It\u27s the Ireland of this Land * The History, Memory, and Marketing of an American Irish Sense of Place

“It’s the Ireland of This Land”[1] The History, Memory, and Marketing of an American Irish Sense of Place Irish culture and identity has long been connected to a sense of place, and for many immigrants, that place was back home in Ireland. Since the late nineteenth century, songwriters romanticized an Irish landscape, advertisers marketed products that came “direct from Ireland,” and an emerging tourism industry urged Irish Americans to “come home” to Ireland. Yet as Irish immigrants adapted to their new homes in Boston, Savannah, New York, Chicago, and elsewhere, they created their own history, culture, and identity that, while having much in common with Irish America as a whole, were shaped by local circumstances. Thus, the American-born generations developed an American Irish sense of place rooted in the urban neighborhoods where their parents and grandparents settled. They became not just Irish, or Irish American, but Boston Irish, Savannah Irish, New York Irish, and South Side Irish—identities that they celebrated in songs, stories, and St. Patrick’s Day parades. In recent decades, the celebration of localized American Irishness has become a marketable commodity well beyond the month of March, enticing tourists with merchandise, Irish-themed pub crawls, walking tours, sporting events, and music festivals. This paper explores the history, memory, and marketing of an American Irish sense of place, particularly in the larger context of heritage tourism. [1] Taken from “St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah” (1952), by Aloysius J. Haniboe