How large is the Irish diaspora?

After 1840, emigration from Ireland became a massive, relentless, and efficiently managed national enterprise. In 1890 40% of Irish-born people were living abroad. By the 21st century, an estimated 80 million people worldwide claimed some Irish descent, which includes more than 36 million Americans who claim Irish as their primary ethnicity.
As recently as the second half of the nineteenth century, the majority of Irish emigrants spoke Irish as their first language. This had social and cultural consequences for the cultivation of the language abroad, including innovations in journalism. The language continues to be cultivated abroad by a small minority as a literary and social medium.
The Irish People are largely assimilated in most countries outside Ireland

Irish diaspora

The Irish diaspora () refers to Irish people and their descendants who live outside Ireland.

The phenomenon of migration from Ireland is recorded since the Early Middle Ages, but it is only possible to quantify it from around 1700: since then between 9 and 10 million people born in Ireland have emigrated. This is more than the population of Ireland at its historical peak in the 1840s of 8.5 million. The poorest of them went to Great Britain, especially Liverpool; those who could afford it went further, including almost 5 million to the United States.

Ciarán Cannon is the Republic of Ireland's Minister of State for the Diaspora.

The term Irish diaspora is open to many interpretations. The diaspora, broadly interpreted, contains all those known to have Irish ancestors, i.e., over 100 million people, which is more than fifteen times the population of the island of Ireland, which was about 4.6 million in 2011. It has been argued the idea of an Irish diaspora, as distinct from the old identification of Irishness with Ireland itself, was influenced by the perceived advent of global mobility and modernity. Irishness could now be identified with dispersed individuals and groups of Irish descent. But many of those individuals were the product of complex ethnic intermarriage in America and elsewhere, complicating the idea of a single line of descent. "Irishness" might then rely primarily on individual identification with an Irish diaspora.

The Government of Ireland defines the Irish diaspora as all persons of Irish nationality who habitually reside outside of the island of Ireland. This includes Irish citizens who have emigrated abroad and their children, who are Irish citizens by descent under Irish law. It also includes their grandchildren in cases where they were registered as Irish citizens in the Foreign Births Register held in every Irish diplomatic mission. Under this legal definition, the Irish diaspora is considerably smaller—some 3 million persons, of whom 1.47 million are Irish-born emigrants. Given Ireland's population of 4.85 million, this is still a large ratio.
However, the usage of "Irish diaspora" is generally not limited by citizenship status, thus leading to an estimated (and fluctuating) membership of up to 80 million persons—the second and more emotive definition. The Irish Government acknowledged this interpretation—although it did not acknowledge any legal obligations to persons in this larger diaspora—when Article 2 of the Constitution of Ireland was amended in 1998 to read ""[f]urthermore, the Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and heritage.""

The right to register as an Irish citizen terminates at the third generation (except as noted above). This contrasts with citizenship law in Italy, Israel, Japan and other countries which practice jus sanguinis or otherwise permit members of the diaspora to register as citizens.

There are people of Irish descent abroad (including Irish speakers) who reject inclusion in an Irish "diaspora" and who designate their identity in other ways. They may see the diasporic label as something used by the Irish government for its own purposes.

The Irish, whom the Romans called "Scotti" (but who called themselves Gaels), had raided and settled along the West Coast of Roman Britain, and numbers were allowed to settle within the province, where the Roman Army recruited many Irish into auxiliary units that were dispatched to the German frontier. The Attacotti, who were similarly recruited into the Roman army, may also have been Irish settlers in Britain (the movement between Ireland and the classical Britain may have been two-way as similarities between the Medieval accounts of Túathal Teachtmar and archaeological evidence indicate that the Romans may have supported the invasion and conquest of Ireland by Irish exiles from Britain with the hopes of establishing a friendly ruler who could halt the raiding of Britain by the Irish. Some historians have also suggested that the Cruthin of the North of Ireland may have been Picts.). Following the withdrawal of the Roman army, the Irish began increasing their footholds in Britain, with part of the north-West of the island annexed within the Irish kingdom of Dál Riata. In time, the Irish colonies became independent, merged with the Pictish kingdom, and formed the basis of modern Scotland.

The traditionally Gaelic-speaking areas of Scotland (the Highlands and Hebrides) are still referred to in the Gaelic language as "a' Ghàidhealtachd" (""the Gaeldom""). Irish monks, and the Celtic church, pioneered a wave of Irish emigration into Great Britain, and continental Europe (and they were possibly the first inhabitants of the Faroe Islands and Iceland). Throughout early Medieval times Britain and continental Europe experienced Irish immigration of varying intensity, mostly from clerics and scholars who are collectively known as "peregrini". Irish emigration to western Europe, and especially to Great Britain, has continued at a greater or lesser pace since then. Today, the ethnic-Irish are the single largest minority group in both England and Scotland, most of whom eventually made it back to Ireland.

The dispersal of the Irish has been mainly to Britain or to countries colonised by Britain. England's political connection with Ireland began in 1155 when Pope Adrian IV issued a papal bull (known as "Laudabiliter") that gave Henry II permission to invade Ireland as a means of strengthening the Papacy's control over the Irish Church. This was followed in 1169 by the Norman invasion of Ireland led by the general Richard de Clare, a.k.a. "Strongbow".

The English Crown did not attempt to assert full control of the island until after Henry VIII's repudiation of paprebelal authority over the Church in England and subsequent rebellion of the Earl of Kildare in Ireland in 1534 threatened English hegemony there. Until the break with Rome, it was widely believed that Ireland was a Papal possession granted as a mere fiefdom to the English king, so in 1541 Henry VIII asserted England's claim to Ireland free from the Papal overlordship by proclaiming himself King of Ireland.

Following the Nine Years' War (1594 to 1603) political power rested in the hands of a Protestant Ascendancy minority and was marked by a Crown policy of plantation, involving the arrival of thousands of English and Scottish Protestant settlers, and the consequent displacement of the pre-plantation Roman Catholic landholders. As the military and political defeat of Gaelic Ireland became more pronounced in the early seventeenth century, sectarian conflict became a recurrent theme in Irish history.

Roman Catholics and members of dissenting Protestant denominations suffered severe political and economic privations from Penal Laws. The Irish Parliament was abolished in 1801 in the wake of the republican United Irishmen Rebellion and Ireland became an integral part of a new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Act of Union.

The Great Famine of Ireland during the 1840s saw a significant number of people flee from the island to all over the world. Between 1841 and 1851 as a result of death and mass emigration (mainly to Great Britain and North America) Ireland's population fell by over 2 million. In Connacht alone the population fell by almost 30%.

Robert E. Kennedy explains, however, that the common argument of the mass emigration from Ireland being a "flight from famine" is not entirely correct: firstly, the Irish had been coming to build canals in Great Britain since the 18th century, and once conditions were better emigration did not slow down. After the famine was over the four following years produced more emigrants than during the four years of the blight. Kennedy argues that the famine was considered the final straw to convince people to move and that there were several other factors in the decision making.

By 1900 the population of Ireland was about half of its 1840 high and continued to fall during the 20th century.

Irish people at home were facing discrimination from Great Britain based on the former's religion. Evictions only increased after the repeal of the British Corn Laws in 1846 and the new Encumbered Estates Act being passed in 1849 as well as the removal of existing civil rights. There had been agrarian terrorism against landlords which these new laws were implemented to stop the retribution. Any hope for change was squashed with the death of Daniel O'Connell in 1847, the political leader championing for Ireland, and the failed rising of the Young Irelanders in 1848. More was to be gained by immigrating to America from Ireland and the 1848 discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada lured away more.

Public interest in ancestry and family history received a boost in the late 1970s with the television broadcast of "", Alex Haley's account of his family line. and the television series "Who Do You Think You Are?", a genealogy documentary series that started on the BBC in 2004.

The Internet and the number of resources now readily accessible has resulted in an explosion of interest in the topic. According to some sources, genealogy is one of the most popular topics on the Internet.

People of the Irish diaspora who were not born in Ireland but who identify as Irish are sometimes labelled as "Plastic Paddies".

Mary J. Hickman writes that "plastic Paddy" was a term used to "deny and denigrate the second-generation Irish in Britain" in the 1980s, and was "frequently articulated by the new middle class Irish immigrants in Britain, for whom it was a means of distancing themselves from established Irish communities." According to Bronwen Walter, professor of Irish Diaspora Studies at Anglia Ruskin University, "the adoption of a hyphenated identity has been much more problematic for the second generation Irish in Britain. The Irish-born have frequently denied the authenticity of their Irish identity."

The term has also been used to taunt non-Irish-born players who choose to play for the Republic of Ireland national football team, fans of Irish teams, who are members of supporters clubs outside Ireland, and other Irish individuals living in Great Britain. A study by the University of Strathclyde and Nil by Mouth found the term was used abusively on Celtic F.C. and Rangers F.C. supporters' internet forums in reference to Celtic supporters and the wider Roman Catholic community in Scotland. In August 2009, a Rangers F.C supporter himself a British Asian man from Birmingham, England received a suspended sentence after making derogatory comments to a police officer, who was of Irish origin. The prosecutor said the man had made racist remarks about the officer, including accusations that the officer was a "Plastic Paddy".

Scottish journalist Alex Massie wrote in "National Review":

In "Spiked", Brendan O'Neill, himself of Irish descent, uses the term to describe "second-generation wannabe" Irishmen and writes that some of those guilty of "Plastic Paddyism" (or, in his words, "Dermot-itis") are Bill Clinton, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Shane MacGowan. Scottish-Australian songwriter Eric Bogle wrote and recorded a song titled "Plastic Paddy". British Mixed martial arts fighter Dan Hardy has called American fighter Marcus Davis a "Plastic Paddy" due to Marcus' enthusiasm for his Irish ancestry and identity. In the book "Why I Am Still a Catholic: Essays in Faith and Perseverance" by Peter Stanford, the television presenter Dermot O'Leary describes his upbringing as "classic plastic paddy", where he would be "bullied in a nice way" by his own cousins in Wexford for being English "until anyone else there called me English and then they would stick up for me."

