Ireland history

The first people settled in Ireland during the Mesolithic period , about 8000 BC. e., when its climate improved after the retreat of the glaciers. In the IV — II millennia BC. er on the island there was a rich and complex culture of the Neolithic era; several hundred megaliths of various types were built, including the tomb of Newgrange in Brú na Bóinne . Presumably in the II millennium BC. er The island was inhabited by Celts and its inhabitants began to speak Celtic languages , although there is very little archaeological evidence of this. According to genetic studies, the Irish are descendants of farmers from the Mediterranean who destroyed the ancient population of the Emerald Isle, as well as the Black Sea coast herders. Black Sea immigrants - Indo-Europeans brought their own language and genes of hemochromatosis , as well as genes that allow digesting lactose and drinking milk. The similarity of the genomes of people of the Bronze Age and modern Irish, Scots and Welsh suggests that by 2000 BC the main characteristics of the “island”, different from the Gallic, Celtic genome, whose descendants can be considered the Irish people ^[1] . The name of the island in Old Irish is Ériu (genitive Érenn, Érin (n), in the traditional Russian program “Erin”). The ancient Irish lived separate clan tribes under the control of hereditary leaders. Perhaps there was communal ownership of the land. Ireland was not part of the Roman Empire , but it is mentioned by the Roman historian Tacitus , the poet Juvenal , the Greek geographers Ptolemy and Strabo . Ptolemy leads several dozen names of places and tribes, which in some cases can be identified with early medieval (for example, Senos - Shannon ).

In 432 , St. Patrick , a native of Britain , spread Christianity among the Irish. The calm that reigned on the island favored the development of scholarship among the monastics. Already in the 6th century, Ireland became the center of Western scholarship, preachers of Christianity on the mainland emerged from its monastic schools; their main center was a monastery on the island of Iona . Irish monks made a significant contribution to the preservation of Latin culture during the early Middle Ages . Ireland of this period was famous for its arts - illustrations for handwritten books (see. The Book of Kells ), metalwork and sculpture (see Celtic Cross ).

The education and leading role of the clergy shaken somewhat in the 10th century, when the Irish shores began to be disturbed by their Viking raids. On the coasts, they began to create urban settlements (in particular, Dublin and Limerick were founded by the Vikings), having until then donated almost exclusively rural Irish port cities, and in fact created funds for independent maritime trade. Many monasteries, especially coastal and located on the islands, were looted and burned, although they were not completely destroyed, as it happened in England around the same time. The monasteries near Dublin coexisted fairly quietly with the Viking city, while maintaining its stronghold of education and religiosity. Viking invasions in Ireland influenced the language - some basic Irish words related to sea and ship navigation are of Scandinavian origin.

At the beginning of the 11th century, the Irish under the leadership of High King Briand Boru defeated and expelled the Vikings, while Brian Boru himself died in the decisive battle of Clontarf in 1014 .

The island was then divided into five kingdoms: Leinster , Munster , Ulster , Connacht and Mide , each of which was subdivided, in turn, into secondary areas of individual clans under the control of dependent leaders. The supreme power was in the hands of a single king, who enjoyed the rights of a limited, fallen king .

Frequent civil wars contributed to the savagery of the population and deprived of its ability to resist foreign conquerors. Dermod, king of Leinster , kidnapped his wife from O'Rourke , the leader of one of the tribes of Mide ; for this, with the help of the sovereign Roderich O'Connor , he was expelled from his possessions and in 1167 went to seek help in England .

The English king Henry II , long ago, with the consent of Pope Adrian IV , who planned to conquer Ireland, commissioned in 1169 some of his barons, including Maurice Fitz-Gerald , first of all to restore Dermod to his possessions; then, when Count Pembroke , sent by him, occupied Waterford and Dublin , he himself came to Ireland in December 1171. Since his conquest was based on the papal bull , the clergy were especially submissive to him. The rulers of Leinster and Munster soon conquered English rule, and in October 1175, after stubborn resistance, Roderich had to agree to a treaty, by virtue of which Heinrich inherited the eastern, and he also the western part of the island; however, he had to recognize himself as a vassal and tributary of the English crown. This treaty decided the fate of the island for many centuries.

The British barons by force seized the lands given to them in the form of feuds , expelled the native leaders and introduced English laws and a control system. The region conquered in this way was called the suburb (the pale) and, as to management, the royal governor and its own parliament, and in its further development differed sharply from the still unconquered space of the so-called Wild Ireland, in which the British constantly tried to do new conquests.

