Quote:
Originally Posted by Docere
This makes no sense.
Yes, these figures don't include all Irish ancestry. But mass Irish immigration to Britain began in the 19th century. Most in the mid-19th century would have been first- or second-generation. You can also see the proportion in Liverpool is 5x higher than London.
There's far more ethnic groups and nationalities today than there were in the 19th century. The pie may have grown but there's far more slices (hence lower percentages).
So how is polyglot London as Irish as Liverpool whose population is far more homogeneous? I don't get it.
How is London 3x as Irish as Glasgow? Again, makes no sense.
Let's put it this way. There were 260,000 Irish-born in NYC (Manhattan and Brooklyn) in 1860, 24% of the population. Their percentage is down since then because there's far more diversity in the population now than there was then, even with natural growth and 20th century Irish immigration. Or are we supposed to think NYC is even more than 77% Irish.
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As mentioned before London has been accepting large waves of Irish since before the other cities, who largely received their waves in the 19th Century before stopping. In terms of sheer numbers London received more than any other in the country, albeit in smaller proportion due to the size of London (a population already larger than the country they were fleeing), but also stretching from far before.
In medieval times London was about a third foreign born, as high as it is today.
In the 1640s, 60% of the island died or left from British conquest and engineered famine, sending the first significant waves.
In the 1740s, engineered famine again killed 1/5 of the population sending another
In the 1830s a labour wave to build the railroads (just before the 1840 famine), with 40% of the army Irish born; Archway became a nexus.
Also the waves continued after the 19th Century.
The censuses show the ongoing wave of Irish immigration, the majority ending up in London. Although the other cities had their big waves in the 1840s, London's continued -as reminder the majority of Irish emigres ended up in the city, whose biggest waves were in the 70s (for ill-fated labour) and 90s (EU accession with opening borders, Ireland then was the poorest state in Western Europe):
The result today shows the 6 million identifying as Irish ancestry are concentrated in 4 areas, London, Birmingham, Manchester-Liverpool, Glasgow-Edinburgh (also a reminder you can also identify as Caribbean ancestry, British ancestry etc on the census alongside - they rightfully overlap, having a single Irish great grandfather in the mix or an Irish surname from 300 years ago in Jamaica doesn't mean it cancels out all your other ancestry):
Today although places like Liverpool have 75% Irish ancestry somewhere, London and Manchester have about a third. I imagine the 77% from 2001 is doable, especially if you take into account the Caribbean population, then at its peak as the city's largest minority (today more than halved), and just after the largest ever wave of Irish emigration had arrived. Also before the largest waves of migration the country has ever seen, from EU, Lat Am and Africa. As reminder this is based on ancestry, and London's population has grown nearly 30% since then, or over 2 million largely from abroad.