Prehistory. Originally connected to mainland Europe, and at times completely glaciated, climate change has had a significant role. The end of the last Ice Age saw sea levels rise and the gradual separation of Britain and Ireland from the European mainland, leaving just a few connections between the two.
The first plant life started to appear at around 12,000 BC and the first reindeer arrived a millennium later. A subsequent period of glaciation resulted in their extinction. Warming occurred again around 9000 BC and forestation started and various animals crossed the remaining land bridges. The first human settlements date from 8000-7000 BC – Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who settled around coastal areas. About 1500 megalithic tombs dating from about 4000 BC of which Newgrange is the most remarkable. Court tombs (the open area next to the entrance) appeared around 3000 BC with Creevykeel in County Sligo the best example. Dolmens or upright stones were built from 2500-2000.
It was not until the Neolithic period, around 3500 BC that farmers appeared. They cleared the great oak/birch forests that covered the island for their crops and animals. Bronze-cast jewelry has been dated to about 2000 BC.
Iron Age. Ireland is considered a Celtic country as Indo-Europeans from eastern Europe arrived around 1000 BC. Trading contributed to this Celtic influence. Iron arrived in about 700 BC and the inhabitants adopted the Celtic ritual-based culture and language. Stone-built ringforts were built in response to the need for protection with Celtic systems of land ownership and intertribal warfare was common. Individual kingdoms were based in Connacht, Leinster, Meath, Musster, and Ulster paying homage to a high king based at Tara, but it wasn’t until Brian Boru that the whole island was under the control of one king.
Early Christianity. Missionaries began to arrive in the 4th century and Ireland embraced Christianity gradually with Celtic pagan beliefs never completely being abandoned. Monastic settlements began around 600 AD and monasteries as major seats of learning started in Clonmacnois in County Offaly and Lismore in County Waterford – the illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Durrow and Book of Kells were written. The Irish sent forth their own missionaries, including St Columba who founded various monasteries in mainland Europe before his death in 615.
The Vikings and the Normans. The Vikings conducted sporadic coastal raids towards the end of the 8th century, usually on monasteries, and the defensive round tower dates from this period. A coordinated assault began in 915 and fortified settlements were built in Dublin, Cork, and Waterford. The Norsemen were vanquished at the Battle of Clontarf by the Ard Ri, Brian Boru.
The Normans finally conquered Britain in 1066, but it took a century before a successful Anglo-Norman incursion was made into Ireland. Henry II sent FitzGilbert de Clare (Strongbow) but it was Henry himself who claimed sovereignty over Ireland and established a court in Dublin.
Norman rule was largely restricted to former Viking townships and feudalism foundered against the resistance of Irish chieftains who limited them to a small area around Dublin – the English Pale from the word for an enclosure. Those living ‘beyond the pale’ were demeaningly considered barbaric. The Norman settlers became integrated into society, now described as Gaelic, founded on the domains of Irish chieftains. Gaelic culture flourished with bards (court musicians) playing a major role in storytelling and music-making. Some Anglo-Norman dynasties – the de Burgo family in Ulster and Connacht and the Fitzgeralds of Kildare were able to broaden their power bases.
Tudor and Stuart Incursions. English interlopers attempted to establish themselves in Ireland but it was not until Henry VIII broke with Rome that a concerted effort was made to demolish the hegemony of the Irish overlords began. Irish monasteries were dissolved and their wealth was up for grabs to any supporter of the Tudor regime. An aborted insurrection in 1534 offered Henry the excuse to send troops to Ireland to quash the revolt and establish himself as both sovereign ruler and ecclesiastical head of his domain.
His daughter, Elizabeth I continued the process with more stringent and far-reaching tactics geared toward undermining Gaelic authority and its Catholicism while simultaneously reinforcing Ireland as an English colony. She unsuccessfully attempted to plant colonists from Scotland around Belfast Lough during the 1570s.
