This superb, ambitious, and beautifully written book offers a wide-ranging account of Irish migration to New Zealand from the 1840s, when systematic colonization began, until the late 1930s. Although the cost and distance of the passage to such a distant and unusual destination made it less attractive than North America, thousands of Irish men and women made their way to the colony during the first post-Treaty century. Most of these newcomers emanated from rural backgrounds in Munster and northeast Ulster, with the latter assuming increasing prominence over time. There were also important links between specific areas in Ireland and particular destinations in New Zealand. By contrast with Australia, however, men outnumbered women in the country, even when regional variations are taken into consideration. Equally striking, perhaps, is the balance of religious affiliations: more than two-fifths of the migrants arriving between 1840 and 1890—and a majority thereafter—were Protestants. The Irish-born contingent reached its highest point as a proportion of the foreign-born population in 1871 (18.25 percent) and did so in overall numbers by 1886 (51,408). But, from 1891 onward, it declined rapidly in both absolute terms and as a percentage of the nation's total population.

To add flesh to these bare statistical bones, Angela McCarthy draws on an impressive collection of personal letters sent from Ireland and New Zealand. The wider contexts of each of the thirty-six selected sequences are laboriously reconstructed through a combination of genealogy, family memory, and local sources in both countries. This rich evidentiary base allows the author to capture the distinctive tonalities of Irish migrant lives and those of their kinsfolk in places such as Ballinderry, Mullaghanee, and Termonfeckin. We follow the paths of emigrants like James and Hamilton McIlrath from Balloo, County Down, to the crowded docks at Liverpool and across the oceans to far-flung outposts of empire in Victoria, Otago, and Canterbury. We catch fleeting glimpses of other migrants buried waist deep in daily routine on emigrant ships and farms, in domestic service, churches, families, and mining camps. Most important, we hear the voices of Irish men and women as they struggled to make sense of their experiences and the transformations taking place around them. The addition of historical photographs and pen portraits of the various letter writers in the introductory chapter directs attention to the human aspects of migration. As readers, we are given revealing insights into the mentalities of ordinary migrants and their social worlds in the best traditions of history from below.

McCarthy covers considerable ground in the thematic chapters included here: the magnitude, flow, and direction of movement; the voyage out; work; the role of migrant networks in the processes of adaptation and identity formation; relationships with home; and politics, death, and religion. Newcomers, she argues, were not the passive ciphers or pathetically alienated individuals depicted by some scholars of migration. Rather, kinship and neighborhood ties at the points of origin and destination were crucially involved in facilitating and sustaining Irish mobility. McCarthy convincingly demonstrates how these connections provided migrants with information, advice, companionship, and material assistance during the course of their transition to new realities. The reach of personal networks was extraordinary, spanning the oceans in all directions from various New Zealand localities to Australia, North America, and distant rural homesteads in Ireland. We are forcefully reminded, first, of the need to view Irish migration within its family context and, second, of the value of transnational perspectives as a key to understanding its inner dynamics.

McCarthy paints a richly detailed picture of the ways that Irish people responded to the rapidly changing circumstances they encountered in their everyday lives and how they adapted certain Old World cultural resources to survive in a new environment. We may quibble with some aspects of the interpretation. But these objections are easily outweighed by the book's accomplishments. First and foremost, McCarthy has answered recent calls for transnational and comparative approaches to Irish global migration. She succeeds in capturing movements and interactions across national boundaries and breaks down the “salt-water curtain” (5) that so often hinders work in the field. The methods developed and refined in her work shed new light on critical issues in migration history and provide a “nuanced explanation” (264) of Irish mobility.

This book is a model example of historical practice and a major contribution to the expanding literature in Irish diaspora studies. It is also instructive for New Zealand scholars seeking to recover migrant experiences in local social settings. As McCarthy makes quite clear, we must know the world outside to write this country's migration and ethnic history. She challenges us to locate, transcribe, edit, and publish the private correspondence exchanged between migrants in New Zealand and their kinsfolk in England, Scotland, and Wales. The close analysis of these materials, she suggests, will provide fresh insights into the migrant saga and allow us to answer key questions about its shape and texture. One hopes that this important book spurs exciting new research that transcends the limitations of a national focus and attends to the fluidity and dynamism of transnational interactions.