PhD Oral Exam - Giselle Gonzalez Garcia, History

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

This thesis explores the history of Irish emigration to Cuba from the late seventeenth century until the late nineteenth century. Central to this project is the research creation of the Cuba-Ireland Immigration Database (CIID), a repository of “data biographies” for each individual migrant, their descendants, the people they interacted with, and the people they enslaved. Following Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Digital History methods, this dissertation puts forward a relational model to understand Irish migration and contextualize the data contained within CIID. Essential to this relational model are each immigrants’ ties, i.e. their social and kinship networks, their demographic and personal information, their migratory routes, and their communities. This database and its accompanying documentation enable new forms of historical analysis by rendering visible each migrant’s connections within the wider Atlantic world. Across three chapters and drawing from the data compiled in CIID, this dissertation demonstrates new areas of analysis centred on key themes: community-building through marriage, kinship, and paisanaje; and understanding the mobilization of whiteness in a highly racialized society. Unlike their peers in North America, the Irish in Cuba were understood as white before their arrival. This guaranteed them integration into the Creole élite (1690s-1817 period) and positioned them as “whitening” agents (1818-1868 period). Marriage played a key role in both of these processes; in the first case, by facilitating the creation of Irish family clans such as that of the O’Farrill’s; and secondly, by being a key element in community-building for more humble immigrants who could not rely on any other type of institutions.

This dissertation also demonstrates that historical databases can function both as a scholarly intervention and public history resource designed to continue generating new avenues of academic inquiry in the field of global Irish Migration Studies; and, that they can stand on their own as knowledge production about the Irish in non-anglophone contexts. Ultimately, this study highlights how Irish migration found its own space within Cuban society, and had a long-lasting presence and demographic impact.