Ireland

Ireland

The Main Events

Ireland has one of the most intriguing and complex histories of any nation, stretching back to the prehistoric period, and fraught with invasions, battles, and rebellion.

Invaders welcome

From the beginning, Ireland put out a doormat welcoming invaders, or so it seems. Ireland was first inhabited by Mesolithic hunters and fishermen who appeared in the countryaround 7500 B.C., most likely hailing from Scotland. They were followed by a wave of Neolithic farmers, also

from Scotland, who arrived 4,000 years later, around 3500 B.C. Around 450 B.C., or perhaps even earlier, the Celts arrived from Europe, conquering the earlier settlers and spreading the Gaelic culture and language that still thrives today. Nine hundred years later, in the fifth centuryA.D., Christian missionaries arrived on the shores of Ireland from various parts of Europe and converted much of the Irish population to Christianity. It was at this time that famed missionary St. Patrick converted thousands of Irish; legend says that he explained the Holy Trinity using a shamrock as a visual aid.

The eighth century saw the graceful longboats of the Norse Vikings landing onseveral Irish coasts. The Vikings raided and plundered their way through Ireland, setting up coastal bases that evolved into the country’s first cities — Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, and Limerick. After almost three centuries of plundering, the Vikings were routed in 1014 by the armies of high king Brian Boru, who was the first leader to preside over all of Ireland. Upon the defeat of the Vikings,Ireland experienced a period of relative peace.



But that peace only lasted a little more than 150 years. In 1169, Diarmuid MacMurrough, the dethroned king of Leinster (the southeastern portion of Ireland) called on the Anglo-Normans, under the leadership of Strongbow, to help him seize back his kingdom. The Anglo-Normans were Vikings who had settled in Normandy and had control over most ofBritain. With their superior military, they had no trouble capturing much of Ireland for themselves. Strongbow’s prize for his troubles was the hand of MacMurrough’s fair-haired daughter, Aoife, in marriage.





Rebels with a cause

In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Celts (also called the Gaels) rose up against both the British and the Anglo-Norman invaders. They succeeded incontaining the British in an area around Dublin known as The Pale, but they had no luck in ridding the island of the powerful Norman overlords. In fact, through intermarriage and the adoption of Irish language and culture, the Normans were becoming as Irish as the Irish themselves. Some of the most popular surnames in Ireland today — Fitzgerald, Burke, Joyce — are actually Norman.

In the 16th century,the British launched a reconquest of Ireland under Henry VIII, who declared himself king of Ireland and forced the Irish chieftains to acknowledge his sovereignty. Though Henry VIII did not introduce British colonists to Ireland, his daughter Mary encouraged colonialism after his death, and her sister, Queen Elizabeth I, sent a steady flow of British settlers into Ireland. Due to Henry VIII’s splitwith the church in Rome, Catholic persecution began in Ireland.

In 1601, Gaelic troops joined with a Spanish army to try to squelch the English army, but the English forces triumphed under Lord Mountjoy, and English law was introduced to much of the island, including Ulster, previously the most Gaelic part of Ireland. Defeated, many of the O’Neills and O’Donnells, the most powerful Gaelicclans in Ulster, fled from Ireland. The English government pronounced the O’Neill and O’Donnell lands forfeit to the crown and sent Protestant English and Scottish settlers to develop farms and towns in the area. Naturally, the Irish Catholic inhabitants of Ulster strongly resented the imposition of these Protestant settlers, and thousands were massacred when the Catholic rebelled in 1641. The...