The movement of people between the adjacent islands of Ireland and Great Britain has ebbed and flowed with their politics, economics and social conditions. Ireland was a feudal Lordship of the Kings of England between 1171 and 1541; a Kingdom in personal union with the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Great Britain between 1542 and 1801; and politically united with Great Britain as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland between 1801 and 1922. Today, Ireland is divided between the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland which is part of the UK.

Today, millions of residents of Great Britain are either from the island of Ireland or have Irish ancestry. It is estimated that as many as six million people living in the UK have an Irish-born grandparent (around 10% of the UK population).

The 2001 UK Census states that 869,093 people born in Ireland are living in Great Britain.
More than 10% of those born in the United Kingdom have at least one grandparent born in Ireland. The article "More Britons applying for Irish passports" states that 6 million Britons have either an Irish grandfather or grandmother and are thus able to apply for Irish citizenship. Almost a quarter claimed some Irish ancestry in one survey.

The Irish have traditionally been involved in the building trade and transport particularly as dockers, following an influx of Irish workers, or navvies, to build the British canal, road and rail networks in the 19th century. This is largely due to the flow of emigrants from Ireland during the Great Famine of 1845–1849. Many Irish servicemen, particularly sailors, settled in Britain: During the 18th and 19th century a third of the Army and Royal Navy were Irish. The Irish still represent a large contingent of foreign volunteers to the British military. Since the 1950s and 1960s in particular, the Irish have become assimilated into the British population. Emigration continued into the next century; over half a million Irish went to Britain in World War II to work in industry and serve in the British armed forces. In the post-war reconstruction era, the numbers of immigrants began to increase, many settling in the larger cities and towns of Britain. According to the 2001 census, around 850,000 people in Britain were born in Ireland.

The largest Irish communities in Britain are located predominantly in the cities and towns: in London, in particular Kilburn (which has one of the largest Irish-born communities outside Ireland) out to the west and north west of the city, in the large port cities such as Liverpool (which elected the first Irish Nationalist members of parliament), Glasgow, Bristol, Sunderland and Portsmouth. Big industrial cities such as Salford, Manchester, Luton, Coventry, Birmingham, Sheffield, Wolverhampton, Cardiff and parts of Newcastle and Nottingham also have large diaspora populations due to the Industrial Revolution and, in the case of the first three, the strength of the motor industry in the 1960s and 1970s. Crosby, Kirkby, Rugby, Denbigh, Widnes, Ilfracombe, Bootle, Huyton, Birkenhead, Gateshead, Seaham, Middlesbrough, Wallasey, Moreton, Batley, Bolton, Barrhead, Winsford, Ellesmere Port, Chester, Blantyre, Runcorn, Ashton-under-Lyne, Heywood, Consett, Bishop Auckland, Cambuslang, Ashton-in-Makerfield, Solihull, Brighouse, Clydebank, Easington Colliery, Litherland, Whitehaven, Barrow-in-Furness, Irlam, Newton Mearns, Chatham, Greenock, Port Glasgow, Prestwich, Holyhead, Fishguard, Caistor, Saltney, Cleator Moor, Newport, Maghull, Washington, North Shields, South Shields, Tynemouth, Paisley, Stockport, Haslingden, Dewsbury, Skelmersdale, Keighley, Chorley and parts of Market Harborough, Devon and Greater Manchester have high concentrations of Irish communities. The towns of Hebburn, Jarrow and Coatbridge have famously all earned the nickname 'Little Ireland' due to their high Irish populations.

Central to the Irish community in Britain was the community's relationship with the Roman Catholic Church, with which it maintained a strong sense of identity. The Church remains a crucial focus of communal life among some of the immigrant population and their descendants. The largest ethnic group among the Roman Catholic priesthood of Britain remains Irish (in the United States, the upper ranks of the Church's hierarchy are of predominantly Irish descent.) The former head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland is Cardinal Keith O'Brien.

Scotland experienced a significant amount of Irish immigration, particularly in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Coatbridge. This led to the formation of Celtic Football Club in 1888 by Marist Brother Walfrid, to raise money to help the community. In Edinburgh Hibernian were founded in 1875 and in 1909 another club with Irish links, Dundee United, was formed. Likewise the Irish community in London formed the London Irish rugby union club. The 2001 UK Census states in Scotland 50,000 people identified as having Irish heritage.

London once more holds an official public St Patrick's Day celebration, which although having been cancelled in the 1970s because of Irish Republican violence, is now a national celebration, with over 60 percent of the population regularly celebrating the day regardless of their ethnic origins.

The Irish have maintained a strong political presence in the UK (mostly in Scotland), in local government and at the national level. Former Prime Ministers David Cameron, Tony Blair, John Major and James Callaghan have been amongst the many in Britain of part-Irish ancestry; Blair's mother, Hazel Elizabeth Rosaleen Corscaden, was born on 12 June 1923 in Ballyshannon, County Donegal. Former Chancellor George Osborne is a member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy and heir to the baronetcies of Ballentaylor and Ballylemon.

Irish links with the continent go back many centuries. During the early Middle Ages, 700–900 AD, many Irish religious figures went abroad to preach and found monasteries in what is known as the Hiberno-Scottish mission. Saint Brieuc founded the city that bears his name in Brittany, Saint Colmán founded the great monastery of Bobbio in northern Italy and one of his monks was Saint Gall for whom the Swiss town of St Gallen and canton of St Gallen are named.

During the Counter-Reformation, Irish religious and political links with Europe became stronger. An important centre of learning and training for Irish priests developed in Leuven (Lúbhan in Irish and "Louvain" historically in English) in the Duchy of Brabant, now in Flanders (northern Belgium). The Flight of the Earls, in 1607, led much of the Gaelic nobility to flee the country, and after the wars of the 17th century many others fled to Spain, France, Austria, and other Roman Catholic lands. The lords and their retainers and supporters joined the armies of these countries, and were known as the Wild Geese. Some of the lords and their descendants rose to high ranks in their adoptive countries, such as the Spanish general and politician Leopoldo O'Donnell, 1st Duke of Tetuan, who became the president of the Government of Spain or the French general and politician Patrice de Mac-Mahon, Duke of Magenta, who became the president of the French Republic. The French Cognac brandy maker, James Hennessy and Co., is named for an Irishman. In Spain and its territories, many Irish descendants can be found with the name "Obregón" ("O'Brien", Irish, "Ó Briain"), including Madrid-born actress "Ana Victoria García Obregón".

During the 20th century, certain Irish intellectuals made their homes in continental Europe, particularly James Joyce, and later Samuel Beckett (who became a courier for the French Resistance). Eoin O'Duffy led a brigade of 700 Irish volunteers to fight for Franco during the Spanish Civil War, and Frank Ryan led the Connolly column who fought on the opposite side, with the Republican International Brigades. William Joyce became an English-language propagandist for the Third Reich, known colloquially as Lord Haw-Haw.

With its newly established trans-Atlantic empire, England needed labour. After the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the Kingdom of England began to pacify Ireland through ethnic cleansing, transporting large numbers of Irish, often forced into indentured servitude, to the New World. This increased following the English Civil War (1642–1651) and the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland (1649–1653). Cromwell took Irish land both to repay investors who had financed the invasion and as payment for his soldiers, and the ethnic Irish were ordered to move to Connaught or die. Between 1641 and 1652, over 550,000 Irish died from famine and other war-related causes. The Irish population of Ireland fell from 1,466,000 to 616,000. Between 1652 and 1659, 50,000 Irish men, women and children were sent to the West Indies, Virginia and Bermuda.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, over 38,000 Irish immigrated to Argentina. Very distinct Irish communities and schools existed until the Perón era in the 1950s.

Today there are an estimated 1,000,000 people of Irish ancestry in Argentina, approximately 15.5% of the Republic of Ireland's current population; however, these numbers may be far higher, given that many Irish newcomers declared themselves to be British, as Ireland at the time was still part of the United Kingdom and today their descendants integrated into Argentine society with mixed bloodlines.

Despite the fact that Argentina was never the main destination for Irish emigrants it does form part of the Irish diaspora. The Irish-Argentine William Bulfin remarked as he travelled around Westmeath in the early 20th century that he came across many locals who had been to Buenos Aires. Several families from Bere island, County Cork were encouraged to send emigrants to Argentina by an islander who had been successful there in the 1880s.

Widely considered a national hero, William Brown is the most famous Irish citizen in Argentina. Creator of the Argentine Navy ("Armada de la República Argentina", ARA) and leader of the Argentine Armed Forces in the wars against Brazil and Spain, he was born in Foxford, County Mayo on 22 June 1777 and died in Buenos Aires in 1857. The is named after him, as well as the Almirante Brown partido, part of the Gran Buenos Aires urban area, with a population of over 500.000 inhabitants.

The first entirely Roman Catholic English language publication published in Buenos Aires, "The Southern Cross" is an Argentine newspaper founded on 16 January 1875 by Dean Patricio Dillon, an Irish immigrant, a deputy for Buenos Aires Province and president of the Presidential Affairs Commission amongst other positions. The newspaper continues in print to this day and publishes a beginners guide to the Irish language, helping Irish Argentines keep in touch with their cultural heritage. Previously to "The Southern Cross" Dublin-born brothers Edward and Michael Mulhall successfully published "The Standard", allegedly the first English-language daily paper in South America.

Between 1943 and 1946, the de facto President of Argentina was Edelmiro Farrell, whose paternal ancestry was Irish.

