Unit two - Irish History (from the Celts to the contemporary Irelands) PDF

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The History of Ireland: the Celts, the land of Saints and Scholars, the Vikings, Anglo-Norman Ireland, Tudor Ireland, Nine Years War, the Ulster plantations, rebellion, English Civil War and the Cromwellian invasion, the Restoration, the Williamite War, Penal Laws and Protestant ascendancy, Wolfe To...

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Unit two – Irish History

1. The Celts Ireland was settled by waves of Celtic people in the pre-Christian era. The Celts brought their language (Gaelic or Irish), religion (Druidism), and political structure (kinships). They also divided the land into five kingdoms: Ulster, Leinster, Munster, Connacht, and Meath. The Celts had a sophisticated stratified society, a flourishing oral culture and a religion ruled by highly influential priests, Druids, but they had no political unity or stability. Some kings sought recognition as High King of Ireland, but their authority was often short lived and reduced. Unlike England, Ireland was never Romanised because the Romans were focused on the conquest of Britain. However, Romans and Celts traded and made contact.

2. The Land of Saints and Scholars’ Ireland converted to Christianity thanks to Saint Patrick’s preaching (433-492) and from the second half of the sixth century monasteries flourished. They became important places of learning and worship and an enormous amount of work was produced: writings on Irish history and mythology, songs, and poetry, illuminated manuscripts. Although there was no political unity, the island was unified by its Gaelic culture. The Irish shared the same religion (Catholicism), the same language (different dialects of Irish), folklore, social structure, and traditional laws (Brehon laws). Such common Celtic identity and way of life survived until the Norman invasion—and in some areas of Ireland even until the 17th century.

3. The Vikings Attracted by the riches of Irish monasteries, the Vikings started looting Ireland in 795 and by the second half of the 9th century they settled along the coast and founded several cities, such as Dublin (841). The Irish fought against the Vikings repeatedly. However, the invaders also intermingled with the Irish population.

4. Anglo-Norman Ireland Norman knights were invited to Ireland to fight for a deposed Irish king in 1169, which opened the door to an English invasion. Their invasion, however, was not complete. English kings became “lords of Ireland”, but their rule was restricted to the “Pale”—some counties around Dublin, and a few outposts—and Gaelic Ireland remained intact for centuries across much of the island. Moreover, many settlers adopted Irish ways of life and, for that reason, the English passed the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366, which forbade the adoption of Gaelic customs.

5. Tudor Ireland

In the 1530s, after an Irish rebellion, Henry VIII took military action, reformed the Irish government with Englishmen, and introduced his religious reformation. In 1541, the Irish Parliament transformed Ireland into a kingdom under the rule of the English crown. The Tudors increased the use of force to impose their rule as well as the number of plantations, that is, sections of Irish land that were given to English loyal subjects to settle. These intended to extend English rule and to create examples of ‘civility’ for the Irish. Tudor politics divided Ireland into three social groups: the Gaelic Irish, the Old English— the descendants of the first English invaders, many of whom had remained Catholic— and the New English, the most recent Protestant settlers who came to occupy Irish administration and lands.

6. Nine Years War In 1594 an alliance of Ulster chieftains (caciques) rebelled against English rule . The rebellion soon extended throughout Ireland and Elizabeth I sent the largest English force ever sent to Ireland. The Spanish also sent some forces in support of the Irish but were unsuccessful. The English then hunted down their enemies in Ulster with the intention of inducing a famine and weaken O’Neill’s powerhouse. The Act of Oblivion in 1603 , however, pardoned many of those involved. Yet, in 1607 several Irish noblemen left Ireland never to return, an event that became known as the Flight of the Earls.

7. The Ulster Plantations The Flight of the Earls left large tracts of land in Ulster open to British plantations and during James I’s reign, most of these lands were assigned to Scottish and English settlers. The Ulster plantation changed Irish society: Ulster, which had traditionally been a Gaelic stronghold, was now populated by a significant number of Protestants.

8. Rebellion, Civil War Cromwellian invasion

and

In 1641 some Old English and Gaelic Irish hatched a limited rebellion in order to pressure the king and obtain a better position, but the uprising gave way to a revolt carried out by dispossessed Irish in Ulster. Protestants were attacked, robbed, and killed. The Irish rebellion was conducted simultaneously with the English Civil War and as the conflict evolved, the Irish rebels joined the royalists —supporters of the king— against parliamentarian forces. In 1649, soon after Charles I was executed, Oliver Cromwell’s army arrived in Dublin and embarked on a ruthless campaign that killed thousands of civilians. After the war, many Irish were executed or transported to the Caribbean to work as indentured servants. The Act of settlement of 1652 forbade, and persecuted Catholicism and many Catholics were stripped of their lands and relocated in Connacht, where the land was of poorer quality.

