History of Ireland

The history of Ireland begins in prehistoric times. People began farming on Ireland thousands of years ago.

The Celts moved there about 2,500 years ago and divided Ireland into many small kingdoms. In the 5th century, Saint Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland; it is still the dominant religion on the island today. The Vikings and later the Normans invaded in the Middle Ages.

Celtic cross in Irish National Heritage Park

Eventually, Ireland became part of the United Kingdom. After the Irish War of Independence in 1919-1921, most of Ireland became an independent country, the Republic of Ireland. However, Northern Ireland stayed in the United Kingdom, and is still a part of the U.K. today.

Prehistory

Also see: Prehistoric Britain

Stone Age

Nobody knows exactly when the first people came to Ireland. In 2016 scientists used radiometric dating on a bear bone that had been found in an Irish cave. They found 12,500-year-old, man-made knife marks on the bone, showing that people lived in Ireland during the Paleolithic era (the first part of the Stone Age).

By 7900 BCE, hunter-gatherers (people who ate wild plants and animals) definitely lived in Ireland. Around 4000 BCE, they started farming and keeping farm animals. Stone Age people in Ireland also made tools, pottery, wooden houses, and large tombs.

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age started around 2500 BCE. During this age, people learned to make things out of metals like bronze, gold, and copper. They built metal weapons and large rooms to store them in.

People also started weaving and working with leather during the Bronze Age.

Iron Age

The Iron Age started around 600 BCE or earlier, when people started making iron tools. During the Iron Age, Celts came to Ireland. They brought Celtic languages, art, and culture.

Between 1 and 400 CE, Roman soldiers may have invaded Ireland, but Ireland did not join the Roman Empire. About five kings each ruled a large part of Ireland.

Early medieval era

Between 400-800 CE, most buildings in Ireland were round forts made of dirt (called raths or ringforts), with houses inside. Most of the island's forests were cut down to make farms.

Christianity spreads

In the 300s CE, Christianity and writing were both brought to Ireland. (Saint Patrick was famous for spreading Christianity in Ireland in the 400s, but he was not the first Christian in Ireland.) Christian monks from other countries came to Irish monasteries. Some monasteries grew into towns.

Christianity spread throughout the island over the next few hundred years. By 800 almost everyone was Christian. They were called Gaels and spoke Gaelic.

Gallowglasses — Irish warriors whose ancestors were Vikings

Vikings invade

In 795 the Vikings, sailors from Scandinavia, invaded and looted many towns. The Vikings ruled over Irish kings. They built Dublin and other cities and towns on the coast.

In 902 the Christian Irish armies pushed out the Vikings, but in 917 the Vikings came back to start a new kingdom of Dublin. Over time, Vikings started new kingdoms.

In the 1000s and 1100s, the Vikings either left or became part of Irish culture.

High kings

Some new kingdoms appeared in this era. The kingdom of Uí Néill in north Ireland took over the area called Tara, then ruled over all the other kingdoms. They were called the high kings.

In 1002 Brian Boru, a King of Munster, fought against Leinster and became the high king. After that, high kings came from the four provinces: Munster, Leinster, Ulster, and Connacht. Each province also had its own king.

Norman era

Ireland in 1450 showing lands held by native Irish (green), the Anglo-Irish (blue) and the English king (dark grey).

Invasion

In the 1100s, Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair was the high king. He forced Diarmaid Mac Murchada, the king of Leinster, to leave his kingdom. Diarmaid asked Henry II, a Norman king of England, to help him get his land back.

Henry agreed and sent an army of Norman (and Welsh) knights to invade Ireland in 1167. Richard de Clare, called Strongbow, led the army. However, Henry decided Strongbow and the Norman knights and Strongbow were too powerful, so he decided to take over Ireland. He traveled to Ireland with his own fleet in 1171.

Norman control

Henry conquered Ireland. He named his youngest son, John, the Lord of Ireland. He had several older sons, and thought John would never become king of England. However, in 1199, John did become king of England after all his brothers died. After that, Ireland was ruled by the English king.