Bermudiana ("Sisyrinchium bermudiana"), the indigenous flower that is ubiquitous in Bermuda in the Spring, has now been realised to be found in one other location, Ireland, where it is restricted to sites around Lough Erne and Lough Melvin in County Fermanagh, and is known as "Feilistrín gorm", or Blue-eyed grass. Early in its history, Bermuda had unusual connections with Ireland. It has been suggested that St. Brendan discovered it during his legendary voyage; a local psychiatric hospital (since renamed) was named after him. In 1616, an incident occurred in which five white settlers arrived in Ireland, having crossed the Atlantic (a distance of around ) in a two-ton boat. By the following year, one of Bermuda's main islands was named after Ireland. By the mid-17th century, Irish prisoners of war and ethnically cleansed civilians were involuntarily shipped to Bermuda, condemned to indentured servitude. This expulsion resulted from the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. The English government expelled Irish people to other parts of the trans-Atlantic Empire as well. This was meant to pacify Ireland, easing English rule, and to clear land for settlement by English soldiers. The Puritan English government officials also expressed the opinion that they were saving the souls of the Roman Catholic Irish by settling them in Protestant territories where they would inevitably be converted to the true faith. Smaller numbers of Scottish prisoners were also sent to Bermuda following Cromwell's invasion of Scotland.

Relations between the involuntary Irish immigrants and the local English population were strained. The Irish and Scots were ostracised by the English, ultimately intermarrying with Black and Native American minority groups to create a single demographic ("coloured", which in Bermuda included anyone not able to be described as wholly of European ancestry. Today, the term has been replaced by "Black", in which wholly sub-Saharan African ancestry is erroneously implicit). The Irish quickly proved troublesome, and Bermudian slave owners were instructed "that those that hath the Irish servants should take care that they straggle not night nor day as is too common with them". In 1658, three Irishmen – John Shehan, David Laragen and Edmund Malony – were lashed for breaking curfew and being suspected of stealing a boat. A Scottish indentured servant and three black slaves were also punished. Several years later, in 1661, the local government alleged that a plot was being hatched by an alliance of Blacks and Irish, one which involved cutting the throats of all the English. Governor William Sayle prepared for the uprising with three edicts: The first was that a nightly watch be raised throughout the colony; second, that slaves and the Irish be disarmed of militia weapons; and third, that any gathering of two or more Irish or slaves be dispersed by whipping. There were no arrests, trials or executions connected to the plot, though an Irish woman named Margaret was found to be romantically involved with a Native American; she was voted to be stigmatised and he was whipped.

During the course of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, the colony's various demographic groups boiled down to free whites and mostly enslaved "coloured" Bermudians with a homogeneous English culture. Little survived of the non-English cultures. Catholicism was outlawed in Bermuda, as with the rest of English territory, and all islanders were required by law to attend services of the established Church of England. Some surnames that were common in Bermuda at this period, however, give lingering evidence of the Irish presence. By example, the area to the east of Bailey's Bay, in Hamilton Parish, is named "Callan Glen" for a Scottish-born shipwright, "Claude MacCallan", who settled in Bermuda after the vessel in which he was a passenger was wrecked off the North Shore in 1787. MacCallan swam to a rock from which he was rescued by a Bailey's Bay fisherman named "Daniel Seon" ("Sheehan"). A later Daniel Seon was appointed Clerk of the House of Assembly and Prothonotary of the Court of General Assize in 1889 (he was also the Registrar of the Supreme Court, and died in 1909).

In 1803, Irish poet Thomas Moore arrived in Bermuda, having been appointed registrar to the Admiralty there. Robert Kennedy, born in Cultra, County Down, was the Government of Bermuda's "Colonial Secretary", and was the acting Governor of Bermuda on three occasions (1829, 1830 and 1835–1836). Irish prisoners were again sent to Bermuda in the 19th century, including participants in the ill-fated Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848, Nationalist journalist and politician John Mitchel, and painter and convicted murderer William Burke Kirwan. Alongside English convicts, they were used to build the Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island. Conditions for the convicts were harsh, and discipline was draconian. In April, 1830, convict James Ryan was shot and killed during rioting of convicts on Ireland Island. Another five convicts were given death sentences for their parts in the riots, with those of the youngest three being commuted to transportation (to Australia) for life. In June, 1849, convict James Cronin, on the hulk Medway at Ireland Island, was placed in solitary confinement from the 25th to the 29th for fighting. On release, and being returned to work, he refused to be cross-ironed. He ran onto the breakwater, brandishing a poker threateningly. For this, he was ordered to receive punishment (presumably flogging) on Tuesday, 3 July 1849, with the other convicts aboard the hulk assembled behind a rail to witness. When ordered to strip, he hesitated. Thomas Cronin, his older brother, addressed him and, while brandishing a knife, rushed forward to the separating rail. He called out to the other prisoners in Irish and many joined him in attempting to free the prisoner and attack the officers. The officers opened fire. Two men were killed and twelve wounded. Punishment of James Cronin was then carried out. Three-hundred men of the 42nd Regiment of Foot, in barracks on Ireland Island, responded to the scene under arms.
Although the Roman Catholic Church (which had been banned in Bermuda, as in the rest of England, since settlement) began to operate openly in Bermuda in the 19th century, its priests were not permitted to conduct baptisms, weddings or funerals. As the most important British naval and military base in the Western Hemisphere following US independence, large numbers of Irish Roman Catholic soldiers served in the British Army's Bermuda Garrison (the Royal Navy had also benefitted from a shipload of Irish emigres wrecked on Bermuda, with most being recruited into the navy there). The first Roman Catholic services in Bermuda were conducted by British Army chaplains early in the 19th Century. Mount Saint Agnes Academy, a private school operated by the Roman Catholic Church of Bermuda, opened in 1890 at the behest of officers of the 86th (Royal County Down) Regiment of Foot (which was posted to Bermuda from 1880 to 1883), who had requested from the Archbishop of Halifax, Nova Scotia, a school for the children of Irish Roman Catholic soldiers.

Not all Irish soldiers in Bermuda had happy lives there. Private Joseph McDaniel of the 30th Regiment of Foot (who was born in the East Indies to an Irish father and a Malay mother) was convicted of the murder of Mary Swears in June, 1837, after he had been found with a self-inflicted wound and her lifeless body. Although he maintained his innocence throughout the trial, after his conviction he confessed that they had made a pact to die together. Although he had succeeded in killing her, he had failed to kill himself. He was put to death on Wednesday, 29 November 1837. Private Patrick Shea of the 20th Regiment of Foot was sentenced to death in June, 1846, for discharging his weapon at Sergeant John Evans. His sentence was commuted to transportation (to Australia) for life. In October, 1841, County Carlow-born Peter Doyle had also been transported to Australia for fourteen years for shooting at a picket. At his court martial he had explained that he had been drunk at the time.

Other Irish soldiers, taking discharge, made a home in Bermuda, remaining there for the rest of their lives. Dublin-born Sapper Cornelius Farrell was discharged in Bermuda from the Royal Engineers. His three Bermudian-born sons followed him into the army, fighting on the Western Front during the First World War in the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps.

Although there is little surviving evidence of Irish culture, some elderly islanders can remember when the term "cilig" (or "killick") was used to describe a common method of fishing for sea turtles by tricking them into swimming into prearranged nets (this was done by splashing a stone on a line – the cilig – into the water on the turtle's opposite side). The word "cilig" appears to be meaningless in English, but in some dialects of Gaelic is used as an adjective meaning "easily deceived". In Irish there is a word "cílí" meaning sly. It is used in the expression "Is é an cílí ceart é" (pronounced "Shayeh kilic airtay") and means "What a sly-boots". Alternatively, the word may be derived from an Irish word for a stone and wood anchor. Characteristics of older Bermudian accents, such as the pronunciation of the letter 'd' as 'dj', as in "Bermudjin" (Bermudian), may indicate an Irish origin. Later Irish immigrants have continued to contribute to Bermuda's makeup, with names like Crockwell ("Ó Creachmhaoil") and O'Connor ("Ó Conchobhair") now being thought of locally as Bermudian names. The strongest remaining Irish influence can be seen in the presence of bagpipes in the music of Bermuda, which stemmed from the presence of Scottish and Irish soldiers from the 18th through 20th centuries. Several prominent businesses in Bermuda have a clear Irish influence, such as the Irish Linen Shop, Tom Moore's Tavern and Flanagan's Irish Pub and Restaurant.

A succession of Irish Masonic lodges have existed in Bermuda, beginning with "Military Lodge #192", established by soldiers of the 47th Regiment of Foot, and operating in Bermuda from 1793 to 1801. This was an ambulatory or traveling lodge, as with other military lodges, moving with its members. Irish Lodges #220 (also a military travelling lodge) was active in Bermuda from 1856 to 1861, and Irish Lodge #209 was established in Bermuda in 1881. Minder Lodge #63 of the Irish Constitution was in Bermuda with the 20th Regiment of Foot from 1841 to 1847. The Hannibal Lodge #224 of the Irish Constitution was warranted in 1867, and still exists, meeting in the Masonic Hall on Old Maid's Lane, St. George's. Another Hannibal Chapter, #123 of the Irish Constitution, was chartered in 1877, but lasted only until 1911.
The 2006 census by Statcan, Canada's Official Statistical office revealed that the Irish were the 4th largest ethnic group with 4,354,155 Canadians with full or partial Irish descent or 14% of the nation's total population. During the 2016 census by Statistics Canada, the Irish ethnicity retained its spot as the 4th largest ethnic group with 4,627,000 Canadians with full or partial Irish descent.

Many Newfoundlanders are of Irish descent. It is estimated that about 80% of Newfoundlanders have Irish ancestry on at least one side of their family tree. The family names, the predominant Roman Catholic religion, the prevalence of Irish music – even the accents of the people – are so reminiscent of rural Ireland that Irish author Tim Pat Coogan has described Newfoundland as ""the most Irish place in the world outside Ireland"". Newfoundland Irish, the dialect of the Irish language specific to the island was widely spoken until the mid-20th century. It is very similar to the language heard in the southeast of Ireland centuries ago, due to mass emigration from the counties Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford, County Kerry and Cork.

