History of Ireland

'''Ireland' is an island in the north-western Europe. The first settlers arrived between 8000 and 7000 BC; these were followed by the first Celtic-speaking people between 700 and 500 BC and Viking settlers in the ninth century AD. Until the fifteenth century Ireland was a patch-work of competing kingdoms and over-kingdoms. English involvement in Ireland began with the arrival of the Normans in the tenth century, but England did not have full control until the whole island had been conquered in 1609. Prior to 1801 Ireland enjoyed a self-governing status under the Parliament of Ireland, but was ruled by its Anglo-Irish, Protestant minority. In 1801 this parliament was abolished and Ireland became an integral part of a new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Act of Union. In 1922, after the War of Independence, the southern twenty-six counties of Ireland secceded from the United Kingdom (UK) and became the independent state known today as the Republic of Ireland. The remainder of the island, known as Northern Ireland, remained part of the UK. After independence in 1922 the southern state suffered from economic difficulties and mass emmigration for many decades. However since the 1990s the Republic has been enjoying economic success. Since its establishment the history of Northern Ireland has been domimated by sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants. This conflict errupted into the Troubles in the late 1960s.

Early history (c8000 BC - 800 AD)

Main article: Early history of Ireland Ireland during the [[Ice Age.]] What little is known of pre-Christian Ireland comes from a few references in Roman writings, Irish poetry and myth, and archaeology. The earliest inhabitants pf Ireland, people of a mid-Stone Age, or Mesolithic, culture, arrived sometime after 8000 BC, when the climate had become more hospitable following the retreat of the polar icecaps. About three or four millennia later, agriculture was introduced from the continent, leading to the establishment of a high Neolithic culture, characterised by the appearance of huge stone monuments, many of them astronomically aligned. This culture apparently prospered, and the island became more densely populated. The Bronze Age, which began around 2500 BC, saw the production of elaborate gold and bronze ornaments and weapons. The Iron Age in Ireland is associated with the Celts, a people who spread across Europe and the British Isles in the middle of the first millennium BC. The Celts colonised Ireland in a series of waves between the eighth and first centuries BC. The Gael, the last wave of Celts, conquered the island and divided it into five or more kingdoms, in which, despite constant strife, a rich culture flourished. The society of these kingdoms was dominated by druids: priests who served as educators, physicians, poets, diviners, and keepers of the laws and histories. The Romans referred to Ireland as Hibernia. Ptolemy in AD 100 accurately records Ireland's geography and tribes. Ireland was never formally a part of the Roman Empire but Roman influence was often projected well beyond formal borders. Tacitus writes that an Irish tribal chieftan was with Agricola in Great Britain and would return to seize power in Ireland. Juvenal tells us that Roman "arms had been taken beyond the shores of Ireland'. If Rome, or an ally, did invade, they didn't leave very much behind. The exact relationship between Rome and the tribes of Hibernia is unclear. Tradition maintains that in AD 432, St. Patrick arrived on the island and, in the years that followed, worked to convert the Irish to Christianity. Patrick preserved the tribal and social patterns of the Irish, codifying their laws and changing only those that conflicted with Christian practices. He is credited with introducing the Roman alphabet, which enabled Irish monks to preserve parts of the extensive Celtic oral literature. The druid tradition collapsed in the face of the spread of the new faith, and Irish scholars excelled in the study of Latin learning and Christian theology in the monasteries that shortly flourished. Missionaries from Ireland to England and Continental Europe spread news of the flowering of learning, and scholars from other nations came to Irish monasteries. The excellence and isolation of these monasteries helped preserve Latin learning during the Dark Ages. The arts of manuscript illumination, metalworking, and sculpture flourished and produced such treasures as the Book of Kells, ornate jewellery, and the many carved stone crosses that dot the island. Sites dating to this period include clochans, ringforts and promontory forts.

