Irish Immigrant Labor Structure and Wealth in Baltimore on the Eve of the Civil War

Keywords: Irish immigrant labor, Baltimore, industrial transformation, capitalist world system
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

This paper analyzes Irish immigrant labor structure and wealth patterns in a waterfront district of Baltimore in 1860. The famine of the 1840s and centuries of English oppression pushed millions of Irish to emigrate to the U.S. with its higher wages and available farmland. During the period 1845-1854, three million emigrants came to the United States, mostly Irish and German. Both groups of these predominantly Catholic immigrants were heavily represented in Baltimore by 1860. Using census data from that fateful year, I discuss Irish labor patterns and reported wealth within the context of structural forces operating in the city’s transition to industrial capitalism from a commercial mercantilist economy that had been immersed in the Atlantic world system of tobacco, slavery and core-periphery relations. Finally, I compare the Irish labor and wealth patterns to those of the Germans, placing similarities and differences within the context of the emerging industrial capitalist economy in the U.S. and Baltimore’s place within this system on the eve of the American Civil War.