When Robert the Bruce took the Scottish crown and successfully fought the war with England, the Irish leaders turned to him for help against a common enemy. His brother Edward arrived with an army in 1315 and was proclaimed by the Irish king, but after a three-year war that terribly devastated the island, he died in battle with the British. However, in 1348 the “ Black Death ” came to Ireland, which exterminated almost all Englishmen who lived in cities where mortality was particularly high. After the plague, the British power extended no further than Dublin.

During the White and Scarlet Rose wars, Ireland mostly held side with the York House , but the power of the British in Ireland weakened considerably during this internecine war.

Under Henry VII , the first Tudor , there was a change in the relationship of I. to England. Heinrich proceeded with great care to regain lost influence; a particularly important step was named after the royal commissioner of the Poining law russ (1494), who introduced new principles into the administration of the conquered area and the latter was placed in even closer dependence on England: the decisions of the Irish parliament submitted to the approval of the English government; the Irish did not have the right to choose the justiciar; the posts of chancellor and treasurer ceased to be for life. But this ruling still applied only to a not extensive margin. Heinrich was stingy in spending to strengthen English power in Ireland, and it was technically difficult to force the Irish to comply with the law. ^[2]

In 1536, Henry VIII suppressed the revolt of the "Silk Thomas" of Fitzgerald , an English protege in Ireland, and decided to re-conquer the island. In 1541, Heinrich proclaimed Ireland a kingdom , and himself - its king. During the English Reformation, the Irish remained Catholics , which created a split between the two islands that survived to this day.

Elizabeth introduced the Reformation in Ireland and confiscated all the riches of the Catholic churches in favor of the new clergy. Already in 1560, as a result, continuous uprisings began, the instigators of which were the English fugitives, the Pope and the Spanish court. Particularly threatening was the uprising of Gug O'Nel, Count of Tyroneus, which began in 1595 and aimed at liberating the island from the English yoke . The Queen sent her favorite Count Essex to Ireland in 1599, but he could not do anything: the truce concluded with O'Nell did not lead to anything either. The successor of Essex, Lord Mountjoy , conquered the country in a few months, rejected the Spaniards who landed in 1601 under Kinsale and captured O'Nell. By the time Elizabeth died, all of Ireland was subject to the English crown. The suppression of the uprising took a significant part of the indigenous people, and led others to eviction and led to the confiscation of many lands that were distributed to the English colonists.

King Jacob I conceived to improve the position of Ireland with political and social reforms. First of all, he wanted to break the arbitrariness of the Irish leaders, who had turned into English barons over time, and to turn the Irish into personally free people, like the English. But to achieve this goal, he also began with the confiscation of the property of influential individuals; of the 800,000 acres that the king in the northern part of the island thus inherited, a significant portion was sold to the Scottish or English speculators. These aggravated acts of violence were further aggravated by religious hatred due to the degraded situation of Catholics, who constituted the majority in Ireland, and their removal from all official posts.

During the civil war in England , the English control over the island was greatly weakened, and the Irish Catholics rebelled against the Protestants , temporarily creating Confederative Ireland , but already in 1649 Oliver Cromwell arrived in Ireland with numerous and experienced troops, took the attack of the city of Droyed and Wexford near Dublin. In Drogheda, Cromwell ordered the entire garrison and Catholic priests to be killed, and in Wexford the army committed massacres without authorization. For nine months, Cromwell conquered almost the entire island, and then handed the authorities over to his son-in-law, Ayrton , who continued the work he had begun. Cromwell’s goal was to end the unrest on the island by displacing Irish Catholics who were forced to either leave the country or move west to Connaught , while their lands were distributed to English colonists, mostly Cromwell soldiers. In 1641 more than 1.5 million people lived in Ireland, and in 1652 only 850 thousand remained, of which 150 thousand were English and Scottish new settlers ^[3] .

The restoration of royal power has little changed the unhappy position of the Catholic Irish. Although Charles II stopped religious persecution, the Protestants retained the lands taken from the Catholics. Only a few Irish people, who had saved enough money for a lengthy legal process, returned their estates by this route. Therefore, the Catholic reaction, which began with the accession of James II , caused great joy among the Irish.

Having lost the English crown , Jacob II tried in 1689 to regain it with the help of the French , for which he landed in Ireland. He was met there with enthusiasm, excluding Londonderry and Enniskillen , all important points were transferred to him, but King William III of Orange soon appeared, defeated him at Bøynne (1690) and conquered the whole of Ireland.

