Ireland
The Irish people are mainly of Celtic origin, with the country's
only significant sized minority having descended from the
Anglo-Normans. English is the common language, but Irish (Gaelic) is
also an official language and is taught in schools.
Anglo-Irish writers such as Swift, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Burke,
Wilde, Joyce, Yeats, Shaw, and Beckett have made a major
contribution to world literature over the past 300 years. |
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The earliest inhabitants--people of a mid-Stone Age culture--arrived
about 6000 BC. About 4,000 years later, tribes from southern Europe
arrived and established a high Neolithic culture, leaving behind
gold ornaments and huge stone monuments. The Bronze Age people, who
arrived during the next 1,000 years, produced elaborate gold and
bronze ornaments and weapons.
The Iron Age arrived abruptly in the fourth century BC with the
invasion of the Celts, a tall, energetic people who had spread
across Europe and Great Britain in the preceding centuries. The
Celts, or Gaels, and their more numerous predecessors divided into
five kingdoms in which, despite constant strife, a rich culture
flourished.
The coming of Christianity from across the Irish Sea brought major
changes and civilizing influences. Tradition maintains that St.
Patrick arrived on the island in AD 432 and, in the years that
followed, worked to convert the Irish to Christianity.
The pagan druid tradition collapsed before the spread of the new
faith, and Irish scholars excelled in the study of Latin learning
and Christian theology in the monasteries that flourished.
Missionaries went forth from Ireland to England and the continent,
spreading news of the flowering of learning, and scholars from other
nations came to Irish monasteries. The excellence and isolation of
these monasteries helped preserve Latin and Greek learning during
the Dark Ages. The arts of manuscript illumination, metalworking,
and sculpture flourished and produced such treasures as the Book of
Kells, ornate jewelry, and the many carved stone crosses that dot
the island.
Two hundred years of Viking invasion and settlement was later
followed by a Norman conquest in the 12th century. The Norman
conquest resulted in the assimilation of the Norman settlers into
Irish society. The early 17th century saw the arrival of Scottish
and English Protestants, sent as colonists to the north of Ireland
and the Pale around Dublin.
In 1800 the Irish Parliament passed the Act of Union with Great
Britain, and Ireland was an official part of the United Kingdom
until 1921. Religious freedom, outlawed in the 18th century, was
restored in 1829, but this victory for the Irish Catholic majority
was overshadowed by a severe economic depression and the great
famine from 1846-48 when the potato crop failed. Millions died, and
the millions that emigrated spawned the first mass wave of Irish
emigration to the United States. A decade later, in 1858, the Irish
Republican Brotherhood (IRB--also known as the Fenians) was founded
as a secret society dedicated to armed rebellion against the
British. An aboveground political counterpart, the Home Rule
Movement, was created in 1874, advocating constitutional change for
independence.
Galvanized by the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, the party
was able to force British governments after 1885 to introduce
several home rule bills. The turn of the century witnessed a surge
of interest in Irish nationalism, including the founding of Sinn
Fein ("Ourselves Alone") as an open political movement.
Nationalism was and is a potent populist force in Irish politics. A
home rule bill passed in 1914, but its implementation was suspended
until war in Europe ended. Believing the mantra: "England's problem
is Ireland's opportunity," and tapping into a mood of Gaelic
revivalism, Padraic Pearse and James Connolly led the unsuccessful
Easter Rising of 1916. Pearse and the other 1916 leaders declared an
independent Irish republic, but a lack of popular support doomed the
rebellion, which lasted a week and destroyed large portions of
Dublin. The decision by the British military government to execute
the leaders of the rebellion, coupled with the British Government's
threat of conscripting the Irish to fight in the Great War,
alienated public opinion and produced massive support for Sinn Fein
in the 1918 general election. Under the leadership of Eamon de
Valera, the elected Sinn Fein deputies constituted themselves as the
first Dail. Tensions only increased: British attempts to smash Sinn
Fein ignited the Anglo-Irish War of 1919-1921.
The end of the war brought the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921, which
established the Irish Free State of 26 counties within the British
Commonwealth and recognized the partition of the island into Ireland
and Northern Ireland, though supposedly as a temporary measure. The
six predominantly Protestant counties of northeast Ulster--Northern
Ireland--remained a part of the United Kingdom with limited
self-government. A significant Irish minority repudiated the treaty
settlement because of the continuance of subordinate ties to the
British monarch and the partition of the island. This opposition led
to further hostilities--a civil war (1922-23), which was won by the
pro-treaty forces.
In 1932, Eamon de Valera, the political leader of the forces
initially opposed to the treaty, became Prime Minister, and a new
Irish constitution was enacted in 1937. The last British military
bases were soon withdrawn, and the ports were returned to Irish
control. Ireland was neutral in World War II. The government
formally declared Ireland a republic in 1948; however, it does not
normally use the term "Republic of Ireland," which tacitly
acknowledges the partition, but refers to the country simply as
"Ireland." |
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