Early medieval era (c800 - 1000)

Viking raids in in 850. This golden age of Christian Irish culture was interrupted in the ninth century by the beginning of two-hundred years of intermittent warfare with waves of Viking raiders who plundered monasteries and towns. Thorgest (in Latin Turgesius) was the first viking to attempt an Irish kingdom. He sailed up the Shannon and the Bann, and forged a kingdom spanning Ulster, Connacht, and Meath which lasted from 831 to 845. In 845 he was killed by Malachy (''Maelsechlainn''), king of Meath. In 848 Malachy, now High king, defeated a Norse army at Sciath Nechtain. Arguing that his fight was allied with the Christian fight against pagans, he requested aid from the Frankish emperor Charles the Bald, but to no avail. In 852, the Vikings Ivar Beinlaus and Olaf the White landed in Dublin Bay and established a fortress, on which the city of Dublin (from the Irish Gaelic Án Dubh Linn meaning the "black pool") now stands. This moment is generally considered to be the founding of Dublin. The Vikings founded many other seacoast towns, and after several generations a group of mixed Irish and Norse ethnic background arose (the so-called Gall-Gaels, Gall then being the Irish word for "foreigners" - the Norse). This Norse influence is reflected in the Norse-derived names of many contemporary Irish kings (e.g. Magnus, Lochlann, and Sitric), and in the appearance of residents of these coastal cities to this day. In 914 an unstable peace between the Irish and the Norse devolved into a long and drawn-out war. The descendents of Ivar Beinlaus established a long dynasty based in Dublin, and from this base succeeded in dominating much of the isle. This rule was ultimately broken by the joint efforts of Malachy, king of Meath and the famous Brian Boru, who afterwards became High King of Ireland. Although the Irish were subsequently free from foreign invasion for 150 years, interdynastic warfare continued to drain their energies and resources.

Norman invasion and aftermath (1169-1536)

Early Ireland was divided politically into a shifting hierarchy of petty kingdoms and over-kingdoms. During the second half of the first millennium a national kingdom emerged as power concentrated into the hands of three regional dynasties contending against each other for control of the whole island. After losing the protection of Muirchertach MacLochlainn, a King of Ireland who was killed in 1166, a Leinster dynast named Diarmuid MacMorrough decided to invite a Norman knight to aid him against his local rivals. This invitation to Richard de Clare caused consternation to King Henry II of England who, fearing the establishment of a rival Norman state, invaded Ireland to establish his authority. In 1155 a Papal Bull had been issued by Adrian IV (the first English pope, in one of his earliest acts) giving Henry authority to invade Ireland as a means of curbing ecclesiastical corruption and abuses. Adrian's successor, Pope Alexander III ratified the grant of Irish lands to Henry in 1172. Meanwhile, Henry landed with a large fleet at Waterford in 1171, becoming the first English king to set foot on Irish soil. Both Waterford and Dublin were proclaimed Royal Cities. Henry awarded his Irish territories to his younger son John with the title Dominus Hiberniae ("Lord of Ireland"). When John unexpectedly succeded his brother as King John, the "Kingdom of Ireland" fell directly under the English Crown. Initially the Normans controlled much of Ireland, but over time the native Irish regained some territory and outside the Pale, an area of English authority around Dublin, the Norman lords adopted the Irish language and customs, becoming known as the Old English, and in a popular Irish historical saying, "more Irish than the Irish." Over the following centuries they sided with the indigenous Irish in political and military conflicts with England and generally stayed Catholic after the Reformation.

Ireland in 1014: a parch-work of rival kingdoms.

The extent of Norman control of Ireland in 1300.

Reformation and Protestant Ascendancy (1536-1801)

The Reformation, during which, in 1536, Henry VIII broke with Papal authority, fundamentally changed Ireland. While Henry VIII broke English Catholicism from Rome, his son Edward VI of England moved further, breaking with Papal doctrine completely. While the English, the Welsh and, later, the Scots accepted Protestantism, the Irish remained Catholic, a fact which determined their relationship with the British state for the next four hundred years. In the early seventeenth century, Scottish and English Protestants were sent as colonists to the north of Ireland and the counties of Laois and Offaly. A series of Penal Laws discriminated against all Christian faiths other than the established (Anglican) Church of Ireland. The principal victims of these laws were Roman Catholicism and (to a lesser extent) Presbyterianism. Ireland played a crucial role in the Glorious Revolution of 1689, when the Roman Catholic James II was deposed by Parliament and replaced William of Orange. James and William fought for the English, Scottish and Irish thrones in the Williamite war in Ireland, most famously at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Ireland had been upgraded from a lordship to a full kingdom under Henry VIII. From the period of the original lordship in the twelfth century onwards, Ireland had retained its own bicameral Parliament of Ireland, consisting of a House of Commons and a House of Lords, although it was restricted for most of its existence in terms both of membership (Catholics were barred) and powers, notably by Poynings Law of 1494, which said that no bill could be introduced into the Irish Parliament without the approval of the English Privy Council. By the late eighteenth century, most such restrictions were removed, in part through a campaign led by among others Henry Grattan. However in 1801 Irish self-government was abolished altogether.

