Griffin begins by explaining that between 1718 and 1775, over 100,000 people migrated from the Irish province of Ulster to the American colonies. Once in America, these people typically did not take up residence in towns along the east coast. Instead, they settled in the deep woods of Pennsylvania--a colony known for its religious tolerance--and cleared land along what was then the western frontier.
Although their ancestors had moved to Ireland from Scotland, they were not identified as Scottish. And though they had recently come from Ireland, neither were they Irish. They were sometimes calls Scots Irish, though they did not call themselves that. What they did call themselves was northern dissenters, a name that made sense in Ireland, but not in America. This book, The People with No Name, tells their often sad and difficult story from the end of the Glorious Revolution to the end of the Seven Years' War. Along the way, Griffin indicates how their experience both reflected and contributed to the development of what he terms "a British Atlantic world."
It does not appear that Griffin anywhere specifies a thesis for his book. And, although his six chapters normally follow a chronological sequence, other than what I've already identified, Griffin does not appear to be building a case. So, this book is what might be called an ethnographic history, a description of a people group. What follows are some of the points I picked up and some of the thoughts that occurred to me as I read it.
1. Throughout, Griffin highlights the status of the Ulster Presbyterians as second-class citizens in (or from) Ireland, which was itself a second-class kingdom. Once in America, they were sometimes exploited.
2. I was impressed at how the development of linen production and trade was so important to the survival and relative prosperity of the Ulster Presbyterians.
3. Griffin describes how that after the Glorious Revolution, Britain reinforced its dominance over Ireland, with Parliament making laws that controlled Irish trade. Some Irish leaders pushed back. For example, in Drapier's Letters, Jonathan Swift said that Britain rewarded Ireland for loyalty by giving her "the Privilege of being governed by laws to which we do not consent" (p.18). No one who grew up in the U.S. can hear such anti-British rhetoric without thinking of the American Revolution.
4. Griffin mentions that the churches in Ulster began to have once- or twice-a-year regional communion gatherings, with people coming from as far away as 40 miles in order to attend. These gatherings would sometimes number as many as 4000 people. Clearly, this practice was part of the matrix for the future religious camp meetings in America.
5. In Chapter Four, the author says that, eventually, the Ulster immigrants to Pennsylvania established churches and presbyteries, and mandated subscription to the Westminster Confession. Griffin's point is that, in the same way that subscription to the Confession lent stability to Presbyterians in Ulster, unsettled by the rapid improvement in their socio-economic status, the same religious move was taken in order to provide stability to immigrants to America who had since their arrival faced poverty, violence, and social chaos. This sort of sociological analysis, according to which environmental factors provide the telling clue, do not always convince me. It's not that the connection is necessarily false. But it seems far from proven in this case.
So what was really good about Griffin's book? Its strongest, best aspect is that it relates the story of a significant but easily-lost people. And, the book takes into account a wide range of historical factors such as geography, agriculture, monetary policy, industry and international trade, shipping, religion, war, and class.
What I didn't like so much was that the author seemed tentative and non-committal when it came to some of the questions his story naturally raises. For example, was the negative reputation of the Scots Irish deserved? Or was it an inaccurate stereotype? Also, to what extent and in what ways does the history of Ireland, and particularly Ulster, provide part of the backdrop for the American Revolution? Griffin's book teases the reader when it comes to questions like that. But the author apparently does not want to tackle them.
ISBN-13:
978-0691074627
ISBN-10:
0691074623
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