Les résidentes et les résidents des États-Unis qui déclarent des origines françaises se comptent par millions. Pensons à la population huguenote installée en Amérique du Nord à l’époque coloniale et dont l’empreinte culturelle s’est largement effacée. Plusieurs grandes villes du pays reçoivent plus tard des gens venus directement de l’Hexagone. La Louisiane, le seul état […]
Continue readingCategory: Franco-Irish Relations
Franco-Americans as Political Actors
A more extensive version of this post appeared as “The Political World of Franco-Americans” in the summer issue of Le Forum (University of Maine). After decades of inconsistent research, questions about Franco-Americans’ political involvement abound. Though we should not underestimate the contributions and insights of such scholars as Norman Sepenuk, Madeleine Giguère, Ronald Petrin, J.-André […]
Continue readingSmash This Un-American Exclusion
War and peace. A pandemic. The League of Nations debate. Nationwide women’s suffrage. Prohibition. Unending strikes and the Red Scare. Runaway inflation and a deep recession. Race riots. Intense Americanism (read: xenophobia), and proposals for English-only education and immigration restriction. And more. From 1917, the United States experienced rapid transformations that revolutionized—at least for a […]
Continue readingThose Other Franco-Americans: Cohoes, N.Y., Part I
Frequent readers of the blog may roll their eyes here: New York State deserves greater attention and study in the field of Franco-American history. It is a case I have made before; every now and then, I put my money where my mouth (or pen… or keyboard) is and try to make some humble contribution […]
Continue readingWright Revisited: The Frank Foster Controversy
Frank Foster wasn’t a nobody, but he was no Colonel Wright. In other words, Franco-Americans could with reason object to the disparaging remarks written into Carroll Wright’s report on labor conditions in 1881. This was a public report issued by a government agency whose claims were informed by Irish workers rather than Franco-Americans themselves. Foster […]
Continue readingFranco-American Religious Controversies: The Corporation Sole
When the Irish men arrived they saw themselves displaced by the French who were occupying their usual pews. This situation did not endure for long, as the French worshippers, offering only minimal resistance, were forcibly dragged out into the aisles. – Philip T. Silvia, Jr., “The Spindle City: Labor, Politics, and Religion in Fall River, […]
Continue readingFranco-American Religious Controversies: Cahensly and the Lay Catholic Congress
The importance of Catholic societies, the necessity of union and concert of action to accomplish aught, are manifest. These societies should be organized on a religious, and not on a race or national basis. We must always remember that the Catholic Church knows no north or south, no east or west, no race, no color. […]
Continue readingFranco-American Religious Controversies: The Flint Affair
[T]heir singular tenacity as a race and their extreme devotion to their religion, and their transplantation to the manufacturing centres and the rural districts in New-England means that Quebec is transferred bodily to Manchester and Fall River and Lowell. – “The French Canadians in New England,” New York Times (June 6, 1892), 4. By no […]
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