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HISTORY
IRISH HISTORY
“In Ireland the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly occurs”, Sir John Pentland Mahaffy, tutor to Oscar Wilde.
Turtle's interest with Irish history bore its first fruits when, while at school in Scotland, an essay he wrote on Michael Collins won the Gladstone Memorial Essay Prize. He subsequently read history at Trinity College Dublin, returning to the subject after a three-year absence in Hong Kong. He is the author of two books on Irish history, The Landed Gentry & Aristocracy of County Wicklow (2005) and The Landed Gentry & Aristocracy of County Kildare (2004). He has also written several private family histories and other commissioned treatises of a historical nature. Examples of these can be found throughout this website.
Turtle’s expertise lies with Ireland since the 17th century. However, viewing history as a jigsaw, the subject matter of these essays stretch back more than 2500 years to an age when the western shores of Europe first came under the influence of a new order – that of the Celtic civilization.
The History of Ireland in 500 Words
21st century Ireland is a land that astonishes in many ways. Twenty years ago, who would have believed this impossibly romantic island would emerge as one of the most prosperous and influential nations in Europe?Ireland’s history has been nothing but eventful. Across the country, ancient ruins from 4000 years ago rise from the lush landscape in tribute to the mysterious complexities of the Universe beyond. The arrival of the Celts at the time of Christ inspired a new age of industry and commerce, of goldsmiths and story tellers, warriors and druids. With Saint Patrick at the helm, Christianity swept into the island “of saints and scholars” in the 5th century AD. Monasteries and abbeys arose alongside the misty riverbanks. For the next 300 years, Irish missionaries carried the Christian spirit east to Germany and west to the unknown. Between the 9th and 12th centuries, Viking longships and Norman armies invaded the island, laid waste the Celtic kingdoms and erected the first towns. In time, the whole island was seized as a colony of the Anglo-Norman crown.
Under Henry VIII, the Catholic Church was abolished and the church lands parcelled out to those loyal to the Crown – native Irish, Norman settler and new planter alike. The redistribution of land to loyal subjects continued under Queen Elizabeth, the Stuarts and Oliver Cromwell; those who protested were cast away to the unruly wilds of the west. William of Orange’s victory at the Boyne in 1689 was the start of more than 200 years of rule by an Anglo-Irish elite, primarily Protestant, intrinsically British. A series of disastrous rebellions and the horror of the Great Famine ultimately ignited a war of independence against Britain in 1919. Irish independence came in stages thereafter.
The Republic of Ireland was officially born on 1st April 1949 and consists of 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties. The remaining 6 counties constitute Northern Ireland, an area that still falls under British rule. When Irish independence was being negotiated in 1921, these 6 northern counties were controlled by wealthy Protestants who felt a strong attachment to the English Crown. They had no wish to unite as an independent nation with the remaining 26 Catholic counties. Partition was deemed the best solution. Tensions between Northern Ireland’s Catholics and Protestants erupted in riots and murder in 1969, leading to an often-brutal thirty-year war. Peace has ostensibly returned since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement although attempts to share power between the Catholic and Protestant political parties remains a thorn in the side of amity.
The Republic’s extraordinary economic success since the early 1990s has become a blueprint for all members of the European Union. Away from the roads and suburbs, romance, history and outstandingly good craic still permeates the air of this most magical of European islands. In Northern Ireland too, prosperity and peace have paved the way for a new age of positivity, bringing welcome harmony to the whole island of Ireland.