Union with Great Britain (1801-1922)

In 1800 the Irish Parliament passed the Act of Union which, in 1801, merged the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Part of the agreement which led to the Act of Union stipulated that the Penal Laws were to be repealed and Catholic Emancipation granted. However King George III blocked emancipation, arguing that to grant it would break his coronation oath to defend the Anglican church. A campaign under lawyer and politician Daniel O'Connell led to the conceding of Catholic emancipation in 1829, thus allowing Catholics to sit in parliament. O'Connell then mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the repeal of the Act of Union and the restoration of Irish self-government.

Economic problems in the 19th century

Ireland underwent major highs and lows economically during the nineteenth century; from economic booms during the Napoleonic Wars and in the late nineteenth century (when it experienced a surge in economic growth unmatched until the Celtic Tiger boom of the 1990s), to severe economic downturns and a series of famines, the latest threatening in 1879. The worst of these was the Great Famine of 1846-1848, in which about 750 thousand people died and another million were forced to emigrate. Ireland's economic problems were in part the result of the small size of Irish landholdings. In particular, both the law and social tradition provided for subdivision of land, with all sons inheriting equal shares in a farm, meaning that farms became so small that only one crop, potatoes, could be grown in sufficient amounts to feed a family. Furthermore many estates, from whom the small farners rented, were poorly run by absentee landlords and in many cases heavily mortgaged. When potato blight hit the island in 1846, much of the rural population was left without food. Unfortunately at this time British politicians such as the Prime Minister Robert Peel were wedded to a strict laissez-faire economic policy, which argued against state intervention of any sort. While enormous sums were raised by private individuals and charities (American Indians sent supplies, while Queen Victoria personally gave the equivalent in modern money of €70,000) British government inaction (or at least inadequate action) led to a problem becoming a catastrophe; the class of cottiers or farm labourers was virtually wiped out. 200px The famine spawned the first mass wave of Irish emigration to the United States. There was also a large amount of emigration to England, Scotland, Canada, and Australia. This had the long term consequence of creating a large and influential Irish diaspora, particularly in the United States, whose members supported and financed the Irish independence movement. In 1858, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB, also known as the Fenians) was founded as a secret society dedicated to armed rebellion against the British. A sister organization was formed among Irish in the United States as the Fenian Brotherhood, which several times invaded the British Province of Canada. However support for Irish republicanism was minimal in Ireland in the period; as late as the 1860s, mass meetings of Irish nationalists ended with the singing of "God Save the Queen" while royal visits drew cheering crowds.

