Origins

The island of Ireland, which is situated northwest of continental Europe in the north Atlantic Ocean, covers 84,405 square kilometres. The melting of glaciers at the end of the last ice age buried the land bridge that once joined the island of Great Britain to Ireland and as a consequence destroyed the principal migration route for Ireland’s original inhabitants, who came to Ireland via Britain nearly 8,000 years ago. Although Ireland is now less than twenty-one kilometres distant from Britain at their closest contiguous points, the rough watery barrier between the two neighbours is symbolic of their social and psychological separation. Ireland’s coastline, in excess of 3,500 kilometres, contains long peninsulas and deep bays that are warmed by the currents of the Gulf Stream. The interior of the country is primarily lowland, although there is more rugged and hilly terrain in the southwest, extreme west, northeast, and far east. Climatically, Ireland is cool and damp and frequent rainfall accounts for its lush green, although sometimes treeless, terrain, thus earning it the nickname of the Emerald Isle.

In the early nineteenth century, there were 8.2 million people in Ireland, but by 1921 migration, war, and famine had reduced the population to 4.3 million and by 1991 the total had recovered only to 5.2 million. For political and administrative purposes the island is divided into four provinces – Connaught, Munster, Leinster, and Ulster – and these provinces are further subdivided into thirty-two counties. Since 1921 Ireland has been split into two distinctive political jurisdictions, the primarily Roman Catholic Republic of Ireland, consisting of the twenty-six “southern counties,” and the predominantly Protestant Northern Ireland, which comprises six of the nine northern counties of Ulster – Armagh, Fermanagh, Derry, Tyrone, Antrim, and Down. Northern Ireland, or “Ulster,” as it is known colloquially, is currently a part of the United Kingdom. As of 1991 the population of Northern Ireland was estimated to be 1,594,000, divided between a Protestant majority (58.2 percent) and a Catholic minority (34.9 percent). The Republic of Ireland reported a population of 3.6 million in 1994, of whom 93 percent were Roman Catholic. Religion has been a critical factor in Ireland’s history, as denominational rivalries have divided the Irish people and the land itself. (See also IRISH PROTESTANTS.)

Catholic Christianity came to Ireland in the early fifth century C.E., when Palladius and Patrick were commissioned by continental European bishops to evangelize the Celtic peoples of Hibernia, a region that had never been formally incorporated into the Roman Empire. Palladius was murdered by local inhabitants in what is now the Dublin area in 431, but Patrick had considerable success in his conversion of the Gaelic clans in modern-day Ulster. The foundations he laid allowed Celtic Christianity to flourish after his death, and its growth was particularly apparent in the establishment of numerous monastic houses.

Following the disintegration of the Roman Empire, Irish monasticism entered its golden age, which was to last until the end of the eighth century. Not only did the monastic houses emerge as centres of learning, but missionary monks such as Aidan, Columba, and Columbanus played leading roles in the re-evangelization of central and northern Europe. During the Protestant Reformation centuries later, the retention of Catholicism by many Irish took on great importance in the context of English-Irish relations. In an effort to counteract Irish resistance to the Reformation, England’s rulers encouraged Scottish Presbyterians and various English Protestant groups to settle in Ireland (the Scots Presbyterians concentrating in Ulster). The resultant expulsion from their lands by Scottish and English settlers in the early seventeenth century, and growing Protestant power on the island, sparked a bloody rebellion of Catholics against English rule in 1641. The insurrection was brutally suppressed by Oliver Cromwell in 1649–50, and persecution of Irish Catholics intensified throughout the rest of the century. The victory of William of Orange over the Catholic army of James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 solidified English control over Ireland and Protestant supremacy within it. Irish Catholic capitulation was completed in 1691 by the surrender at Limerick and by the treaty of the same name. Settlement from Britain continued, with the result that today there are significant cultural, political, and economic differences between the descendants of the ancient Celtic inhabitants of Ireland and the descendants of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scottish and English planters who displaced many of them from their lands, especially in Ulster.

The aftermath of the debacle of 1690–91 was marked by measures designed to stamp out the Catholic fact in Ireland. Between 1695 and 1728 the Protestant-dominated Irish Parliament passed a series of penal laws which prohibited Catholic clergy from celebrating the mass, barred Catholics from most liberal professions, restricted Catholic suffrage and officeholding, and placed severe obstacles to Catholic ownership of land. Under such restrictions the Catholic Church went underground, with itinerant clergy and religious celebrating the Eucharist at “Mass Houses.” Yet the Irish authorities found it nearly impossible to enforce the penal laws uniformly across Ireland. By the 1750s Irish Catholicism had in place a parochial structure as well as an educational network. Britain also began to mollify its harsh rule as the penal laws were slowly and partially repealed by a series of acts in 1778, 1782, and 1793.