9. The Restoration

Irish Catholics expected Charles II to restore their lands, but only a handful of Catholics had land returned to them. The reign of James II offered a second chance. He transferred positions of power in Ireland to Catholics.

10. The Williamite War When James II was deposed in the Glorious Revolution, Irish Catholics welcomed him in Ireland. Consequently, in 1690 William of Orange landed in Ireland with an army. The two kings faced each other in the battle of Boyne. William’s army won and James II fled to France. The Treaty of Limerick officially brought the war to an end in 1691. The Irish troops and leaders left Ireland to join other armies in Europe and became known as the ‘wild geese’.

11. Penal Laws and Protestant Ascendancy In the first decades of the 18th century, the all-Protestant Irish Parliament passed a series of regulations against Catholics—they also affected Dissenters, but to a lesser degree— which became known as “penal laws”. Catholics were forbidden to own weapons, horses worth more than 5 pounds, purchase land, vote, have their own schools or work in government offices. These laws helped to create a state run by an Anglican elite, “the Protestant Ascendancy”. Irish land was owned by Protestant absentee landlords—most lived in England—whereas Catholics, who made up most of the population, were excluded from power. Catholic emancipation—the readmission of Catholics to political and economic rights—would become an important political issue in the following decades.

12. Wolfe Tone Rebellion The Protestant elite, however, became increasingly conscious of their Irish identity and wanted to administer and legislate their own country independently. In 1791 the Society of the United Irishmen was founded, led by Wolfe Tone and other Protestants. Their main aim was to obtain political independence for Ireland. Additionally, many, including Tone, wanted to see Catholic emancipation. They contacted France in 1796 for help, which led to a cruel repression by the British. The United Irishmen finally rebelled in 1798 but were defeated.

13. Union with Britain The British answer to the rebellion was the Act of union of Ireland and Britain in 1801. It abolished the Irish Parliament and integrated Ireland in the United Kingdom. From then on, Irish issues were discussed in Westminster and some Irish started to take active part in the British Empire. However, Catholics remained barred from becoming MPs.

14. Catholic Emancipation In the 1823, Daniel O’Connell, a wealthy Catholic, established the Catholic Association to campaign for Catholic emancipation. At the time, only the richest Catholics were allowed to vote, but they could not have Catholic MPs. The Association led peaceful rallies and elected Protestants who were sympathetic to their cause. Finally, in 1829 the necessary laws were passed, and Catholics could become MPs.

15. The Great Famine In the 1840s, a series of fungal diseases on potatoes caused the death of about a million Irish and mass emigration. Such tragic episode became known as the Great Famine. It affected the poorest areas the most, where agricultural development was lowest and large families had to make a living off the little land they owned. The poorest farmers died from starvation and related diseases. Others were paid in food or became dependent on charity and workhouses. Many others were evicted from their land when they could not pay the rates and felt forced to emigrate to America, Australia, and Britain. The Irish had emigrated to those lands in the past — or been deported to, as it was often the case in Australia—, but the famine increased enormously the number of Irish emigrants. Many of them, despite several difficulties, managed to climb the social ladder and became influential in their new homeland, while remaining attached to their Irish cultural heritage.

16. National Land League A new organisation, the Irish National Land League, started to fight in the 1870s for the rights of small tenant farmers. It also wanted to take away the land from the ownership of absentee landlords and give it to Irish small farmers. The league attacked and ostracised landlords who treated their tenants badly— the term ‘boycott’ was coined after one of such landlords, Captain Charles Boycott. Their strategies were successful, and the Land Act of 1870 gave Irish tenants several rights and began a process whereby the old landlords were steadily replaced by Irish owners.

17. Campaign for Home Rule The Irish also wanted their own parliament to rule over Irish affairs within the United Kingdom (Home Rule). One of the most important voices in the Home Rule party was Charles Stewart Parnell, a rich Protestant MP in Westminster, who by the 1880s had gained support across Ireland. However, Parnell career ended because of an affair he had with a married woman. Such scandal was so controversial that it split the Home Rule party and stopped political discussion for years.

18. The Irish Cultural Revival In the second half of the 19th century, many Irish thinkers and artists realised that Irish culture was becoming anglicised. A series of movements emerged aimed at promoting everything Irish: language, folklore, literature, theatre, painting, and sports. Many of these artists, even though they were Anglo-Irish and Protestant, often turned to Irish folklore and to the west of Ireland for inspiration, which had not been modernised and had the largest Irish-speaking population.

19. Nationalists vs Unionists Home Rule Bill was finally passed in 1914. It gave Ireland its own Parliament, but it did not make it an independent Republic. Ireland, however, was on the verge of a civil war. There were nationalist groups such as Sinn Fein — “ourselves alone”— who argued for complete and total independence. On the opposite side, the unionists, most of whom were Protestants from Ulster, who did not want to have Home Rule. They believed that Ireland was an integral part of Britain and had started to get organised. One month before Home Rule was enacted, however, World War I started, and the Home Rule Bill was suspended.

