Surviving Kinsale

Irish emigration and identity formation in early modern Spain, 160140

By (author) Ciaran O'Scea

Publication date:

01 July 2015

Length of book:

280 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

234x156mm

ISBN-13: 9780719088582

In the aftermath of the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 as many as 10,000 Irish emigrated from Ireland to Galicia in the north-west of Spain. Between 1601 and 1608 the brunt of this immigration fell on the city of La Coruña, which became a virtual encampment of starving homeless Irish nobles, soldiers, women, children, elderly and poor. This is the story of that community and how its members adapted to their new circumstances, and how they themselves, their social structures and beliefs were transformed by their immigrant experience. Through an examination of the community across a broad range of social cultural aspects such as family, literacy, material culture, the acquisition of honours, religious sentiment, and social ascent, important new insights into Irish socio-cultural history have been uncovered.

Introduction
Part I: Irish-Spanish Relations (1580–1608)
1. The Irish and Spanish socio-political contexts
2. Irish emigration to Galicia
Part II: The Community in La Coruña
3. Kinship and family structures
4. Literacy, language, and material culture
5. Religosity and religious sentiment
Part III: Accessing Patronage at the Spanish court
6. The Spanish Court, networks and political control
7. Nobility and blood purity
8. The crisis of the ‘Spanish Irishry’
Part IV: Acculturation, Assimilation, and Identity Formation
9. Networks, acculturation and identity formation
10. Moriscos, Sephardic Jews, and the Irish in France
Conclusion
Index

‘The present book is a valuable regional study of Irish immigration to the Iberianpeninsula; in its broad social range and the attention given to kinship, itbrings the role of women and families into focus; it is a welcome contributionto the expanding literature on Irish migration in the early modern period.’

BrianMac Cuarta SJ, Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Irish Economic and SocialHistory 44 (1)