Saint John, New Brunswick, claims the distinction of being Canada's most Irish city, according to census records. There have been Irish settlers in New Brunswick since at least the late 18th century, but during the peak of the Great Irish Famine (1845–1847), thousands of Irish emigrated through Partridge Island in the port of Saint John. Most of these Irish were Roman Catholic, who changed the complexion of the Loyalist city. A large, vibrant Irish community can also be found in the Miramichi region of New Brunswick.

Guysborough County, Nova Scotia has many rural Irish villages. Erinville (which means Irishville), Salmon River, Ogden, Bantry (named after Bantry Bay, County Cork, Ireland but now abandoned and grown up in trees) among others, where Irish last names are prevalent and the accent is reminiscent of the Irish as well as the music, traditions, religion (Roman Catholic), and the love of Ireland itself. Some of the Irish counties from which these people arrived were County Kerry (Dingle Peninsula), County Cork, and County Roscommon, along with others.

In Antigonish County, next to Guysborough County in Nova Scotia there are a few rural Irish villages despite the predominance of Scottish in most of that County. Some of these villages names are Ireland, Lochaber and Cloverville. Antigonish Town is a fairly even mix of Irish and Scottish, and the Irish presence contributes to Nova Scotia's Celtic cultural character.

Quebec is also home to a large Irish community, especially in Montreal, where the Irish shamrock is featured on the municipal flag. This is not a sign of homage to the Irish but of the conquest of French speaking Québec by British who use the symbols of France, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland bounded within the English cross of St. George. Notably, thousands of Irish emigrants during the Famine passed through Grosse Isle near Québec City, where many succumbed to typhus. Most of the Irish who settled near Québec City are now French speakers.

Ontario has over 2 million people of Irish descent, who in greater numbers arrived in the 1820s and the decades that followed to work on colonial infrastructure and to settle land tracts in Upper Canada, the result today is a countryside speckled with the place names of Ireland. Ontario received a large number of those who landed in Quebec during the Famine years, many thousands died in Ontario's ports. Irish-born became the majority in Toronto by 1851.

From the 1620s, many of the Irish Roman Catholic merchant class in this period migrated voluntarily to the West Indies to avail of the business opportunities there occasioned by the trade in sugar, tobacco and cotton. They were followed by landless Irish indentured labourers, who were recruited to serve a landowner for a specified time before receiving freedom and land. The descendants of some Irish immigrants are known today in the West Indies as redlegs. Most descendants of these Irishmen moved off the islands as African slavery was implemented and blacks began to replace whites. Many Barbadian-born Irishmen helped establish the Carolina colony in the United States.

After the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland Irish prisoners were forcibly transferred to English colonies in the Americas and sold into indentured servitude, a practice that came to be known as being "Barbadosed", though Barbados was not the only colony to receive Irish prisoners, with those sent to Montserrat being the best known. To this day, Montserrat is the only country or territory in the world, apart from the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the Canadian province of Newfoundland to observe a public holiday on St Patrick's Day. The population is predominantly of mixed Irish and African descent.

Irish immigrants played an instrumental role in Puerto Rico's economy. One of the most important industries of the island was the sugar industry. Among the successful businessmen in this industry were Miguel Conway, who owned a plantation in the town of Hatillo and Juan Nagle whose plantation was located in Río Piedras. General Alexander O'Reilly, "Father of the Puerto Rican Militia", named Tomas O'Daly chief engineer of modernising the defences of San Juan, this included the fortress of San Cristóbal. Tomas O'Daly and Miguel Kirwan were partners in the "Hacienda San Patricio", which they named after the patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick. A relative of O'Daly, Demetrio O'Daly, succeeded Captain Ramon Power y Giralt as the island's delegate to the Spanish Courts. The plantation no longer exists, however the land in which the plantation was located is now a San Patricio suburb with a shopping mall by the same name. The Quinlan family established two plantations, one in the town of Toa Baja and the other in Loíza. Puerto Ricans of Irish descent were also instrumental in the development of the island's tobacco industry. Among them Miguel Conboy who was a founder of the tobacco trade in Puerto Rico.

Other notable places in the Caribbean include:

Many of the Wild Geese, expatriate Irish soldiers who had gone to Spain, or their descendants, continued on to its colonies in South America. Many of them rose to prominent positions in the Spanish governments there. In the 1820s, some of them helped liberate the continent. Bernardo O'Higgins was the first Supreme director of Chile. When Chilean troops occupied Lima during the War of the Pacific in 1881, they put in charge certain Patricio Lynch, whose grandfather came from Ireland to Argentina and then moved to Chile. Other Latin American countries that have Irish settlement include Puerto Rico and Colombia.

The County Wexford born William Lamport, better known to most Mexicans as Guillén de Lampart, was a precursor of the Independence movement and author of the first proclamation of independence in the New World. His statue stands today in the Crypt of Heroes beneath the Column of Independence in Mexico City.

After Lampart, the most famous Irishmen in Mexican history are probably "Los Patricios". Many communities also existed in Mexican Texas until the revolution there, when they sided with Roman Catholic Mexico against Protestant pro-US elements. The "Batallón de San Patricio", a battalion of US troops who deserted and fought alongside the Mexican Army against the United States in the Mexican–American War of 1846–1848, is well known in Mexican history.

Álvaro Obregón (possibly O'Brian or O'Brien) was president of Mexico during 1920–24 and Obregón city and airport are named in his honour. Mexico also has a large number of people of Irish ancestry, among them the actor Anthony Quinn. There are monuments in Mexico City paying tribute to those Irish who fought for Mexico in the 19th century. There is a monument to Los Patricios in the fort of Churubusco. During the Potato Famine, thousands of Irish immigrants entered the country. Other Mexicans of Irish descent are: Romulo O'Farril, Juan O'Gorman, Edmundo O'Gorman, Anthony Quinn, Alejo Bay (Governor of the state of Sonora).

The diaspora to the United States was immortalised in the words of many songs including the famous Irish ballad, "The Green Fields of America":So pack up your sea-stores, consider no longer,
Ten dollars a week is not very bad pay,
With no taxes or tithes to devour up your wages,
When you're on the green fields of Americay.The experience of Irish immigrants in the United States has not always been harmonious. The US did not have a good relationship with most of the incoming Irish because of their Roman Catholic faith, as the majority of the population was Protestant and had been originally formed by offshoots of the Protestant faith, many of whom were from Northern Ireland (Ulster). So it came as no surprise that the federal government issued new immigration acts, adding to previous ones which limited Eastern European immigration, ones which limited the immigration of the Irish.

Those who were successful in coming over from Ireland were for the most part already good farm and other hard labour workers, so the jobs they were taking were plentiful in the beginning. However, as time went on and the land needed less cultivation, the jobs the new Irish immigrants were taking were those that Americans wanted as well.
In most cases, Irish newcomers were sometimes uneducated and often found themselves competing with Americans for manual labour jobs or, in the 1860s, being recruited from the docks by the US Army to serve in the American Civil War and afterward to build the Union Pacific Railroad. This view of the Irish-American experience is depicted by another traditional song, "Paddy's Lamentation."Hear me boys, now take my advice,
To America I'll have ye's not be going,
There is nothing here but war, where the murderin' cannons roar,
And I wish I was at home in dear old Ireland.The classic image of an Irish immigrant is led to a certain extent by racist and anti-Catholic stereotypes. In modern times, in the United States, the Irish are largely perceived as hard workers. Most notably they are associated with the positions of police officer, firefighter, Roman Catholic Church leaders and politicians in the larger Eastern Seaboard metropolitan areas. Irish Americans number over 35 million, making them the second largest reported ethnic group in the country, after German Americans. Historically, large Irish American communities have been found in Philadelphia; Chicago; Boston; New York City; New York; Detroit; New England; Washington, DC; Baltimore; Pittsburgh; Cleveland; St. Paul, Minnesota; Buffalo; Broome County; Butte; Dubuque; Quincy; Dublin; Hartford; New Haven; Waterbury; Providence; Kansas City; New Orleans; Braintree; Weymouth; Norfolk; Nashville; Scranton; Wilkes-Barre; O'Fallon; Tampa; Hazleton; Worcester; Lowell; Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Bay Area. Many cities across the country have annual St Patrick's Day parades; The nation's largest is in New York City—one of the world's largest parades. The parade in Boston is closely associated with Evacuation Day, when the British left Boston in 1776 during the American War of Independence.

Before the Great Hunger ("Irish Potato Famine"), in which over a million died and more emigrated, there had been the Penal Laws which had already resulted in significant emigration from Ireland.

According to the "Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups", in 1790 there were 400,000 Americans of Irish birth or ancestry out of a total white population of 3,100,000. Half of these Irish Americans were descended from Ulster people, and half were descended from the people of Connacht, Leinster and Munster.

According to US Census figures from 2000, 41,000,000 Americans claim to be wholly or partly of Irish ancestry, a group that represents more than one in five white Americans. Many African Americans are part of the Irish diaspora, as they are descended from Scots-Irish slave owners and overseers who arrived in America during the colonial era. The US Census Bureau's data from 2016 reveals that Irish ancestry is one of the most common reported ancestries reported (in the top 3 most common ancestries reported). Even though Irish immigration is extremely small relative to the scope of current migration, Irish ancestry is one of the most common ancestries in the United States because of the events that took place over a century ago.

Irishmen have been known in India right from the days of the East India Company. While most of the early Irish came as traders, some also came as soldiers. However, the majority of these traders and soldiers were from the Protestant Ascendancy. Prominent among them were the generals Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1834 and his brother Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley (1760–1842), who was Governor-General of India (1798–1805) and a great-great-great grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II. Later in the Victorian period, many thinkers, philosophers and Irish nationalists from the Roman Catholic majority too made it to India, prominent among the nationalists being the theosophist Annie Besant.

