From ‘Irish Exile’ to ‘Australian pagan’: the Christian Brothers, Irish handball, and identity in early twentieth-century Australia

Abstract

Migrant histories necessarily consider human journeys to new social and cultural realities, marked by discourse around integration and identity. The historiography of the Irish in Australia, dominated by historian Patrick O'Farrell, has lost its fundamental engagement with ordinary migrant experience and fixated on a narrative of nationalism, hierarchy, and elitist politics. This thesis examines the experience of the Irish Christian Brothers in early twentieth-century Australia and the playing of Irish handball in their colleges across the country. In doing so, it seeks a new understanding of Irish-Australian identity through the complex relationship of Catholicism, education, and sport; questioning the extent to which Gaelic games assuaged the transformative and dislocational processes of migration beyond O'Farrell's notion of Irish integration as an imperative of ‘Australianise or perish’.