Most Irish Americans of the 21st century are descendants of immigrants who moved to the United States in the midth century because of the Great Famine in Ireland. Some of the first Irish people to travel to the New World did so as members of the Spanish garrison in Florida during the s. Small numbers of Irish colonists were involved in efforts to establish colonies in the Amazon region , in Newfoundland , and in Virginia between and the s.
According to historian Donald Akenson, there were "few if any" Irish forcibly transported to the Americas during this period.
Irish immigration to the Americas was the result of a series of complex causes. The Tudor conquest and subsequent colonization by English and Scots people during the 16th and 17th centuries had led to widespread social upheaval in Ireland.
Many Irish people tried to seek a better life elsewhere. At the time European colonies were being founded in the Americas , offering destinations for emigration. Most Irish immigrants to the Americas traveled as indentured servants , with their passage paid for a wealthier person to whom they owed labor for a period of time. Some were merchants and landowners, who served as key players in a variety of different mercantile and colonizing enterprises. In the s significant numbers of Irish laborers began traveling to English colonies such as Virginia on the continent, and the Leeward Islands and Barbados in the Caribbean region.
Half of the Irish immigrants to the United States in its colonial era β came from the Irish province of Ulster and were largely Protestant, while the other half came from the other three provinces Leinster , Munster , and Connacht. In the 17th century, immigration from Ireland to the Thirteen Colonies was minimal, [ 19 ] [ 20 ] confined mostly to male Irish indentured servants who were primarily Catholic [ 20 ] [ 21 ] and peaked with 8, prisoner-of-war penal transports to the Chesapeake Colonies from the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in the s out of a total of approximately 10, Catholic immigrants from Ireland to the United States prior to the American Revolutionary War in Indentured servitude in British America emerged in part due to the high cost of passage across the Atlantic Ocean.