It is widely believed that there existed a secret alliance between the Irish and Indian independence movements. Some Indian intellectuals like Jawaharlal Nehru and V. V. Giri were certainly inspired by Irish nationalists when they studied in the United Kingdom. The Indian revolutionary group known as the Bengal Volunteers took this name in emulation of the Irish Volunteers.2,087,800 (10.4%) of Australians self-reported some Irish ancestry in the 2011 census, second only to English and Australian.
The Australian government estimates the total figure may be around 7 million (30%).

In the 2006 Census 50,255 Australian residents declared they were born in the Republic of Ireland and a further 21,291 declared to have been born in Northern Ireland. This gives Australia the third largest Irish-born population outside of Ireland (after Britain and America).

Between the 1790s and 1920s, approximately 400,000 Irish settlers – both voluntary and forced – are thought to have arrived in Australia. They first came over in large numbers as convicts, with around 50,000 transported between 1791 and 1867. Even larger numbers of free settlers came during the 19th century due to famine, the Donegal Relief Fund, the discovery of gold in Victoria and New South Wales, and the increasing "pull" of a pre-existing Irish community. By 1871, Irish immigrants accounted for one quarter of Australia's overseas-born population.

Irish Catholic immigrants – who made up about 75% of the total Irish population – were largely responsible for the establishment of a separate Catholic school system. About 20% of Australian children attend Catholic schools as of 2017.

It has also been argued that the Irish language was the source of a significant number of words in Australian English.

Irish communities can be found in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Kimberley, and Johannesburg, with smaller communities in Pretoria, Barberton, Durban and East London. A third of the Cape's governors were Irish, as were many of the judges and politicians. Both the Cape Colony and the Colony of Natal had Irish prime ministers: Sir Thomas Upington, "The Afrikaner from Cork"; and Sir Albert Hime, from Kilcoole in County Wicklow. Irish Cape Governors included Lord Macartney, Lord Caledon and Sir John Francis Cradock.

Henry Nourse, a shipowner at the Cape, brought out a small party of Irish settlers in 1818. In 1823, John Ingram brought out 146 Irish from Cork. Single Irish women were sent to the Cape on a few occasions. Twenty arrived in November 1849 and 46 arrived in March 1851. The majority arrived in November 1857 aboard the "Lady Kennaway". A large contingent of Irish troops fought in the Anglo-Boer War on both sides and a few of them stayed in South Africa after the war. Others returned home but later came out to settle in South Africa with their families. Between 1902 and 1905, there were about 5,000 Irish immigrants. Places in South Africa named after Irish people include Upington, Porterville, Caledon, Cradock, Sir Lowry's Pass, the Biggarsberg Mountains, Donnybrook, Himeville and Belfast.

The Diaspora population of Ireland also got a fresh start on the islands of New Zealand during the later half of the 19th century. The ideology of striking it rich in the gold mines caused many Irish people to flock to the docks; risking their lives on the long voyage to potential freedom and more importantly self-sufficiency. Most famous places including both Gabriel's Gully and Otago are examples of mining sites which, with the funding of large companies, allowed for the creation of wages and the appearance of mining towns. Women found jobs as housemaids cleaning the shacks of the single men at work thereby providing a second income to the Irish family household. The subsequent money accumulated with regards to this would allow for chain migration for the rest of the family left behind.

The Transition to New Zealand was made easier due to the overexposure that the Irish had previously had with colonialism. They ventured upwards to the British ports, settling temporarily to accumulate the necessary finances before moving onwards towards the banks of the far away island. In doing so, they not only exposed themselves to the form of British form of government but likewise to capitalism. This aided to further the simplicity of the transition for the dispersed population.

The government aided through the use of both promissory notes and land grants. By promising to pay for the passage of a family the government ensured that the island would be populated and a British colony would be formed. Free passage was installed for women first between the ages of 15-35, while males between the ages of 18–40 years of age would be promised a certain amount of acres of land upon arrival in the New World. This was attributed to the installment of the New Zealand Land act. To further aid with the financial burden, free passage to any immigrant was granted after 1874.

A final note with regards to importance of the Irish diaspora population in New Zealand deals with the diminished amount of prejudice present for the Roman Catholic population upon arrival. The lack of embedded hierarchy and social structure in the New World allowed for previous sectarian tensions to be dissolved. This can also be attributed to the sheer amount of distance between the respective religions due to the sparseness of the unpopulated area and the sheer size of the islands.

Paul Cardinal Cullen set out to spread Irish dominance over the English-speaking Roman Catholic Church in the 19th century. The establishment of an 'Irish Episcopal Empire' involved three transnational entities – the British Empire, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Irish diaspora. Irish clergy, notably Cullen, made particular use of the reach of the British Empire to spread their influence. From the 1830s until his death in 1878, Cullen held several key positions near the top of the Irish hierarchy and influenced Rome's appointment of Irish bishops on four continents.

Walker (2007) compares Irish immigrant communities in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Great Britain respecting issues of identity and 'Irishness.' Religion remained the major cause of differentiation in all Irish diaspora communities and had the greatest impact on identity, followed by the nature and difficulty of socio-economic conditions faced in each new country and the strength of continued social and political links of Irish immigrants and their descendants with Ireland.

In the United States specifically, Irish immigrants were persecuted because of their religion. The Know Nothing Movement sprung up during the time of the Irish's arrival. The Know Nothing Party was formed by Protestants and was the first political party in American history to push against Catholic immigration to the United States, particularly targeting Irish and German immigrants. The Know Nothings fought  to limit immigration from traditional Catholic countries, prohibit non-English language speaking on US territory, and create a policy where you must spend 21 years in the US before gaining citizenship. The party faded out of existence relatively quickly, but they are a reminder of the persecution Irish immigrants faced. During the third and fourth waves of immigration, new arrivals faced similar discrimination and the now settled Irish would take part in this persecution of other groups.

From the late 20th century onward, Irish identity abroad became increasingly cultural, non-denominational, and non-political, although many emigrants from Northern Ireland stood apart from this trend. However, Ireland as religious reference point is now increasingly significant in neopagan contexts.

This listing is for politicians of Irish nationality or origin, who were or are engaged in the politics of a foreign country. The term Irish diaspora is open to many interpretations. One, preferred by the government of Ireland, is defined in legal terms: the Irish diaspora are those of Irish nationality, mostly but not exclusively Roman Catholic, residing outside of the island of Ireland. This includes Irish citizens who have emigrated abroad and their children, who were Irish citizens by descent under Irish law. It also includes their grandchildren in cases. See also Irish military diaspora. (See also Notable Americans of Scotch-Irish descent).

Irish diaspora

The Irish diaspora () refers to Irish people and their descendants who live outside Ireland.

The phenomenon of migration from Ireland is recorded since the Early Middle Ages, but it is only possible to quantify it from around 1700: since then between 9 and 10 million people born in Ireland have emigrated. This is more than the population of Ireland at its historical peak in the 1840s of 8.5 million. The poorest of them went to Great Britain, especially Liverpool; those who could afford it went further, including almost 5 million to the United States.

Ciarán Cannon is the Republic of Ireland's Minister of State for the Diaspora.

The right to register as an Irish citizen terminates at the third generation (except as noted above). This contrasts with citizenship law in Italy, Israel, Japan and other countries which practice jus sanguinis or otherwise permit members of the diaspora to register as citizens.

There are people of Irish descent abroad (including Irish speakers) who reject inclusion in an Irish "diaspora" and who designate their identity in other ways. They may see the diasporic label as something used by the Irish government for its own purposes.

The dispersal of the Irish has been mainly to Britain or to countries colonised by Britain. England's political connection with Ireland began in 1155 when Pope Adrian IV issued a papal bull (known as "Laudabiliter") that gave Henry II permission to invade Ireland as a means of strengthening the Papacy's control over the Irish Church. This was followed in 1169 by the Norman invasion of Ireland led by the general Richard de Clare, a.k.a. "Strongbow".

The English Crown did not attempt to assert full control of the island until after Henry VIII's repudiation of paprebelal authority over the Church in England and subsequent rebellion of the Earl of Kildare in Ireland in 1534 threatened English hegemony there. Until the break with Rome, it was widely believed that Ireland was a Papal possession granted as a mere fiefdom to the English king, so in 1541 Henry VIII asserted England's claim to Ireland free from the Papal overlordship by proclaiming himself King of Ireland.

Following the Nine Years' War (1594 to 1603) political power rested in the hands of a Protestant Ascendancy minority and was marked by a Crown policy of plantation, involving the arrival of thousands of English and Scottish Protestant settlers, and the consequent displacement of the pre-plantation Roman Catholic landholders. As the military and political defeat of Gaelic Ireland became more pronounced in the early seventeenth century, sectarian conflict became a recurrent theme in Irish history.

Roman Catholics and members of dissenting Protestant denominations suffered severe political and economic privations from Penal Laws. The Irish Parliament was abolished in 1801 in the wake of the republican United Irishmen Rebellion and Ireland became an integral part of a new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Act of Union.

The Great Famine of Ireland during the 1840s saw a significant number of people flee from the island to all over the world. Between 1841 and 1851 as a result of death and mass emigration (mainly to Great Britain and North America) Ireland's population fell by over 2 million. In Connacht alone the population fell by almost 30%.

Robert E. Kennedy explains, however, that the common argument of the mass emigration from Ireland being a "flight from famine" is not entirely correct: firstly, the Irish had been coming to build canals in Great Britain since the 18th century, and once conditions were better emigration did not slow down. After the famine was over the four following years produced more emigrants than during the four years of the blight. Kennedy argues that the famine was considered the final straw to convince people to move and that there were several other factors in the decision making.

