Turtle Bunbury

Writer and Historian

 
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HISTORY

IRISH HISTORY

A 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 during the early 1990s was a blueprint for fellow members of the European Union. A comprehensive account of the Celtic Tiger at its busiest can be found in Turtle's book on the Dublin Docklands. In Northern Ireland too, prosperity and peace paved the way for a new age of positivity, bringing welcome harmony to the whole island of Ireland. While present times might look somewaht hairier, away from the roads and suburbs, romance, history and outstandingly good craic still permeates the air of this most magical of European islands.


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