Irish offensive reaction – the most crucial revolt was led by Hugh O’Neill of Northern Ireland – but was crucially defeated at Kinsale in 1601 and Mellifont in County Louth in 1603. A treaty granted all his land to the English which was leased back to them. This opened the door for a flood of “planters”, mainly ex-soldiers from England the Scottish lowlands. Irish chiefs left their country en masse in 1607 – the Flight of the Earls – for Flanders and Italy. The old Gaelic kingdoms thus ended and James I urged lowland Scots to take over the Earl’s impounded lands. This established a significant division between the Protestant planters and the evicted Irish Catholics, the ramifications of which endure to this day.
The 1641 Rebellion and Oliver Cromwell. The pro-Catholic religious policies of James I’s successor, Charles I, resulted in the Scottish Rebellion of 1640. Irish Catholics suppressed the uprising in return for concessions on land ownership and religious tolerance. Their Northern Ireland campaign led by Phelium O’Neill was initially successful, Charles and the Scots both sent armies to protect the Ulster Protestants, but 4000 died in the fighting and 8000 died in the harsh winter.
The Catholic Confederation coordinated the attacks until Oliver Cromwell arrived in 1649 with a merciless and bitterly fought crusade targeting Royalist garrisons in Drogheda, Cork and Kinsale slaughtering ¼ of the Catholic population and sending many others into slavery in the Caribbean. All Ireland was under his control by 1652. The Act of Settlement sequestered Catholic land and many Catholics died on their way to Connemara and the boglands of Mayo. Needless to say, Cromwell remains reviled across Ireland.
The Williamite War and the Penal Laws. After the monarchy was restored in 1660 with Charles II, but it was not until the Catholic James II in 1683 that Irish hopes were revitalized. The English parliament offered the throne to William of Orange, James fled to Ireland and started the “glorious revolution but floundered at Derry – after being victorious at the 1690 Battle of the Boyne – and James was finally defeated at Limerick. William consolidated control over Ireland by diminishing the rights of the native Catholic population in terms of land ownership, marriage, religion, and enfranchisement with the penal laws between 1695 and 1728. Catholics were barred from purchasing land and property was split equally between all his sons incrementally diminishing familial wealth by each generation. Any son who converted to Protestantism was entitled to his brother’s inheritance. The Catholic priests had to pay £50 to register and were not allowed to say Mass, whereas conversion to the Church of Ireland attracted a £20 stipend levied on their former congregations. Targeting cultural transmission, Catholics were barred from teaching but the Irish language survived through surreptitious ‘hedge schools in the countryside.
Revolution and Rebellion. Catalyzed by the American War of Independence when British troops were diverted across the Atlantic. Laws establishing the primacy of the Anglican church also affected Presbyterian Northern Ireland planters many of whom had emigrated to the Americas. Trade levies started demands for proper representation at Westminster, Irish were recruited to defend Ireland against the threat of a French invasion. The French Revolution of 1789 and the publication of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man in 1792 saw the Society of United Irishmen established by Belfast Protestants who promulgated Nationalist views. A French army was sent to invade Ireland 1n 1797 but bad weather and indecision prevented success.
The 1798 Rebellion met brutal English resistance supported by the Protestant Orange Order in the north – a French army was defeated at Ballinamuck and a Gaelic force was put down by the British navy at Donegal. The 1801 Act of Union dissolved Dublin’s parliament ensuring legislative control over Ireland, now part of the United Kingdom.
Catholic Emancipation. Led by the lawyer Daniel O’Connell, the Catholic Emancipation Act franchised only a tiny number of middle-class voters but more significantly, made Catholics eligible for public offices. Elected as Dublin’s mayor in 1841, he held a series of ‘monster meetings’ attended by as many as 100,000 people but these were outlawed by the British parliament.