By 1900 the population of Ireland was about half of its 1840 high and continued to fall during the 20th century.

Public interest in ancestry and family history received a boost in the late 1970s with the television broadcast of "", Alex Haley's account of his family line. and the television series "Who Do You Think You Are?", a genealogy documentary series that started on the BBC in 2004.

The Internet and the number of resources now readily accessible has resulted in an explosion of interest in the topic. According to some sources, genealogy is one of the most popular topics on the Internet.

People of the Irish diaspora who were not born in Ireland but who identify as Irish are sometimes labelled as "Plastic Paddies".

Mary J. Hickman writes that "plastic Paddy" was a term used to "deny and denigrate the second-generation Irish in Britain" in the 1980s, and was "frequently articulated by the new middle class Irish immigrants in Britain, for whom it was a means of distancing themselves from established Irish communities." According to Bronwen Walter, professor of Irish Diaspora Studies at Anglia Ruskin University, "the adoption of a hyphenated identity has been much more problematic for the second generation Irish in Britain. The Irish-born have frequently denied the authenticity of their Irish identity."

Scottish journalist Alex Massie wrote in "National Review":

The movement of people between the adjacent islands of Ireland and Great Britain has ebbed and flowed with their politics, economics and social conditions. Ireland was a feudal Lordship of the Kings of England between 1171 and 1541; a Kingdom in personal union with the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Great Britain between 1542 and 1801; and politically united with Great Britain as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland between 1801 and 1922. Today, Ireland is divided between the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland which is part of the UK.

Today, millions of residents of Great Britain are either from the island of Ireland or have Irish ancestry. It is estimated that as many as six million people living in the UK have an Irish-born grandparent (around 10% of the UK population).

The 2001 UK Census states that 869,093 people born in Ireland are living in Great Britain.
More than 10% of those born in the United Kingdom have at least one grandparent born in Ireland. The article "More Britons applying for Irish passports" states that 6 million Britons have either an Irish grandfather or grandmother and are thus able to apply for Irish citizenship. Almost a quarter claimed some Irish ancestry in one survey.

Central to the Irish community in Britain was the community's relationship with the Roman Catholic Church, with which it maintained a strong sense of identity. The Church remains a crucial focus of communal life among some of the immigrant population and their descendants. The largest ethnic group among the Roman Catholic priesthood of Britain remains Irish (in the United States, the upper ranks of the Church's hierarchy are of predominantly Irish descent.) The former head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland is Cardinal Keith O'Brien.

Scotland experienced a significant amount of Irish immigration, particularly in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Coatbridge. This led to the formation of Celtic Football Club in 1888 by Marist Brother Walfrid, to raise money to help the community. In Edinburgh Hibernian were founded in 1875 and in 1909 another club with Irish links, Dundee United, was formed. Likewise the Irish community in London formed the London Irish rugby union club. The 2001 UK Census states in Scotland 50,000 people identified as having Irish heritage.

London once more holds an official public St Patrick's Day celebration, which although having been cancelled in the 1970s because of Irish Republican violence, is now a national celebration, with over 60 percent of the population regularly celebrating the day regardless of their ethnic origins.

The Irish have maintained a strong political presence in the UK (mostly in Scotland), in local government and at the national level. Former Prime Ministers David Cameron, Tony Blair, John Major and James Callaghan have been amongst the many in Britain of part-Irish ancestry; Blair's mother, Hazel Elizabeth Rosaleen Corscaden, was born on 12 June 1923 in Ballyshannon, County Donegal. Former Chancellor George Osborne is a member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy and heir to the baronetcies of Ballentaylor and Ballylemon.

Irish links with the continent go back many centuries. During the early Middle Ages, 700–900 AD, many Irish religious figures went abroad to preach and found monasteries in what is known as the Hiberno-Scottish mission. Saint Brieuc founded the city that bears his name in Brittany, Saint Colmán founded the great monastery of Bobbio in northern Italy and one of his monks was Saint Gall for whom the Swiss town of St Gallen and canton of St Gallen are named.

During the 20th century, certain Irish intellectuals made their homes in continental Europe, particularly James Joyce, and later Samuel Beckett (who became a courier for the French Resistance). Eoin O'Duffy led a brigade of 700 Irish volunteers to fight for Franco during the Spanish Civil War, and Frank Ryan led the Connolly column who fought on the opposite side, with the Republican International Brigades. William Joyce became an English-language propagandist for the Third Reich, known colloquially as Lord Haw-Haw.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, over 38,000 Irish immigrated to Argentina. Very distinct Irish communities and schools existed until the Perón era in the 1950s.

Today there are an estimated 1,000,000 people of Irish ancestry in Argentina, approximately 15.5% of the Republic of Ireland's current population; however, these numbers may be far higher, given that many Irish newcomers declared themselves to be British, as Ireland at the time was still part of the United Kingdom and today their descendants integrated into Argentine society with mixed bloodlines.

Despite the fact that Argentina was never the main destination for Irish emigrants it does form part of the Irish diaspora. The Irish-Argentine William Bulfin remarked as he travelled around Westmeath in the early 20th century that he came across many locals who had been to Buenos Aires. Several families from Bere island, County Cork were encouraged to send emigrants to Argentina by an islander who had been successful there in the 1880s.

Widely considered a national hero, William Brown is the most famous Irish citizen in Argentina. Creator of the Argentine Navy ("Armada de la República Argentina", ARA) and leader of the Argentine Armed Forces in the wars against Brazil and Spain, he was born in Foxford, County Mayo on 22 June 1777 and died in Buenos Aires in 1857. The is named after him, as well as the Almirante Brown partido, part of the Gran Buenos Aires urban area, with a population of over 500.000 inhabitants.

Between 1943 and 1946, the de facto President of Argentina was Edelmiro Farrell, whose paternal ancestry was Irish.

Other Irish soldiers, taking discharge, made a home in Bermuda, remaining there for the rest of their lives. Dublin-born Sapper Cornelius Farrell was discharged in Bermuda from the Royal Engineers. His three Bermudian-born sons followed him into the army, fighting on the Western Front during the First World War in the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps.

Saint John, New Brunswick, claims the distinction of being Canada's most Irish city, according to census records. There have been Irish settlers in New Brunswick since at least the late 18th century, but during the peak of the Great Irish Famine (1845–1847), thousands of Irish emigrated through Partridge Island in the port of Saint John. Most of these Irish were Roman Catholic, who changed the complexion of the Loyalist city. A large, vibrant Irish community can also be found in the Miramichi region of New Brunswick.

Guysborough County, Nova Scotia has many rural Irish villages. Erinville (which means Irishville), Salmon River, Ogden, Bantry (named after Bantry Bay, County Cork, Ireland but now abandoned and grown up in trees) among others, where Irish last names are prevalent and the accent is reminiscent of the Irish as well as the music, traditions, religion (Roman Catholic), and the love of Ireland itself. Some of the Irish counties from which these people arrived were County Kerry (Dingle Peninsula), County Cork, and County Roscommon, along with others.

In Antigonish County, next to Guysborough County in Nova Scotia there are a few rural Irish villages despite the predominance of Scottish in most of that County. Some of these villages names are Ireland, Lochaber and Cloverville. Antigonish Town is a fairly even mix of Irish and Scottish, and the Irish presence contributes to Nova Scotia's Celtic cultural character.

Quebec is also home to a large Irish community, especially in Montreal, where the Irish shamrock is featured on the municipal flag. This is not a sign of homage to the Irish but of the conquest of French speaking Québec by British who use the symbols of France, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland bounded within the English cross of St. George. Notably, thousands of Irish emigrants during the Famine passed through Grosse Isle near Québec City, where many succumbed to typhus. Most of the Irish who settled near Québec City are now French speakers.

Ontario has over 2 million people of Irish descent, who in greater numbers arrived in the 1820s and the decades that followed to work on colonial infrastructure and to settle land tracts in Upper Canada, the result today is a countryside speckled with the place names of Ireland. Ontario received a large number of those who landed in Quebec during the Famine years, many thousands died in Ontario's ports. Irish-born became the majority in Toronto by 1851.

After the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland Irish prisoners were forcibly transferred to English colonies in the Americas and sold into indentured servitude, a practice that came to be known as being "Barbadosed", though Barbados was not the only colony to receive Irish prisoners, with those sent to Montserrat being the best known. To this day, Montserrat is the only country or territory in the world, apart from the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the Canadian province of Newfoundland to observe a public holiday on St Patrick's Day. The population is predominantly of mixed Irish and African descent.

Other notable places in the Caribbean include:

Many of the Wild Geese, expatriate Irish soldiers who had gone to Spain, or their descendants, continued on to its colonies in South America. Many of them rose to prominent positions in the Spanish governments there. In the 1820s, some of them helped liberate the continent. Bernardo O'Higgins was the first Supreme director of Chile. When Chilean troops occupied Lima during the War of the Pacific in 1881, they put in charge certain Patricio Lynch, whose grandfather came from Ireland to Argentina and then moved to Chile. Other Latin American countries that have Irish settlement include Puerto Rico and Colombia.

The County Wexford born William Lamport, better known to most Mexicans as Guillén de Lampart, was a precursor of the Independence movement and author of the first proclamation of independence in the New World. His statue stands today in the Crypt of Heroes beneath the Column of Independence in Mexico City.

After Lampart, the most famous Irishmen in Mexican history are probably "Los Patricios". Many communities also existed in Mexican Texas until the revolution there, when they sided with Roman Catholic Mexico against Protestant pro-US elements. The "Batallón de San Patricio", a battalion of US troops who deserted and fought alongside the Mexican Army against the United States in the Mexican–American War of 1846–1848, is well known in Mexican history.

Before the Great Hunger ("Irish Potato Famine"), in which over a million died and more emigrated, there had been the Penal Laws which had already resulted in significant emigration from Ireland.

