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Ireland is one of the most sparsely populated and least industrialized in Western Europe.  It is known for its green fields, its rain and its pubs.  But beyond this lies a history of pride and tragedy.  The two are intermingled when it comes to the long and difficult relationship Ireland has with its neighbour across the Irish Sea, England.

There are many Stone Age sites which dot Ireland but the current inhabitants of Ireland descend from the Celts, Iron Age warriors from eastern Europe, who reached Ireland around 300 BC. They controlled the country for 1000 years and left a legacy of language and culture that survives today, especially in Galway, Cork, Kerry and Waterford. The Romans never reached Ireland, and when the rest of Europe sank into the decline of the Dark Ages after the fall of the empire, the country became an outpost of European civilization, particularly after the arrival of Christianity, between the 3rd and 5th centuries.
During the 8th century Viking raiders began to plunder Ireland’s monasteries. The Vikings settled in Ireland in the 9th century, and formed alliances with native families and chieftains. They founded Dublin, which in the 10th century was a small Viking kingdom. The English arrived with the Normans in 1169, taking Wexford and Dublin with ease. The Pope recognized the English king, Henry II, as Lord of Ireland and he took Waterford in 1171, declaring it a royal city. But English control of the island was limited.   It was not until the 1500’s with Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, with the change of the church, that England started to enforce its rule in Ireland. The last thorn in the English side was Ulster, the final outpost of the Irish Catholic chiefs.  But in 1607 with the chiefs departure to France, the English began their policy of colonization known as ‘plantation’, the organized expropriation of land from the local Catholics and given to loyal Protestant settlers.  A move which sowed the seeds for the division of Ulster which is still in existence today, as the newcomers did not intermarry or mingle with the impoverished and very angry population of native Irish and Old English Catholics.   This simmering resentment resulted in a bloody conflict in 1641 when the native Irish and Old English Catholics supported the royalists and Charles I in the English Civil War.   After the execution of Charles I in 1649, Oliver Cromwell the victorious Protestant parliamentarian arrived in Ireland and vigorously stamped out all royal Catholic supporters.
Ireland once again came into conflict with England less then a decade later when Catholic James II fled England for Ireland to raise an army to reclaim the throne, which had been given to Protestant William of Orange.   In 1690 James’ army was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne.  A victory that is still celebrated every year by Protestant Orangemen, with marches, on July 12.
In 1695 harsh penal laws were enforced, known as the ‘popery code’: Catholics were forbidden from buying land, bringing their children up as Catholics, and from entering the forces or the law. All Irish culture, music and education were banned. The religion and culture were kept alive by secret open-air masses and illegal outdoor schools, known as ‘hedge schools’.   By 1778, Catholics owned barely 5% of the land. Alarmed by the level of unrest at the end of the 18th century, the Protestant gentry traded what remained of their independence for British security, and the 1800 Act of Union united Ireland politically with Britain.
The formation of the Catholic Association by the popular leader Daniel O’Connell led to some Catholic emancipation with many of the more restrictive Catholic policies being repealed.   But further strides halted by the tragedy of the Great Famine (1845-51). The almost complete failure of the potato crop during those years was a disaster as the potato was the main staple of diet for many families.  The failed crops led to mass starvation and set up a pattern of emigration that continued well into the 20th century.
Irish resentment continued to simmer as the desire for self-government grew while British parliament was slow in its reforms.   This all came to a head in 1916 with the Easter Rising, in Dublin.  The uprising failed and the British held a series of public trial and executions of the ringleaders.   But the uprising had its desired effect in the overall push for Irish independence and in Britain’s 1918 general election the Irish republicans won a large majority of the Irish seats. They declared Ireland independent and formed the first Dail Eireann (Irish assembly or lower house).
A guerrilla war broke out in 1919 with the Irish political Sinn Fein and their “military wing” the IRA against the British.  Atrocity was met with atrocity until the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 which gave independence to 26 Irish counties, but with “strings attached”, and allowed the six, largely Protestant, Ulster counties, in the north, the choice of opting out, which they did and formed their parliament.
Over the next few decades the south of Ireland shifted themselves further away from Britain with slow, gradual and peaceful repealing of the “strings” from the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and in 1948 southern Ireland was finally declared a republic and left the British Commonwealth in 1949.
But the politics of the North became increasingly divided on religious grounds, and discrimination against Catholics was rife in politics, housing, employment and social welfare.   This division between the ruling Protestant minority and the Catholic majority in the North came to international attention when a peaceful civil rights march in 1968 was violently broken up by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).  The Troubles were under way.
British troops were sent into Derry and Belfast in August 1969 and were initially welcomed by the Catholics, but it soon became clear that they were the instrument of the Protestant majority. Peaceful measures had clearly failed and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which had fought the British during the Anglo-Irish war, was re-instated. This was the time of “Trouble”.  It was comprised of seemingly endless tit-for-tat killings on both sides, the internment of IRA sympathizers without trial, the death by hunger strike of the imprisoned and the introduction of terrorism to mainland Britain.
The “Troubled Times” peace process was started in earnest in 1994 but with numerous setbacks the talks were to last until July 2007, when the British Army formally ended Operation Banner, their mission in Northern Ireland which began 38 years earlier, in 1969.
By the late 1990s Southern Ireland’s economy was booming, mainly thanks to an injection of investment funds from the EU that have helped renovate the country’s infrastructure. It’s been said that Ireland has skipped straight from an agricultural economy to a post-industrial one, as large computer and telecommunications firms have been moving in, bringing jobs and investment. The century and a half tradition of emigration has slowed and possibly even stopped, as young people are staying or returning from abroad for new jobs in new industries.
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