The Great Famine (1845-1851). A potato blight struck at the core of Irish peasantry excessively dependent on potato yields resulted in 1.5 million deaths, 20% of the population. Despite this, Britain continued to export other agricultural products from Ireland. Mass evictions of tenants unable to pay taxes caused workhouses to be crammed to overcapacity and hundreds of thousands faced starvation in the worst year of the famine, Black ’47. Dublin, Belfast, and Northern Ireland were relatively unscathed and hundreds of thousands migrated to Britain or risked death on the infamous ‘coffin ships’ to North America or Australia – many were not fit to sail and floundered en route. This set a pattern of emigration as the only means to escape poverty. Sixty years after the famine, the population had shrunk to half the 1841 level of 8.1 million. 10% of British have an Irish grandparent and Irish Americans played a major role in supporting independence. More than 20 US presidents and over 40 million Americans have Irish roots. Other countries with significant Irish descent include Australia, Canada, South Africa, Mexico, and Argentina.
Nationalist action was fuelled by British policy during the Famine years. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (Fenians funded in part from the US) carried out an abortive uprising in 1867 and incurred a massive backlash. Agrarian groups focused on absentee English landlords and those who continued to evict tenants unable to pay their rent – one of the most notorious was at Derryveagh in Donegal.
The Home Rule Movement. Over the remaining decades of the 19th century, struggles over land and tenants’ rights retained pivotal importance. Securing independence via parliamentary democracy was pursued by the Land League led by Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-91). His ideals included an Irish Parliament, obstructive tactics in the House of Commons, and using social ex-communication against recalcitrant landlords. One of his victims was Captain Charles Boycott in 1880.
The leaders were put on trial but they rejected a new Land Act based on fair rent, fixed tenure, and freedom of sale and embarked on a campaign of violence against landowners. The British viceroy Lord Frederick Cavendish and his Under Secretary T H Burke were assassinated by a Fenian group calling itself “The Invincibles” and attitudes towards the Irish hardened. Home Rule bills failed in 1886 and 1891.
From the late 19th century Nationalist ideas became intertwined with cultural identity promoted by the 1884 Gaelic Athletic Association (preserve and nurture Irish sports such a Gaelic football and hurling) and the 1891 Gaelic League (preserve the Irish language and native culture) with de-Anglicization of Ireland the goal.
Support for withdrawal of Irish MPs from Westminster and an independent Irish Parliament led to the formation of the political party Sinn Féin 1m 1905. The rise of the trade union movement also spurred on reform. “The land of Ireland for the people of Ireland”.
Resistance. The general election of 1910 resulted in the slimmest of majorities for Asquith’s Liberal Party leaving it utterly reliant on the Irish Nationalist Party to enact legislation and a new Home Rule Bill was passed by the Commons in 1912. This aroused a bitterly intransigent response from Northern Protestants who united under Sir Edward Carson, a Tory MP, and leader of the Irish Unionists. A campaign was initiated to resist Home Rule and any threat to impose Catholicism on Protestant Ulster. Their own militia, the Ulster Volunteers were formed armed with munitions from Germany.
The Nationalists and British responded vigorously with their own armed force, the Irish Volunteers. Armed weapons were banned in Ireland. Northern Ireland was excluded from the introduction of the Home Rule. Then WW I broke out in 1914.
Revolt. Even though 230,000 Irishmen enlisted in the British army, others saw it as an opportunity – especially the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Preparations were made for a rising to integrate if Germany entered Ireland or if the British tried to implement conscription. The IRB successfully secured German support for the rising. The April 1916 Easter Rising was a drastically limited affair. After 5 days of fighting, the leaders surrendered – 1350 people were killed or wounded and numerous buildings in Dublin were destroyed. Public anger turned to the outcry when all of the Rising’s leaders and numerous other insurgents were executed by the British at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin after a secret court-martial. Eamon de Valera, a US citizen was shot while tied to a chair and Sir Roger Casement was hanged in London in August.
The War for Independence. Far from losing support, the rebel’s ideas were embraced by the next wave of leaders. The Volunteers grew in strength and Sinn Féin achieved crushing success in the 1918 general election. But none took their seats instead convening in the “Ireland Parliament” and issuing a declaration of independence. The Volunteers and Citizen Army were reorganized under the new name of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The British poured troops into Ireland and war effectively began in September 1919. Guerrilla warfare broke out across most of Ireland that the Royal Irish Constabulary proved powerless to restrain.