Home rule movement

Until the 1870s most Irish people elected as their Members of Parliament (MPs) Liberals and Conservative Party (UK) who belonged to the main British political parties. A significant minority also elected Unionists, who championed the cause of the maintenance of the Act of Union. In the 1870s a former Conservative barrister turned nationalist campaigner, Isaac Butt, established a new moderate nationalist movement: the Home Rule League. After his death, under William Shaw and in particular a radical young protestant landowner, Charles Stewart Parnell, turned the home rule movement, or the Irish Parliamentary Party as it became known, into a major political force, dominating Irish politics, to the exclusion of the previous Liberal, Conservative and Unionist parties that had existed. Parnell's movement proved to be a broad church, from conservative landowners to the Land League which was campaigning for fundamental reform of Irish landholding, where most farms were held on rental from large aristocratic estates. A radical fringe among Home Rulers associated with militant republicanism, particularly Irish-American republicanism. Parnell's movement also campaigned for the right of Ireland to govern herself as a region within the United Kingdom, in contrast to O'Connell who had wanted complete independence subject to a shared monarch and crown. Two home rule bills (in 1886 and 1893) were introduced by Liberal Prime Minister William E. Gladstone, but neither became law. The issue divided Ireland, for a significant minority (largely though by no means exclusively based in Ulster), opposed home rule, fearing that a Dublin parliament dominated by Catholics and nationalists would discriminate against them and would also impose tariffs on trade with Britain; while most of Ireland was primarily agricultural, the six counties of north-east Ulster were the location of heavy industry and would be affected by any tariff barriers imposed. In 1912 a further home rule bill passed the House of Commons but was defeated in the House of Lords, as had been the bill of 1893, but by this time the House of Lords had lost its power to veto legislation and could only delay the bill for two years. During these two years the threat of civil war hung over the island of Ireland, with the creation of the Unionist Ulster Volunteers and their nationalist counterparts the Irish Volunteers. These two groups armed themselves by importing rifles and ammunition and carried out drills openly. In 1914 the UK House of Commons finally adopted a home rule bill but the sudden outbreak of the First World War meant the bill never became law and effectively put the home rule question on hold for the duration of the war. The Unionist and nationalist volunteer forces joined the British army in their thousands and suffered crippling losses in the trenches. Until 1918 the Irish Parliamentary Party remained the dominant Irish party, though it was for part of that time divided by the O'Shea Divorce Case, when it was revealed that (as many already knew but pretended they hadn't), that Parnell, nicknamed the Uncrowned King of Ireland for his popularity, had been living with the wife of one of his fellow MPs for many years and was the father of a number of her children. When the scandal broke, religious non-conformists in Britain, who were the backbone of the pro-Irish Liberal Party, forced leader W. E. Gladstone to abandon support for the Irish cause as long as the adulterer Parnell remained in charge. The Party and the country split between pro- and anti-Parnellites, who fought each other in elections¹.

Militant separatism

In 1916, a small band of republican rebels staged an attempted rebellion, called the "Easter Rising", under Padraig Pearse and James Connolly. Initially their acts were widely condemned in nationalist Ireland, much of which had sons fighting in the British army at the urging of Irish Parliamentary leader John Redmond. Indeed major newspapers such as the Irish Independent and local authorities openly called for the execution of Pearse and the Rising's leadership. However the government's handling of the aftermath, and the execution of rebels and others in stages, ulimately led to widespread public sympathy for the rebels. The government and the Irish media wrongly blamed Sinn Féin, then a small monarchist political party with little popular support, for the rebellion, even though in reality it had not been involved. Nonetheless Rising survivors, notably Eamon de Valera, returning from imprisonment in Britain joined the party in great numbers, radicalised its programme and took control of its leadership². Up until 1917, Sinn Féin, under its founder Arthur Griffith had campaigned for a form of repeal championed first by O'Connell, namely that Ireland would become independent as a dual monarchy with Britain, under a shared king. Such a system operated under Austria-Hungary, where the same monarch, King Charles IV reigned separately in both Austria and Hungary. Indeed Griffith in his book, The Resurrection of Hungary, modelled his ideas on the manner in which Hungary had forced Austria to create a dual monarchy linking both states. Faced with an impending split between its monarchists and republicans, a compromise was brokered at the 1917 Ard Fheis (party conference) whereby the party would campaign to create a republic, then let the people decide if they wanted a monarchy or republic, subject to the proviso that if they wanted a king, they could not choose someone from Britain's Royal Family (Pearse during the Rising had suggested having Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany's youngest son, Prince Joachim as King of Ireland). Throughout 1917 and 1918, Sinn Féin and the Irish Parliamentary Party fought a bitter and rather inconclusive electoral battle; each won some by-elections and lost others. The scales were finally tipped Sinn Féin's way when the government, which ironically had received vast number of soldiers from Ireland, tried to impose conscription on the island. An infuriated public turned against Britain over the Conscription Crisis. Even the Irish Parliamentary Party was forced to withdraw its MPs from the British Parliament in Westminster. In the December 1918 general election, Sinn Féin won the vast majority of seats, many of which were uncontested. Sinn Féin's new MPs refused to travel to Westminster and sit in the British House of Commons. Instead they assembled as TDs in the Mansion House in Dublin and established Dáil Éireann (a revolutionary Irish parliament). They proclaimed an Irish Republic and attempted to establish a system of government. For several years, from 1919 to 1921, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), notionally the army of the Irish Republic, engaged in guerrilla warfare against the British army and a paramilitary unit known as the Black and Tans. Both sides engaged in brutal acts; the Black and Tans deliberately burned entire towns and tortured civilians. The IRA carried out ethnic cleansing of Protestant communities in the Munster region, as well as burning historic homes. This clash, for which it appears one third sided with the IRA, one quarter with the British while the vast majority kept their heads down and avoided involvement, came to be known as the Irish War of Independence or the Anglo-Irish War. The Fourth Home Rule Act, known as the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, attempted to partition Ireland into two semi-autonomous states: Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, with what was hoped to an embryonic all-Ireland parliament, a Council of Ireland, joining them. Northern Ireland did come into being. The institutions of Southern Ireland, however, were boycotted by nationalists and so never became fully functional. Eventually a cease-fire was called and negotiations between delegations of the Irish and British sides produced the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Under the treaty Southern Ireland was to be given a form of dominion status far in excess of what Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party had sought, modelled on the Dominion of Canada. Northern Ireland was given the right to opt out of the new state, which was to be called the Irish Free State and a Boundary Commission was to be established to work out the final details of the border. Northern Ireland comprised the six traditional counties of north-east Ulster, while the remaining twenty-six formed the Free State.

