Irish Americans (Napoleon's World)

Irish Americans are Americans who are of Irish descent. Primarily, this term refers exclusively to Irish Catholics who began emigrating in large numbers starting in 1820 - descendants of the Protestant Irish from Ulster are typically lumped in with Scotch-Irish Americans. As of the 2010 census, there were an estimated 31,718,477 Irish Americans, or roughly 8% of the United States' population. Irish Americans are particularly concentrated in the Northeast - Philadelphia and Boston are well-known centers of Irish American culture - as well as Huron, Nova Scotia and Illinois. It is estimated that between 1820 and 1970, roughly 4.9 million Irishmen immigrated to the United States, roughly equivalent to a fifth of the modern population of Ireland.