Irish sentiment was much heightened when British soldiers The Black and Tans arrived whose reprisals were merciless. It was a virtual stalemate that dragged on until a truce was called in July 1921.
Meanwhile, in 1920, Westminster passed the Government of Ireland Act, establishing separate new parliaments for the six counties of “Northern Ireland” and the residual 26 counties of “Southern Ireland” (who demanded independence as a 32-county state.
The Irish Civil War. With the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921, finally, the South established a provisional government as the Irish Free State at the cost of partition but retaining allegiance to the crown through membership in the Commonwealth. It was rejected as a diminution of Republicanism and by July 1922, pro-and anti-Treaty forces had become embroiled in a bitter civil war. Though most of the population of the 26 counties supported the “Free Staters”, opinion was seriously divided due to the fighting and reprisals including the execution of Republican Erskine Childers arrested for possessing a revolver. Eventually, the much weaker Republican forces were restricted to the southwest and west and were forced to surrender in May 1923.
The Free State. The new government under William T Cosgrave formed the civil service and police force. Republicans boycotted the parliament until 1926 when the Fianna Fáil political party was formed, drawing members from the anti-Treaty element within Sinn Féin. Cosgrave held power until 1932 (stabilizing electric supply in Ireland) but lost the election of Fianna Fáil under de Valera who remained in power for the next 16 years. The right-wing Fine Gael party was formed and became the main opposition.
Northern Ireland. As a self-governing body since 1921, the Ulster Unionist Party was in power until 1972. But they included only 6 counties rather than the nine in Ulster province. The largely Catholic counties of Donegal and Cavan A significant Catholic minority was concentrated in the agricultural land west of the River Bann, plus the city of Derry, while the economically thriving linen and shipbuilding industries east of the river remained almost entirely in Protestant hands.
The Unionists reinforced their domination by establishing the largely Protestant police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and the military B Specials and favoring the Protestant population with economic support, housing allocations, and gerrymandering (for example, Derry’s electoral boundaries were changed to ensure a Protestant council remained in power for decades despite the city’s ⅔ Catholic majority.
WW II. As part of the UK, Northern Ireland was heavily involved in the war, especially Belfast whose shipyards were a major target for German bombing. Éire was neutral throughout but remained utterly dependent on imports from the UK and suffered drastically when British ships carrying coal and cattle feed were attacked by U-boats. 50,000 Irishmen from south of the border volunteered to fight for the British Army, roughly the same number as those from the north.
The Postwar Republic. The 1948 election was won by Fine Gael that removed any surviving legislative links with Britain by establishing Éire as the Republic of Ireland in 1949. The economic situation remained dire and the early 1950s saw rural depopulation and migration both to Dublin and abroad. Finally, in 1959, policies were enacted to boost Ireland’s stagnant economy – away from protectionism and towards free trade – drawing foreign investment and membership in the European Economic Community in January 1973. The recession in the 1980s still led to a new wave of emigration. Its remaining population became increasingly conservative, rejecting referenda to allow abortion and divorce in 1983 and 1986 respectively.
The Troubles and the Peace Process. Though Northern Ireland benefitted hugely from the social policies of Britain (health and social care), its Catholic population continued to suffer levels of social deprivation far worse than anywhere else in the UK. In 1967 the Civil Rights Movement demanded equal rights using protest marches. One of these through Derry in 1968 saw demonstrators attacked by a police baton charge – TV pictures of West Belfast MP Gerry Fitt with blood streaming down his face were transmitted around the world provoking international condemnation of the RUC’s tactics. Following the Apprentice Boy’s August parade, severe rioting led to the barricading of the Bogside area of Derry and the arrival of British troops where Protestant attacks on West Belfast’s Catholics had taken place. But they were also repressive and the IRA took up the gauntlet as defenders of the Catholic turf. Internal disputes led to the formation of the Provisional IRA who began an armed campaign against the army, RUC, and Loyalists. The British introduced internment without trial, indiscriminately rounding up any Catholic thought to be linked to the violence. On January 30, 1972, British paratroopers shot and killed 13 unarmed civil rights demonstrators in Derry – Bloody Sunday. Three days later the British Embassy in Dublin was burnt down and Westminster reinstated direct rule over Northern Ireland. On Bloody Friday, July 21 1972, the IRA exploded 20 car bombs in Belfast’s city center, killing 9 and injuring 130.