Now that Ireland was controlled by England, many lords came from England to take Irish land. They built new castles and towns on the lands they took over. These were usually near the east and south coasts (other parts of the island were still ruled by Irish kings).

The English, Norman, or Anglo-Norman lords broke up land into areas called manors. They put fences around farms so everyone would know who owned each farm. They tried to improve farms so they could grow more food in smaller spaces. The Anglo-Normans planted more wheat and raised more sheep.

The population grew quickly. In 1297, Anglo-Normans started the Irish Parliament, a gathering to make laws.

Fighting over control

The Gaelic Irish often tried to take control from the Anglo-Normans. In 1315, Edward Bruce, a lord from Scotland, allied with the Irish to fight the Anglo-Normans. In 1318 the Anglo-Normans won the war.

But the Anglo-Norman rulers became weaker. By 1500, England only controlled a small part of eastern Ireland, called the Pale. In the rest of Ireland, people spoke Irish and had Irish culture.

16th to 18th centuries

English king & settlers

"Chronological tree of Irish history from the first invasion of the English to the present day" (1869)

Ireland had a governor (ruler) who was supposed to be loyal to the King of England. In the 1530s, Thomas Fitzgerald, the governor, rebelled against England. He failed, and King Henry VIII of England decided to rule the island himself instead of giving power to a governor. In 1541, he declared himself King of Ireland and began building military forts on the island.

Settlers, mostly Anglicans from England, also moved to plantations in Ireland. They used English laws and took over a lot of the island. This caused conflicts with the native Irish Catholic people.

During the Nine Years War in the 1590s, Irish soldiers from Ulster (the largest plantation) fought the English. Unlike in the other provinces, settlers in Ulster were mostly Presbyterians from Scotland.

Protestant Ascendancy

Anglicanism was the official religion of the Church of England. English kings and the English Parliament wanted the Irish people to be Anglican. They created the Church of Ireland, a branch of the Anglican Church.

The Penal Laws of the 1600s punished Irish people who did not follow the Church of Ireland. The Anglicans grew more powerful. This time was called the Protestant Ascendancy. That was the end of Gaelic Ireland.

18th century

In the 1700s, the Catholic people of Ireland were poor peasants. They were not allowed to own land. England forced them to export much of the food they produced. There was little left to eat other than potatoes; an average man would eat up to 14 pounds of them a day.

There were rebellions against landlords and English rule, but they mostly failed. In 1801, the Acts of Union joined Ireland with Great Britain, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK). The Irish parliament became part of the United Kingdom parliament in London.

The Great Famine

The population of Ireland (in green) fell because of the Great Famine and people moving to other countries.

See the main article: Great Famine (Ireland)

From 1845-1852, there was a terrible famine in Ireland. A million people starved to death, and another million moved to other countries.

The famine was caused by a plant disease which killed potato crops. This was disastrous because most Irish people depended on potatoes to survive. An average Irish man ate 12-14 pounds of potatoes per day. Even children under ten ate about 5 pounds of potatoes per day.

Many Irish people were forced to leave their land because they could not pay rent to their landlords. Some were forced to work in poorhouses because of the Irish Poor Laws (created by the English government).

England continued exporting Irish crops - selling them to other countries - throughout the famine. Critics have said that England should have left this food in Ireland so the people did not starve.

Irish language

Ireland's Great Famine hurt Irish speakers the most, because they were poor.

In 1831, the government had already forced primary schools to teach in English, not Irish. Children were punished if they spoke Irish in school. People had to speak English if they wanted a good job. During the famine years, even more Irish-speaking people switched to English.

Home rule

An Irish family is evicted around 1879

In 1886 the Liberal Party tried to create an Irish parliament within the government of the United Kingdom. This idea was called Home Rule. However, the Parliament of the United Kingdom did not allow Ireland to have Home Rule.

From the 1870s to the 1890s, there was violence between the Land League and the government. The Land League wanted lower rent and they wanted to buy land. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the British government made it easier for Irish people to buy land.

