A Short History

The island has been occupied for just about 10,000 years. The first people who arrived who share the first resemblances to the modern Irish were called the Gaels. They arrived around 6000 years ago and brought the Bronze Age with them. The island was then finally brought into the Iron Age when the Celts arrived from Europe. Ireland was never part of the Roman Empire, but through contact with it, and the famous Saint Patrick, the island adopted Christianity, as had Rome. The island settled into peace and prosperity for the next 400 years or so until the Vikings arrived and plundered the coast. The Irish fought back, and by 1014, the had driven the Vikings out of Ireland. However, in 1169, the Normans arrived in Ireland, and controlled much of the island, at least nominally, by 1300 AD. Their power in Ireland soon began to wane until Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I conquered the island's and ended the old Gaelic powers. They brought in a program of plantation, or colonization, which had a huge affect on Ulster in the North. The island fought against the new Protestant religion throughout the 1600s, but were virtually subdued by 1701. After a brief rebellion in 1798, Ireland joined the United Kingdom in 1801. The island suffered under a famine in the 1840s, where over a million died. By the end of the century, nationalism sprang up and under Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish called for home rule. Their opponents were descendants of the former in Planters of Ulster, and they wanted to uphold the Union. This developed into conflict when the 1916 Rising broke out in Dublin, and although a failure, it brought Ireland into a bitter war of independence. By 1921, the island was divided into the modern states we see today, with six counties in the North forming Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. Throughout the early 20th century, the new Irish state gained increasing autonomy from the British Empire, and finally left the Commonwealth in 1948. In the north, the Catholics, in a minority of one to two in the province, protested for civil rights in the 1960s, but only served to alienate them more from the Protestants, and so bitter violence broke out. Northern Ireland was ravaged by this until 1998, when an agreement was set up for a power-sharing assembly for both Unionists and Nationalists, and so peace returned to the province. In the south, an economic boom resulted in the modernization of the Republic into a forward-looking European power, with a strong tourist industry.