confined to Irish ghettoes. But integration was far from placid. Riots sometimes erupted over jobs, and newspapers printed anti-Irish propaganda.

In terms of religion, O'Leary notes, surprisingly, that friction between the Catholic Irish and the Protestant Welsh did not seem to be a divisive factor, despite the common stereotype of the Irish Catholics as low-born, drunken, and violent. This, he believes, is due at least in part to the fact that the stereotype was false and the pre-Famine immigrants were more socially and culturally diverse than previously thought. They established Friendly Societies, stores and churches in the urban areas of Cardiff and Swansea, and aspired to the more bourgeois manners of the Welsh, even while they maintained their ethnic identity. Post-Famine, shared political views toward Irish independence, trade unions, and the Labour Party helped create common bonds that may have prevented social strife. The study's end-date of 1922 coincides with the founding of the Irish Free State; O'Leary outlines the political organizing of the Irish in Wales in the years leading up to this. In a review for Albion, W.P. Griffith called the book a "most welcome" and "well researched study," and in the English Historical Review, Matthew Cragoe concluded that Immigration and Integration is a "well-written book [representing] a valuable addition both to the social and religious history of Victorian Wales and the wider study of the Irish in Britain."