John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University remains one of the classics of the philosophy of higher education. Composed in several parts in Dublin in the 1850s, it can only be properly understood in the context of the creation and relative failure of the Catholic University of Ireland, of which Newman was the first rector; although written by an Englishman, it is in several important respects an Irish book, shaped by and for Irish conditions. But it also draws on Newman’s own experiences, particularly of Oxford. Newman’s views on higher education were shaped by the debates of the 1810s and 1820s on the purpose and nature of higher education, and then by his own experiences as a fellow and tutor of Oriel College. It is the fusion of Ireland and Oxford that lies at the core of Newman’s classic text.

In Australia, Irish and Catholic are virtually synonymous. In the eastern states, Irish Catholics often comprised nearly a third of the population and rarely less than a quarter. Irish nuns, priests, bishops, and laity shaped the country almost from the beginning. This chapter traces the development of Irish, and Irish Catholic, Australia across the continent from the early 1800s to Federation and beyond.

The Introduction sketches the main arguments of the book and introduces the reader to the concepts of Greater Ireland and Hiberno–Roman Catholicism and to the workings of the Propaganda Fide and its relationship to the Irish Catholic diaspora.

The story of Catholic Canada is not simply a binary of French and English. Rather, there were a number of groups, including significant populations of Scottish Catholics, in the Maritime provinces and Upper Canada (modern Ontario). This chapter takes as its starting point the regional nature of Canadian history and examines the development of distinctively (and distinct) Irish Catholic communities in the Maritime provinces and Upper Canada/Ontario.

The Catholic Irish comprised a small but coherent group in New Zealand’s nineteenth century. They retained a recognizably Irish identity, largely but not only in Otago, well into the twentieth century. This chapter looks at how the Catholic Church in New Zealand passed from French to Irish control and from a mission centred on the Maori to one focussed on the settled Irish.

In the early nineteenth century, the American Catholic Church was largely dominated by French and German priests and bishops, many associated with a particular religious order. By 1850, Irish bishops – many trained in Rome – controlled most of the church. This chapter examines how this happened and with what consequences.

In the history of southern Africa, the Irish are rarely mentioned as a distinct ethnic group. They are instead subsumed under larger categories such as ‘white’ or ‘English’. There was, however, a significant Irish Catholic presence in the region and especially in the Cape Colony. This chapter examines that community, its development, and its relationship to other groups, both European and indigenous.

In India, the Irish came late and as conquerors. Irish Catholics – mostly soldiers – were never a significant part of the Catholic population, which traced its origins to successive waves of evangelization dating back to the seventh century. In colonial India, the Irish clashed not only with the long-dominant Portuguese church but also with long-established French, Italian, and other missionary groups.

Old Conn Docherty was confused. It was bad enough that his son had married a Protestant, but now he was sending their children to the ‘Protestant schil’ on the unconvincing grounds that it was ‘nearer’. He wondered if he should ever have left Ireland for the west coast of Scotland and dropped heavy hints that it was all the fault of his daughter-in-law. His son was furious: the old man thought only what ‘Father Rankin’ told him to think. ‘They confiscated yer bloody brains at birth’, he raged, ‘An’ stuffed their stinkin’ catechism in their place.’ Reflecting on the argument later, Tam Docherty wondered if he was even still a Catholic. Yet it was not that simple. ‘His father and mother had done their work well.

The island of Newfoundland was the only jurisdiction larger than a municipality outside of Ireland itself that had a (transient) Irish Catholic majority. It was also a Dominion in its own right until 1949, the constitutional equal of Australia, New Zealand, or Canada. The link between Irish ethnicity and Catholic faith was central to the Island’s history and development and is the subject of this chapter.