According to the "Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups", in 1790 there were 400,000 Americans of Irish birth or ancestry out of a total white population of 3,100,000. Half of these Irish Americans were descended from Ulster people, and half were descended from the people of Connacht, Leinster and Munster.

It is widely believed that there existed a secret alliance between the Irish and Indian independence movements. Some Indian intellectuals like Jawaharlal Nehru and V. V. Giri were certainly inspired by Irish nationalists when they studied in the United Kingdom. The Indian revolutionary group known as the Bengal Volunteers took this name in emulation of the Irish Volunteers.2,087,800 (10.4%) of Australians self-reported some Irish ancestry in the 2011 census, second only to English and Australian.
The Australian government estimates the total figure may be around 7 million (30%).

In the 2006 Census 50,255 Australian residents declared they were born in the Republic of Ireland and a further 21,291 declared to have been born in Northern Ireland. This gives Australia the third largest Irish-born population outside of Ireland (after Britain and America).

Between the 1790s and 1920s, approximately 400,000 Irish settlers – both voluntary and forced – are thought to have arrived in Australia. They first came over in large numbers as convicts, with around 50,000 transported between 1791 and 1867. Even larger numbers of free settlers came during the 19th century due to famine, the Donegal Relief Fund, the discovery of gold in Victoria and New South Wales, and the increasing "pull" of a pre-existing Irish community. By 1871, Irish immigrants accounted for one quarter of Australia's overseas-born population.

Irish Catholic immigrants – who made up about 75% of the total Irish population – were largely responsible for the establishment of a separate Catholic school system. About 20% of Australian children attend Catholic schools as of 2017.

It has also been argued that the Irish language was the source of a significant number of words in Australian English.

Irish communities can be found in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Kimberley, and Johannesburg, with smaller communities in Pretoria, Barberton, Durban and East London. A third of the Cape's governors were Irish, as were many of the judges and politicians. Both the Cape Colony and the Colony of Natal had Irish prime ministers: Sir Thomas Upington, "The Afrikaner from Cork"; and Sir Albert Hime, from Kilcoole in County Wicklow. Irish Cape Governors included Lord Macartney, Lord Caledon and Sir John Francis Cradock.

The Transition to New Zealand was made easier due to the overexposure that the Irish had previously had with colonialism. They ventured upwards to the British ports, settling temporarily to accumulate the necessary finances before moving onwards towards the banks of the far away island. In doing so, they not only exposed themselves to the form of British form of government but likewise to capitalism. This aided to further the simplicity of the transition for the dispersed population.

The government aided through the use of both promissory notes and land grants. By promising to pay for the passage of a family the government ensured that the island would be populated and a British colony would be formed. Free passage was installed for women first between the ages of 15-35, while males between the ages of 18–40 years of age would be promised a certain amount of acres of land upon arrival in the New World. This was attributed to the installment of the New Zealand Land act. To further aid with the financial burden, free passage to any immigrant was granted after 1874.

A final note with regards to importance of the Irish diaspora population in New Zealand deals with the diminished amount of prejudice present for the Roman Catholic population upon arrival. The lack of embedded hierarchy and social structure in the New World allowed for previous sectarian tensions to be dissolved. This can also be attributed to the sheer amount of distance between the respective religions due to the sparseness of the unpopulated area and the sheer size of the islands.

Paul Cardinal Cullen set out to spread Irish dominance over the English-speaking Roman Catholic Church in the 19th century. The establishment of an 'Irish Episcopal Empire' involved three transnational entities – the British Empire, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Irish diaspora. Irish clergy, notably Cullen, made particular use of the reach of the British Empire to spread their influence. From the 1830s until his death in 1878, Cullen held several key positions near the top of the Irish hierarchy and influenced Rome's appointment of Irish bishops on four continents.

Walker (2007) compares Irish immigrant communities in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Great Britain respecting issues of identity and 'Irishness.' Religion remained the major cause of differentiation in all Irish diaspora communities and had the greatest impact on identity, followed by the nature and difficulty of socio-economic conditions faced in each new country and the strength of continued social and political links of Irish immigrants and their descendants with Ireland.

From the late 20th century onward, Irish identity abroad became increasingly cultural, non-denominational, and non-political, although many emigrants from Northern Ireland stood apart from this trend. However, Ireland as religious reference point is now increasingly significant in neopagan contexts.


How long did American troops stay in Germany after WWII?

The United States Army maintained a substantial and continuous military presence at the inner German border throughout the entire period from 1945 to after the end of the Cold War. Regular American soldiers manned the border from the end of the war until they were replaced in 1946 by the United States Constabulary, a lightly armed constabulary force responsible for border security. It was disbanded in 1952 after policing duties were transferred to the German authorities. In its place, two dedicated armoured cavalry regiments were assigned to provide a permanent border defence. The 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment based at Nuremberg and the 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment based at Fulda– later replaced by the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment – were tasked with monitoring the border using observation posts, ground and air patrols, countering border intrusions and gathering intelligence on Warsaw Pact activities. Unlike their East German counterparts, U.S. soldiers did not stay for more than 30 days on the border, though they carried out regular patrols around the clock using foot and helicopter patrols. They also used a variety of technical measures such as ground surveillance radars to monitor Warsaw Pact troop movements across the border. A rapid reaction force was on constant duty further behind the border to provide backup in an emergency. The American presence on the border provoked political controversy in Germany. During the 1960s the state of Hesse refused to grant U.S. forces land rights to its observation points or allow them to install paved access roads, electricity or telephone lines. It took the view that since there was no legally recognised border, there was no legal reason for their military observation posts to be built along it. By the 1980s the American border presence had become the target of peace activists, who in 1984 blockaded the U.S. Observation Post Alpha with a human chain. The U.S. withdrew from the inner German border in 1991.

Border guards of the inner German border

The border guards of the inner German border comprised tens of thousands of military, paramilitary and civilian personnel from both East and West Germany, as well as from the United Kingdom, the United States and initially the Soviet Union.

The East German side of the border was guarded initially by the Border Troops ("Pogranichnyie Voiska") of the Soviet NKVD (later the KGB). In 1946, the Soviets established a locally recruited paramilitary force, the German Border Police ("Deutsche Grenzpolizei" or DGP), under the administration of the Interior Ministry for Security of the State Frontier ("Innenministerium zum Schutz der Staatsgrenze"). Soviet troops and the DGP shared responsibility for patrolling the border and crossing points until 1955/56, when the Soviets handed over control to the East Germans.

The DGP became increasingly militarised as the East German government decided that protecting the border was a military task. Although it was notionally a police force, it was equipped with heavy weapons, including tanks and self-propelled artillery. In 1961 the DGP was converted into a military force within the National People's Army ("Nationale Volksarmee", NVA). The newly renamed Border Troops of the GDR ("Grenztruppen", commonly nicknamed the "Grenzer") came under the NVA's Border Command or "Grenzkommando". They were responsible for securing and defending the borders with West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Baltic Sea and West Berlin. At their peak, the "Grenztruppen" had up to 50,000 personnel.

Around half of the "Grenztruppen" were conscripts, a lower proportion than in other branches of the East German armed forces. Their political reliability was under especially close scrutiny due to the sensitive nature of their role. They were subjected to intensive ideological indoctrination, which made up as much as 50 per cent of their training time. They were not allowed to serve in areas near their homes. Some categories of individuals were not allowed to serve in the "Grenztruppen" at all; for instance, if they had close relatives in West Germany, a record of dissent or dissenting family members, or were actively religious. Even if they were accepted for service, trainee border guards who were suspected of political unreliability were weeded out at an early stage. As one later recalled: "At the officers' training school there are always 10 per cent whose loyalty is suspect who are never sent to the border."

The ultimate role of the "Grenztruppen" was to prevent border escapes by any means necessary, including by shooting escapees. Their marksmanship was expected to be substantially better than that of regular NVA troops; they were required to be able to hit two moving targets at with only four shots, by day or night. Failure to shoot was itself a punishable offence, resulting in severe consequences for a soldier and his family.

The East German regime's distrust of its own citizens extended to its border guards, who were in a better position to defect than almost anyone else in the country. Many did in fact flee across the border; between 1961 and 1989, around 7,000 border guards tried to escape. 2,500 succeeded but 5,500 were caught and imprisoned for up to five years. To prevent such defections, the Stasi secret police kept a close watch on the border guards with agents and informers. A special Stasi unit worked covertly within the "Grenztruppen", posing as regular border guards, between 1968 and 1985. The Stasi also maintained a pervasive network of informers within the ranks of the "Grenztruppen". One in ten officers and one in thirty enlisted men were said to have been "liaison agents", the euphemism for an informer. The Stasi regularly interviewed and maintained files on every border guard. Stasi operatives were directly responsible for some aspects of border security; passport control stations were entirely manned by Stasi officers wearing "Grenztruppen" uniforms.

As a further measure to prevent escapes, the patrol patterns of the "Grenztruppen" were carefully arranged to reduce any chance of a border guard defecting. Patrols, watchtowers and observation posts were always manned by two or three soldiers at a time. They were not allowed to go out of each other's sight in any circumstances. When changing the guard in watchtowers, they were under orders to enter and exit the buildings in such a way that there were never fewer than two people on the ground. Duty rosters were organised to prevent friends and roommates being assigned to the same patrols. The pairings were switched (though not randomly) to ensure that the same people did not repeatedly carry out duty together. Individual border guards did not know until the start of their shift with whom they would be working that day. If a guard attempted to escape, his colleagues were under instructions to shoot him without hesitation or prior warning.