The 1970s saw increasing violence. The first attempt at power-sharing was disrupted by the Reverend Ian Paisley and the strike by the Ulster Workers Council in May 1974 paralyzed much of Northern Ireland. The Loyalist UDA (Ulster Defense Association) exploded 3 car bombs in Central Dublin killing 33. Direct rule was reinstituted until 1999.
Meanwhile, the IRA transferred its bombing campaign to mainland Britain to try to force the reunification of Ireland, and in 1974 set of massive explosions in pubs in Birmingham, Woolwich, and Guildford, killing 28. A brief ceasefire but failure to secure a lasting agreement led to the resumption of the campaign. The Prevention of Terrorism Act allowed extended detention without charge. Two major trials found guilty the Guildford and Birmingham bombers guilty but unreliable evidence saw the release of the Guildford Four in 1989 and the Birmingham Six in 1991.
The Maze Hunger Strikes. IRA prisoners in Long Kesh Prison (The Maze) protested against the abolition of the special category status they had been granted to be treated as political prisoners. They refused to wear prison clothes and were naked using only blankets, the ‘dirty protest’ where they smeared their feces over their cell walls and then hunger strikes when Bobby Sands was elected MP when in prison and 10 deaths resulted including Sands. Britain remained intransigent despite world condemnation. In 1984, the IRA bombed the Tory Party conference in Brighton in an attempt to kill Margaret Thatcher.
All things changed when the IRA decided to use the democratic process along with armed campaign as stated by Danny Morrison “Will anyone here object if, with the ballot box in one hand and the Armalite in the other, we take power in Ireland?” Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness from Sinn Féin became pivotal figures in the peace process.
The IRA kept up its bombing campaign during the 1990s including a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street in 1991. Loyalist and Catholic deaths matched each other. After another mortar attack on Heathrow Airport, lobbying by Dublin and US Vice President Al Gore resulted in a ceasefire and intense negotiations with John Hume, Gerry Adams, and Bill Clinton playing the key roles. The IRA continued bombing. The most significant broker became Tony Blair elected in 1997 who finally negotiated the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998. A key principle was that any subsequent changes in the government of Northern Ireland relied on both Catholic and Protestant consent.
An impasse occurred immediately when Ian Paisley objected to the Orange Order to march from a Presbyterian church in Drumcree prior to celebrations of the Battle of the Boyne through Catholic areas of Drumcree. The Real IRA exploded a car bomb in the center of Omagh in August 1998 killing 29 and injuring hundreds more. This resulted in a ceasefire 2 weeks later. Proposals to reorganize and remove ‘Royal’ and ‘Ulster’ from the RUC brought difficulties but the Police Service of Northern Ireland came into existence in 2001 but has difficulties recruiting equally from both religions. The two key issues were the release of political prisoners and decommissioning of weaponry (this latter dragged on for 7 years).
The 2005 elections saw a sea change in public opinion when the SDLP and UUP did very badly at the polls in Northern Ireland. Subsequent elections confirmed Sinn Fein and the DUP as the two leading parties.
The Republic. The 1990s and 2000s saw rapid economic development under 14 years of Fianna Fáil governments despite many corruption scandals.
The 2008-09 international monetary crisis saw national insolvency almost occur and severe austerity measures. The 2009 Murphy Report exposed sexual abuse by priests in Dublin, cover-ups, and widespread failure to prosecute the perpetrators. The EU and IMF gave an €85 billion bailout to save the banks and unemployment reached over 15% in 2012. The debt was eventually repaid. In 2014, President Michael D Higgins made the first official visit by an Irish head of state to Britain.