Although Catholics were allowed free confession of their faith, as under Charles II, however, they began to be evicted by the thousands abroad. By the decision of the English Parliament, a million acres of land was confiscated again and distributed to the Protestants. As a result of English colonization, the indigenous Irish almost completely lost their land ownership; a new ruling stratum was formed, consisting of Protestants from England and Scotland.

In the cities, Protestants made up the so-called societies, or lodges, of Orangemen , who with all the zeal of fanatics persecuted and oppressed the Catholic population. In order to suppress any movement of the Catholic and national elements, there were, moreover, brutal laws , according to which the highest representatives of the church were to move out, and the lowest were forbidden to leave their counties; not a single Catholic had the right to hold any office, acquire land property, freely bequeath his property, etc. Although these laws were not always strictly applied, they supported hatred and bitterness.

Instead of the desired own legislation, the Poining law was re-approved in 1719, and in 1727 the Catholics were denied the right to participate in parliamentary elections.

These constant oppression forced the oppressed people to fight for their rights. A number of revolutionary alliances emerged, which have since played a large role in the history of Ireland. This is how the union of the so-called Defenders ; in 1760 the Whiteboys appeared to punish and kill cruel landlords, priests, agents and officials; almost at the same time with them, in 1763, acted Hearts of oak , ie, oak hearts, rebelled against the compulsory forced labor on the device roads.

When the war for the liberation of the North American colonies began , all the people rose and forced the government, constrained by heavy external wars, to make some concessions. Since France threatened to attack the Irish coast, and there were almost no troops in the country, the Irish made up in 1778, supposedly to protect it, a volunteer corps in which two years later there were already 50,000 people. In order to prevent a general uprising, the English Parliament was forced to repeal the law of Poining in 1782 and to allow the legislative independence of Ireland. At the same time , if not completely repealed, laws against Catholics considerably relaxed , Especially hard for the latter was the tithe , which they had to pay Protestant priests, while contributing money to the needs of their own church. The heartlessness with which many priests gathered this duty caused in 1786 the formation of a secret community, whose members called themselves the Rightboys; they took from the people an oath pledge not to pay tithing at all, or to pay it only to a certain extent and punished those who did not keep their promises.

The French Revolution made an extraordinary impression in Ireland; its echo was in Dublin, in November 1791, the union of “United Irishmen” (United Irishmen) , in which many Protestants took part and which secretly prepared for the revolution that was supposed to turn Ireland into an independent republic. The Catholics, taking advantage of the cramped position of the government, demanded full equality with the Protestants at a large meeting in Dublin in 1792. The British Parliament, wanting to tame the storm, abolished all measures aimed at restraining Irish trade and industry, and almost all other repressive measures. In 1793, the penalties imposed on Catholics for not attending the Protestant church on Sundays were abolished; they were also given the right to participate in parliamentary elections, but were denied the right to be elected as members of parliament and to occupy even lower administrative positions.

When further demands were met with refusal and the alliance even more boldly came forward with its revolutionary intentions, the government decided to suppress the movement by force. The action of the Habeas corpus , introduced in Ireland since 1782, was suspended, the cities were occupied by troops, and the United Irish alliance was disarmed.

But, in the hope of helping France, the conspirators did not lose heart. Finally, in December 1796, a French fleet with an army of 25,000 troops, led by General Ghosh , appeared off the coast of Ireland ; but due to unfavorable accidents he had to sail without doing anything. The British government declared the whole island martial. The Union of the United Irish again began in 1797 to its secret activities. It was headed by a directory of five people whose names were known only to the secretaries of the four provincial committees. The union already numbered up to 500,000 conspirators when in January 1798 the government received detailed information about it from one of the members who had changed it.

Despite this discovery and the arrest of many leaders, an uprising broke out in May 1798 in various places. The presence of significant military forces prevented the further development of the rebellion: the main rebel forces suffered at Weingar Hill on June 21 the most complete defeat . Military teams scattered throughout the island, everywhere suppressing the rebellion. Barely ended the massacre, as in August 1798 a French squadron appeared with a landing force of 1060 people. near Killala , off the northern shores of County Mayo ; but British troops prevented the French from connecting with the Irish, and after several unsuccessful clashes the French had to surrender. Later attempts to land them, which lasted until November 1798, also ended in nothing.

In 1801, Ireland became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . Irish began to be supplanted by English .

At the beginning of the XIX century. about 86% of the Irish population was employed in agriculture, which was dominated by bonded forms of exploitation. Ireland served as one of the sources of the accumulation of British capital and the development of industry in England.