Much of the work of the border guards focused on maintaining and scrutinising the border defences. This included carrying out repair work, looking for evidence of escape attempts, examining the area for signs of suspicious activities and so on. The patrol times and routes were deliberately varied to ensure that there was no predictability, ensuring that a patrol could potentially appear at any time from either direction. Guards posted in watchtowers played an important role in monitoring the border, though shortages of personnel meant that the watchtowers were not continuously manned. During the final years of the East German state, the lack of manpower was so severe that cardboard cut-outs of guards were placed in towers to present the illusion that they were occupied.

The "Grenztruppen" also had the task of gathering intelligence on West German and NATO activities across the border line. This task was performed primarily by the "Grenzaufklärungszug" (GAK), an elite reconnaissance force within the "Grenztruppen". These became a familiar sight for Western observers of the border as the GAK troopers, uniquely, were tasked with patrolling the western side of the border fence – i.e. in the outer strip, adjoining the geographical border between the two German states. Not surprisingly, given that they could defect with only a few footsteps in the right direction, the GAKs were drawn from the most politically reliable echelons of the "Grenztruppen". They worked closely with the Stasi and were often seen photographing targets across the border. They also guarded work detachments carrying out maintenance work on the western side of the fence. The workers would be covered by machine guns to discourage them from attempting to escape.

To maintain what the East German state called "Ordnung und Sicherheit" ("order and security") along the border, local civilians were co-opted to assist the border guards and police. A decree of 5 June 1958 spoke of encouraging "the working population in the border districts of the GDR [to express] the desire to help by volunteering to guarantee the inviolability of the border." Civilians living in villages along the border were recruited into the "Border Helpers" ("Grenzhelfer") and "People's Police Helpers" ("Volkspolizeihelfer"). They were tasked with patrolling the strip behind the border defences, assisting at control checkpoints and reporting any unusual activities or strangers in their area. In one border community, Kella in Thuringia, the mayor boasted in a 1967 speech that nearly two-thirds of arrests on the border that year had been made by local civilians. The locals were, however, kept away from the border strip itself. The border guards were usually recruited from far-away regions of East Germany to ensure that people living near the border would not become familiar with its workings. Even children were brought into the fold. A "Young Friends of the Border Guards" organisation was established for children living in the border region, modelled on a similar Soviet organisation. The original Soviet version fostered a cult of the border guards, promoting slogans such as "The frontier runs through people's hearts."

A number of West German state organisations were responsible for policing the western side of the border. These included the "Bundesgrenzschutz" (BGS, Federal Border Protection), the "Bayerische Grenzpolizei" (Bavarian Border Police) and the "Bundeszollverwaltung" (Federal Customs Administration). In addition, the British Army, the British Frontier Service, the United States Constabulary, and the United States Army carried out patrols and provided backup in their respective sectors of the border. West German troops were not allowed to approach within one kilometre of the border individually or within five kilometres in formation without being accompanied by BGS personnel.

The BGS – which today forms part of the "Bundespolizei" – was responsible for policing Germany's frontiers. It was initially a paramilitary force of 10,000, established in 1951, which was responsible for policing a zone deep along the border. It eventually became the basis for the present national semi-militarised police force. Its numbers were later expanded to 20,000 men, a mixture of conscripts, drafted for the mandatory border guard service and volunteers equipped with armoured cars, anti-tank guns, helicopters, trucks and jeeps. Although it was not intended to be able to repel a full-scale invasion, the BGS was tasked with dealing with small-scale threats to the security of West Germany's borders, including the international borders as well as the inner German border. It had limited police powers within its zone of operations to enable it to deal with threats to the peace of the border. The BGS had a reputation for assertiveness which made it especially unpopular with the East Germans, who routinely criticised it as a reincarnation of Hitler's SS. It also sustained a long-running feud with the "Bundeszollverwaltung" over which agency should have the lead responsibility for the inner German border.

Although it was nominally a customs service, the "Bundeszollverwaltung" (BZV) was responsible for policing much of the inner German border. Its original duties focused on stopping smuggling across the border, though this task virtually ceased after the border was fortified in 1952. The BZV continued to man the few remaining border crossings but its duties now evolved into the policing of the border zone to a depth of about. Unlike the BGS, which was based in barracks located further back from the border, BZV personnel lived with their families in communities along the border. They carried out regular policing tasks with the power to arrest and search suspects in their area of operations (with the exception of the section of border in Bavaria). They regularly patrolled the border line – including the river border along the Elbe, where they maintained a fleet of patrol boats – in two-man patrols or with the iconic "Zollhunde", trained customs dogs wearing a "Zoll" ("Customs") strap. The BZV was, in effect, West Germany's eyes and ears on the border.

The "Bayerische Grenzpolizei" (BGP) were a product of Bavaria's semi-detached relationship with the rest of West Germany. The Bavarian government argued that the 1949 Basic Law vested police powers in the hands of the "Länder" and not the federal government, and thus that the BZV had no business carrying out police duties on Bavarian soil. It consequently raised its own border police force, the BGP, to carry out policing duties along the length of the inner German border in Bavaria. By the late 1960s, the BGP had 600 men patrolling its sector of the border, alongside the BZV, BGS and U.S. Army – effectively duplicating the duties of the BZV. Not surprisingly, this led to turf wars between the two agencies.

The British Army conducted only symbolic patrols along its sector of the inner German border and gradually reduced the tempo of its border operations as the Cold War progressed. By the 1970s it was carrying out only one patrol a month, only rarely using helicopters or ground surveillance radar and erecting no permanent observation posts. The British border zone was divided into two sectors. The first stretched from Lübeck to Lauenburg on the Elbe and the second from Lauenburg to the border with the U.S. Zone – a total distance of about. Although patrols were stepped up in the 1980s, they were carried out primarily for training purposes. Soldiers were issued weapons but not ammunition. Unlike the Americans, the British did not assign specific units to border duty but rotated the task between the divisions of the British Army of the Rhine.

The border was also patrolled in the British sector by the British Frontier Service (BFS), the smallest of the Western border surveillance organisations. The BFS had been established (as the Frontier Control Service) in 1946 to take over control of border crossing points from the British Army. Its personnel manned frontier control posts along all of the international and interzonal borders of the British sector, including the Danish and Dutch borders as well as the inner German border. The German customs service was re-established under BFS supervision and manned crossing points on the borders of the British zone of occupation along with BFS personnel. When German sovereignty was re-established in 1955, customs responsibilities were handed over to the Germans. A heavily reduced BFS remained in operation to serve as a liaison between British military and political interests and the German agencies on the border. One curiosity of the BFS was that despite being entirely land-based, its founding Director was a Royal Navy captain. He instituted the highly distinctive uniform of the BFS, designed in a quasi-naval style with silver rank badges. The BFS was finally disbanded in 1990 following Germany's reunification.

Perhaps appropriately for a cold war, the relationship between the East and West German border guards and officials was frosty. As a "Bayerische Grenzpolizei" report of 1968 noted, "the conduct of the Soviet zone [i.e. East German] border troops continued unfriendly and uncooperative. Officers and officials only sought contact to obtain information about refugees or to influence the border population with their propaganda." There was very little official face-to-face interaction between the two sides on the ground, as the East German border guards were under orders not to speak to Westerners. Klaus Grünzner, a former West German border guard, later recalled: "I served... for eight years and the East German police never said a single word to us, except in 1974 during the World Cup, when East Germany beat us. One of the guards shouted at us: 'Sparwasser [a GDR striker] really socked it to you!'" After the initiation of "détente" between East and West Germany in the 1970s, the two sides established procedures for maintaining formal contacts through fourteen direct telephone connections or "Grenzinformationspunkt" (GIP, "border information point"). They were used to resolve local problems affecting the border, such as floods, forest fires or stray animals.

For many years, the two sides waged a propaganda battle across the border, erecting signs with slogans promoting their respective ideologies. Both sides used balloons, rockets and mortars to fire propaganda leaflets into the other's territory with the aim of undermining the other side's morale and sowing doubts about their government's policies. The West German government and political parties of both left and right, especially the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, participated in the campaign.

West German leaflets sought to undermine the willingness of East German border guards to shoot at refugees attempting to cross the border. Some leaflets depicted dead and dying refugees alongside captions such as "The world knows that the overwhelming majority of the People's Army soldiers are decent young men who would not dream of committing murder." Other leaflets sought to encourage desertions by highlighting the material benefits enjoyed by defectors to the West. According to NVA officers who defected across the border, the West German leaflets were quite effective in reaching their target audience. Border troops were said to be avid readers, despite risking severe punishment if they were caught even picking up propaganda leaflets. Reasons advanced for taking the risk included trying to find out the true facts, affirming solidarity with West Germany, the thrill of doing something forbidden, demonstrating secret opposition to the regime, and simple curiosity.

East German leaflets and slogans played on Westerners' desire for peace. A common theme was the allegation that the Bonn government was threatening European peace and security by its supposed "revanchist" aim of restoring German's 1937 borders. West Germany's moral values were also criticised; one leaflet accused the government of corrupting its people with "pictures of playgirls and naked female legs". West Germany's membership of NATO was a frequent target. NATO exercises in Germany were denounced as "warmongering" and the stationing of nuclear weapons on West German soil was condemned (though, of course, Soviet nuclear weapons went unmentioned). Bonn's claimed continuity with the former Nazi regime was also a theme of East German propaganda, as was the emergence of the far-right National Democratic Party. Some leaflets were bellicose, warning of the consequences of a Western attack: "The manoeuvre "Oktobersturm" [a Warsaw Pact military exercise in 1965] is a serious warning addressed to the Bonn militarists that an attack on the GDR will conjure up their own demise."

The number of such leaflet drops was immense. During the 1950s, West Germany sent millions of propaganda leaflets into East Germany each year. In 1968 alone, over 4,000 projectiles containing some 450,000 leaflets were fired from East Germany into the West. Another 600 waterproof East German leaflet containers were recovered from cross-border rivers. The "leaflet war" was eventually ended by mutual agreement in the early 1970s as part of the normalisation of relations between the two German states.