Population (1801-1921)

bgcolor="#F0EBAA" style="text-align:center"; >align="left" | 1801

-	5.2
1811	6.0
1821	6.8
1831	7.8
1841	8.2
1851	6.9
1861	5.8
1871	5.4
1881	5.2
1891	4.7
1901	4.5
1911	4.4
1921	4.4

(Figures are from Tacitus.nu)

History since partition

Independent southern Ireland

Main article: History of the Irish state The Anglo-Irish Treaty was narrowly ratified by the Dáil in December 1921 but was rejected a large minority, resulting in the Irish Civil War which lasted until 1923. In 1922, in the middle of this war, the Irish Free State came into being. For its first years the new state was governed by the victors of the Civil War. However in the 1930s Fianna Fáil, the party of the opponents of the treaty, were elected into government. The party introduced a new constitution in 1937 which renamed the state to simply "Ireland". The state was neutral during World War II but offered some assistance to the Allies. In 1949 the state was declared to be a republic; since that time it has been commonly referred to as the "Republic of Ireland". The state was plagued by poverty and emmigration until the 1990s. That decade saw the begining of unprecedented economic success, in a phenomenon known as the "Celtic Tiger".

Northern Ireland

Main article: History of Northern Ireland From its creation in 1921 until 1972 Northern Ireland enjoyed limited self-government within the United Kingdom, with its own parliament and prime minister. However the Protestant and Catholic ommunities in Northern Ireland each voted almost entirely along sectarian lines, meaning that the government of Northern Ireland was dominated by the Unionist majority which did not permit Catholics to participate in the government. Nationalist grievances at Unionist discrimination within the state eventually led to large civil rights protests in 1960s. It was during this period of civil unrest that the Provisional IRA, an extra-legal paramilitary group favouring the creation of a united Ireland, began its campaign of bombings and shootings. Other groups on both the Unionist and nationalist side also began to participate in the violence and the period known as the "Troubles" began. Owing to the civil unrest the British government suspended home rule in 1972 and imposed direct rule. In 1998, following a Provisional IRA cease-fire, the Good Friday Agreement was concluded and attempts began to be made to restore self-government to Northern Ireland on the basis of powersharing between the two communities. Violence has greatly decreased since the signing of the accord.

Footnotes

#Ireland's current top selling Irish Independent was launched as the "''Daily Independent''" during this split as an anti-Parnell newspaper. #Contrary to myth de Valera did not avoid being executed for his part in the Easter Rising because he was American. Rather he survived because, firstly, he was held in a different prison from the other leaders and so could not be executed immediately, and secondly because of his American citizenship, which caused a technical delay. By the time a decision could be taken to execute him, all executions had ceased.

External link

Source of maps
Ireland Under Coercion - "''The diary of an American''", by William Henry Hurlbert, published 1888, from Project Gutenberg