20. Easter Rising While Britain was at war, the nationalists planned a rebellion. On Easter Sunday 1916, some Irish nationalists read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic outside the General Post Office. The British crushed the rebellion: many nationalists were arrested—whether guilty or not—and 14 were executed. Although the rising was not immediately successful, it gave martyrs to the cause and turned the public towards revolution.

21. War of Independence The war was mainly fought in the southern part of Ireland between the British and the Irish republicans. The Irish would use guerrilla strategies and both sides displayed terrible cruelty. The British introduced ex-service men known as “Black and Tans” who were particularly brutal, but the IRA also terrorised the Protestant population. The British sought to end the conflict by splitting Ireland. The six north-eastern counties of Ireland, those with a majority of Protestants, would remain part of the British Empire and the other twenty-six counties would become the Irish Free State, a self-ruling country within the Commonwealth. In June 1921, the Irish and the British agreed to a truce and in December 1921 the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed.

21. Civil war The new Irish Free State was divided into two factions: pro and anti-Treaty. The anti-Treaty side wanted to continue fighting until all of Ireland was independent and the pro-Treaty side believed it was better to stop. This division caused a civil war state between 1922 and 1923. The pro-Treaty forces won, but the cost of the war was terrible, and the issue of partition remained contentious for years.

22. From the Irish Free State to the Republic of Ireland The Anglo-Irish treaty had created two different states in Ireland. In the South, the Irish Free State controlled its own affairs from their Parliament (Dáil) in Dublin but remained a member of the Commonwealth —its members had to swear allegiance to the British crown. In time, they abolished the oath and in 1937 wrote a new constitution. It renamed the state as a republic, Eire, to be governed by a President. It also made Irish the official language of state, along with English, and recognised the special place of Catholicism in the state.

23. The Troubles Meanwhile, Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom and ran her domestic affairs through a parliament in Belfast. From the start, Northern Ireland was marked by sectarian tension and Catholic discrimination. The government created a largely protestant police force and ensured a unionist hegemony by discriminating Catholics in the electoral system (Gerrymandering). In 1968, a Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formed to demand equal rights for Catholics. To promote their cause, they organised a series of marches that were met with counterdemonstrations from unionist groups. These encounters turned violent and led to thirty years of violence in Northern Ireland between British forces and both republican and loyalist paramilitaries, a conflict that became known as “the Troubles”. The main paramilitary republican organisation, IRA, was initially concerned with the defence of the Catholic community, but as time went by, they also sought to destabilise British rule— they believed that a violent struggle would reunite Ireland— and from the 1970s organised a series of devastating attacks in Britain. On the opposite side were the loyalist paramilitaries such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), who believed that the use of violence was justified to protect Northern Ireland’s relationship with Britain. Both sides engaged in tit-for-tat killings, in which the majority of those killed were non-combatants. The third group involved in the conflict were the forces of the state—the British army and Northern Ireland’s police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary— who used their political, security, and legal systems to protect the unionist democratic majority. Among other highly criticised and controversial measures, in 1971 they ordered imprisonment without trial of anyone suspected of having connections to IRA, violently repressed a peaceful Catholic march against such measure (Bloody Sunday, 1972) and in 1976 stripped prisoners from paramilitary groups of their political prisoner status. This last measure led first to a dirty protest and then to several hunger strikes in prisons in 1981, events that gained much public attention. In total, during “the Troubles” more than 3,500 people were killed. In the 1990s peace talks started and in 1998 the Good Friday Agreement was signed. It ordered the decommission of paramilitary groups, allowed for cross-border cooperation, demilitarised Northern Ireland and gave her an assembly with legislative powers as well as the possibility of reunification, if the majority voted so. The agreement remained contentious, but it ensured peace. However, Northern Ireland did not have her Assembly restored until 2007,

following the Saint Andrews Agreement of 2006. A coalition government was formed with the Unionist, Ian Paisley, as First Minister and the nationalist (Sinn Fein), Martin McGuinness, as his deputy.

24. Contemporary Ireland(s) In the 1990s the Republic of Ireland experienced a period of economic growth (‘The Celtic Tiger’). Ireland had a very low corporate tax rate, and encouraged multinational companies, especially high-tech companies, to locate in the country. This economic growth, however, was hindered by the economic crisis of 2008. In the last decades, Ireland has also undergone many social changes as people began turning away from the Catholic Church and passed laws in favour of divorce, same-sex marriage, and abortion. In Northern Ireland, Brexit has recently raised questions about the border with the Republic of Ireland, an issue that remains to be solved....