Since the mid 40s. XIX century. The agrarian coup began. The fall in the price of bread (after the abolition of the “ bread laws ” in 1846 in England) prompted the landowners to begin an intensive transition from the system of small-scale peasant leases to large-scale pasture farming. The process of sgona small tenants from the land (the so-called cleaning of estates). People everywhere lost their homes. Queen Victoria spoke about her sympathy for the Irish, but in fact did not help the disadvantaged inhabitants of the island. The hatred of the English government became so strong that the mood of the people of Ireland gradually approached the uprising.

The abolition of the “bread laws” and the disease of potatoes , which was the main crop of the landown Irish peasants, led to the terrible famine of 1845-1849. As a result of the famine, about 1,000,000 people died.

Emigration increased significantly (from 1846 to 1851 1.5 million people left, mainly to the United States ), which became a constant feature of the historical development of Ireland.

As a result, in 1841-1851. Irish population declined by 30% ^[4] .

And in the future, Ireland was rapidly losing its population: if in 1841 the population was 8 million 178 thousand people, in 1901 it was only 4 million 459 thousand ^[5] .

In 1858, the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood (IRB) was created. IRB organizations originated in Ireland, Great Britain in the 1860s – 1870s, as well as among Irish immigrants to the USA , Canada , Australia, and others. Their participants called themselves Fenias (from the ancient Irish fían , the legendary military squad of the ancient Irish ). The main purpose of the Fenians was the creation of an independent Republic of Ireland through a secretly prepared armed uprising. But the scattered uprisings raised by Fenias in March 1867 in various counties of Ireland were defeated. In the 1870-1880s, the Fenians were increasingly drawn into terrorist activities . The American organization Fenian Brotherhood ( English ) organized raids on Canada .

Gaining Independence

By the beginning of World War I, the struggle between the Gomurul supporters and the unionists ( English ) had reached its apogee, and the British Parliament passed the law on the autonomy of Ireland, which was supposed to take effect after the end of the war due to fears of a civil war . The “Irish volunteers” split up: the majority were ready to accept self-government and send their members to the front of World War II, but the 12,000 people who left the name “Volunteers”, together with the leaders of the RBI, agreed only to complete independence.

In the spring of 1916, the IRB was preparing a rebellion in Dublin . But 3 days before the uprising, Owen McNeil found out about the upcoming uprising at the last minute and forbade the "volunteers" to participate in it, with the result that only 2 of the 12,000 fighters took to the streets. On April 24, the conspirators occupied the center of Dublin and a week stood up to the British forces . During the battle killed more than 500 civilians.

In 1918, the British Parliament passed a law on military service of the Irish, which caused outrage and a new crisis ( eng ). Irish deputies left the British parliament and created a national parliament ( Doyle Eren ), who declared the independence of the new state - the Irish Republic . The 100,000-strong contingent of Irish volunteers was reorganized by parliament into a national army, which was called the Irish Republican Army .

In 1919, the Irish Republican Army launched active hostilities against the British troops and the police . April 15–27, 1919, in the territory of the county of the same name, there is the Soviet Limerick Republic. The Irish Republic was created, which included the entire territory of the island.

In December 1921, a peace treaty was signed between Great Britain and Ireland . Ireland received the status of dominion (the so-called Irish Free State ).

After the conclusion of the Anglo-Irish Agreement and its ratification by the Irish Parliament, the IRA split up - a significant part of it took the side of the newly formed Irish free state , occupying important posts in the "National Army", while the rest turned their weapons against their former comrades . However, the National Army, reinforced by British support, was stronger, and on May 24, 1923, Frank Aiken gave the order to lay down arms. Those who submitted in 1926 created the party Fianna File , led by Imon de Valera , which is now the largest party in the Republic of Ireland. Those who did not submit went underground.

In 1937, the country adopted the official name "Eire."

Full independence

In 1949, Ireland proclaimed an independent republic. It was announced the withdrawal of the republic from the British Commonwealth .

Since the 1960s, Northern Ireland has become the scene of fierce confrontation between the IRA , Protestant terrorists and the security forces of the United Kingdom. IRA militants commit terrorist acts outside of Ireland, including in London. Protestant terrorists commit separate actions on the territory of the Republic of Ireland.

In some cases, military clashes occur between British security forces and Protestant militants.

In 1973, Ireland became a member of the European Union .

• Ireland // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : in 86 tons (82 tons and 4 extra). - SPb. , 1890-1907.