Nationalists & Unionists

By around 1900, Irish people were split into Nationalists (who wanted Home Rule or independence) and Unionists (who wanted to be ruled by Britain). Nationalists were mostly Catholics who lived in rural areas.

Unionists were mostly Protestants who lived in cities. They worried they would lose their rights if Ireland had its own government. In some parts of Ireland, Unionists were mostly rich. But in Ulster, many Unionists were workers who wanted the upper class to have less power.

In 1912 some members of the U.K. Parliament tried again to get Home Rule for Ireland. About 500,000 Unionists in Ulster signed a petition against Home Rule called the Ulster Convenant. They also formed an army called the Ulster Volunteers. Meanwhile, Irish Nationalists formed an army called the Irish Volunteers.

By 1914, the government was too worried about World War I to think about Home Rule. Both Nationalists and Unionists fought in British military units in World War I.

The Irish War of Independence

See the main article: Irish War of Independence

In 1916, there was a rebellion by Irish people who wanted to be independent. Britain stopped it quickly, but many Irish were angry. They elected Sinn Féin, an independence party, to most Irish seats in the U.K. Parliament. Sinn Féin members refused to go to London to join Parliament. Instead they started a new assembly in Dublin called the Dáil Éireann (or Dáil). Sinn Féin said that Ireland was now independent.

In 1918 they organized the Irish Volunteers into the Irish Republican Army (IRA). From 1919-1921, the IRA fought a war against the British (Irish War of Independence) to be a separate country. In 1920 the British government decided to divide Ireland into Southern Ireland (The Provisional Government), which was about 5/6 of the island, and Northern Ireland.

The Dáil and Britain signed a treaty in 1922 to make Southern Ireland into the Irish Free State. It was still connected to the UK, but it had more freedom.

After division

The Irish Civil War

The IRA were not happy with the Irish Free State treaty. They wanted Ireland to fully leave the U.K. Immediately, they began fighting the Irish Free State government in the Irish Civil War. The war ended when the IRA stopped fighting in 1923.

Separate governments

Northern Ireland was governed by the Ulster Unionist Party from 1922-1972. It was a Protestant country, according to James Craig, its first prime minister.

The Irish Free State got a new constitution in 1937, which created the Government of Ireland. In 1949, Ireland left the British Commonwealth and became the Republic of Ireland (sometimes just called "Ireland").

The Irish Republican Army bombed the Grand Brighton Hotel in 1984 during The Troubles.

The Troubles

See the main article: The Troubles

In 1969, violence was growing in Northern Ireland between the nationalist Catholics and Unionist Protestants. (The nationalists wanted Ireland to be an independent nation; the Unionists wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom.)

The Provisional IRA formed to defend Catholics and unite Ireland. From 1969 until 1998, there was constant fighting between the Provisional IRA and the UK Army.

The Belfast Agreement

See the main article: Belfast Agreement

In 1998, Irish voters approved the Belfast Agreement, or Good Friday Agreement, agreeing that Northern Ireland would stay in the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland could join the Republic of Ireland if more than half of voters wanted to. The agreement also created councils where ministers from both parts of Ireland worked together.

Northern Ireland got a new government in 1998.

European Union

In 1973 the Republic of Ireland and the UK joined the European Economic Community, which became the European Union (EU).

In the 1990s, the Republic of Ireland became part of the European Single Market. People are allowed to travel and sell things between countries in the European Single Market.

In the late 20th century the economy grew quickly, and changed from mostly farming to mostly services and industry. The UK, including Northern Ireland, left the European Union in 2020, but the UK and the Republic of Ireland agreed not to control border crossings.

Life in Ireland

During most of the 20th century (1900-1999), the Republic of Ireland was over 90% Catholic. The people and the government were socially conservative. Divorce, contraceptives, and abortions were not allowed until the late 20th century.

In 1927 the Republic of Ireland government created the Electricity Supply Board to manage electricity. By the 1960s, 80% of rural families had electricity. The Single Electricity Market was created in 2007 to supply all of Ireland.