In 1798 the improved relations between the Irish Catholic Church and Britain were disrupted by the rebellion of the United Irishmen, a political group inspired by the liberal ideas of the French Revolution and intent on overthrowing the British regime. This rebellion was defeated as well, and as a result the Irish Parliament was dissolved in 1800 and Ireland was formally joined to the United Kingdom the following year. Amidst the economic crisis that followed the termination of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Ireland witnessed the emergence of a mass-protest movement, largely Catholic in composition. Its leader, Daniel O’Connell, enjoying wide support from both clergy and laity, campaigned initially for the right of Catholics to hold public office in Ireland and Britain and later for repeal of the union. His efforts on the first score achieved success with the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829.

The process begun by O’Connell put in motion a century-long political struggle for Irish autonomy. In 1848 and 1867 the nationalist movement resorted, unsuccessfully, to violent rebellion. Radical elements were resentful of the landholding system, which placed Protestant, and sometimes absentee, landlords at the top of the social pyramid and consigned Ireland’s majority Catholic population to a state of tenancy and often, for the cottiers and labourers, a life of poverty. There was also anger over the British government’s inadequate measures to alleviate distress during the Great Famine of 1846–49, and some suggested that British leaders and British dominance in Ireland had wilfully caused the tragedy. The 1870s marked a formal assault on the landholding system of Ireland by the Land League.

Agitation for land reform and the movement for Home Rule (ambiguously defined as a type of political autonomy for Ireland) merged in the person of Charles Stewart Parnell. Parnell abandoned the violent tactics of some supporters of the Land League; instead, he used constitutional methods to fight for Home Rule, forming a bloc of over eighty members in the British House of Commons. The Irish Parliamentary Party, as it became known, weathered the fall of Parnell in 1890–91, the failure of Home Rule bills in 1886 and 1893, and the growing radicalization of Irish politicians who deemed the constitutional process futile. In 1914 another Home Rule bill was passed, only to be temporarily withheld until the conclusion of World War I.

Constitutional options failed to bring the desired results. Consequently, Sinn Fein (“We Ourselves”), a radical movement founded at the end of the nineteenth century that called for independence from Britain, led an insurrection in Dublin on Easter Sunday, 1916. The brutal suppression of the rising, followed by the speedy execution of defeated Sinn Fein leaders, succeeded in transforming moderate constitutional nationalism into a burning desire for independence, to be achieved if necessary by force of arms. Warfare between the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the military wing of Sinn Fein, and British forces, continued until the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on 6 December 1921, effectively creating an autonomous Ireland within the British Empire.

The new Irish Free State did not, however, encompass all of Ireland. Vociferous assertions by Ulster Protestants of their loyalty to the union with Britain resulted in the partition of the island. Six predominantly Protestant counties in Ulster were excluded from the Free State, remained part of the United Kingdom, and were renamed Northern Ireland. This partition was not satisfactory to many in Sinn Fein who had envisioned a republic that would include all the counties and be completely separate from Britain. Disagreement over how to deal with the British led to civil war between rival factions of Sinn Fein that lasted from 1921 to 1923, when the pro-treaty forces prevailed.

Following the civil war, Ireland’s political factions jostled for control until 1932, when Eamon De Valera, the leader of the Fianna Fáil (“Men of Destiny”) party, won power. In 1937 a national referendum approved de Valera’s revised constitution. “Éire,” as the Free State was now known, asserted Irish independence, although within the British commonwealth, and it formally recognized the Catholic Church as the church of the Irish majority. It was not until 1948 that Ireland was declared a republic and the political connection with England was finally severed.

Northern Ireland has remained a part of the United Kingdom, but its Catholic minority has consistently resisted the rule of the Protestant majority and the British tie. In 1972 open violence erupted, the local Parliament, Stormont, was closed, and Northern Ireland came under the direct rule of the British Parliament. The arrival of the British army served to inflame passions further, and violence continued between British forces, Protestant Ulster Unionists, and the IRA until the latter declared a ceasefire in 1994. When that ceasefire was broken the following year, various parties involved in the “Troubles” – Northern Ireland’s Catholic and Protestant communities, the Republic of Ireland, and the British government – struggled to arrive at a formula for peace negotiations. In May 1997 the election of a Labour government in Britain led to the beginning of peace talks in Northern Ireland, and in September Sinn Fein entered the negotiations after making a public declaration against violence. An agreement was reached the following year and ratified in a subsequent referendum.

All of these political events took place against the background of an economic boom that has swept across Ireland, due in no small part to Ireland’s membership in the European Union. Meanwhile, modernization of the Irish economy has been accompanied by increased secularization. Debate continues over the state prohibition on abortion, and in November 1995 the Irish voted in a referendum to lift the ban on divorce, which had been entrenched in the constitution since 1937. The Catholic Church has lost much of its pre-eminent status, particularly as a result of several scandals involving priests and bishops. Currently, vocations to the priesthood are at an all-time low.